How easy the spiritual life seems, when material things fall into their subordinate places! If it might always be so!
May 20. Still in Boston, interested in many things. People _are_ trying to help each other. I have been at the Woman’s Industrial Union, have heard Miss Leigh talk of her work in Paris, have talked over the possibilities of better influences for girl-workers in Boston, have listened to Miss Freeman’s report of her Student’s Aid work at Wellesley College--all so suggestive--so hopeful! What should not the woman of the future be? What may she not be?
“I saw all women of our race Revealed in that one woman’s face!”
June 6. Canon Wilberforce and the great temperance meeting at Tremont Temple. A most eloquent man, and he goes to the very root of the matter,--no real temperance without spirituality. “Not drunken with wine, but filled with the Holy Ghost,”--he made that infinite contrast clear. His sermon yesterday was most impressive,--from the text, “What seest thou?” It was a Trinity Sunday sermon, and the thought was that in Jesus we see God most perfectly. But emphasis was placed upon the attitude and condition of the soul, for the seeing. It was Canon Wilberforce’s first sermon in Boston, and I think this is his first visit to America. It is good to have such neighbors come to see us.
In the afternoon Mr. Brooks spoke from the text, “He that hath the Son hath life.” I have seldom heard him speak with more fervor, of what life is, and of the dreadful thing it is to lack life, the life that comes to us and is in us through Christ,--the life of God in human souls. It is his last sermon for the summer, and the text itself is one to keep close at heart all through the year. “Not merely the knowledge of Christ, but Christ Himself with us, we must have,” he said: and with the thought comes the suggestion of all true relations of spirit with spirit, the human and the divine interblended, God the soul of our souls and the children one with the Father through the Son. I thank God for what I have found at Trinity Church this winter: I begin to know more what the true Church is,--nothing exclusive or separating, but the coming together of all souls in Christ.
June 12. In Beverly, but not yet acclimated to the stronger sweep of the east winds. They give rheumatic twinges. But the birds sing, and the fresh foliage is shaken out into greenness, the rose acacia and the bridal-wreath spirea run wild in the garden, and the freedom of nature’s life revives mine. The thrill of the oriole,--what a jubilation it is, through the Sabbath stillness; it is better than the city in summer time.