Page images
PDF
EPUB

Ribat, scarcely more than a child, while returning home rather late, had perceived on the mountain, near a grove of trees, at the spot called the White Cross, on account of two rocks placed one above another, a sort of light, a tremulous light, something like a Will-o'-the-Wisp. The child, greatly surprised by this unexpected sight, had also noticed a strong odor of incense in the air, and although much terrified, crouched among the grasses and crawled toward the light, which at times disappeared and then reappeared. On arriving within a certain distance, he heard a confused murmur of voices, and hiding behind a little bush, gazed at the scene as steadily as he could. The light flickered like a star that was about to return to the skies. Suddenly a cry rose, a frightful cry, such as he had never heard before, a cry that seemed to proceed from the rocks. The child was so frightened that he felt his hair stand on end, and could not help uttering a shriek, when the light was instantly transformed into a dazzling flood of rays, in the midst of which he saw with his own eyes, the Holy Virgin mounted on an ass, and St. Joseph walking behind, so that any one would have supposed the colored statues in the church of Grand Fort had suddenly appeared in a burst of sunlight. The child Jesus was probably concealed under his mother's cloak on account of the night-air, so the shepherd did not see him; but he was almost sure that he had heard him. Unfortunately the splendor of the heavenly light was so great that his dazzled eyes could not distinguish the details of the picture very clearly. Be that as it might, Pierre Ribat plainly understood that the Virgin did not wish to be approached, for she raised her arm, and ordered him by a gesture of the hand to go at once toward the old saw-mill; then everything disappeared. The little shepherd lost all self-command on finding himself alone in the darkness, and began to run at full speed over the stones and through the brambles, leaping over rocks and hedges, and climbing the steep slopes; the dogs, hearing the uproar, sprang out of the sheepfolds, and rushed after him. Half mad with terror, he reached the plain, cut by the stones, torn by the thorns, and, still pursued by the dogs, stopped behind the new

building, which barred any further progress, and falling on his knees, recited five Paters and five Aves.-Autour d'une Source.

RUMMOND, SIR HENRY, a Scottish clergyman and author; born at Stirling, August 17, 1851; died at Tunbridge Wells, March 11, 1897. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and at the Free Church Divinity Hall. He was appointed to a mission at Malta, and on his return was made lecturer on science at Free Church College, Glasgow, and also took charge of a workingmen's mission. "For several years," he says, " it has been my privilege to address regularly two very different audiences on two very different themes. On week-days I have lectured to a class of students on the natural sciences, and on Sundays to an audience, consisting for the most part of workingmen, on subjects of a moral and religious character. For a time I succeeded in keeping the science and the religion shut off from one another in two separate compartments of my mind. But gradually the wall of separation showed symptoms of giving way. The two fountains of knowledge also slowly began to overflow, and finally their waters met and mingled; and I found the truth running out of my audience on Sundays by the week-day outlets. In other words, the subject-matter religion had taken on the method of expression of science, and I discovered myself enunciating spiritual law in the exact terms of biology and physics." The result of these studies is summed up in Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883); The Greatest Thing in the World

[graphic][merged small]

(1890); Pax Vobiscum (1890); The Changed Life (1891); The Programme of Christianity (1892); The City Without a Church (1893); The Ascent of Man (1894). He visited America and Africa in the pursuit of his scientific studies.

In a review of some of his earlier religious writings, the London Spectator says:-"No one who reads the papers entitled Biogenesis, Degeneration, Eternal Life and Classification, will fail to recognize in him a new and powerful teacher, impressive both from the scientific calmness and accuracy of his view of law, and from the deep religious earnestness with which he traces the workings of law in the moral and spiritual sphere. He attempts to show how the same laws which science has discovered in the phenomena of nature continue, and can be traced in the phenomena of the spiritual world: how such great principles as biogenesis, the origination of life only out of what is already living,- not only by analogy, but identically, govern the course of spiritual, as they have been proved to govern that of natural phenomena. He takes, therefore, some of the chief laws of nature as they have been discovered and stated by evolutionists, and demonstrates their identity with those principles of Christianity which have hitherto been accepted on authority, but have never been reduced to law or compared with the laws of nature. Biogenesis becomes in religion regeneration: spiritual death is want of correspondence: eternal life is perfect correspondence with the spiritual environment — God: conformity to type is conformity to the image of his Son."

The same authority thus speaks of Professor Drummond's Tropical Africa: "After the numerous and enormous volumes which have been written upon

« EelmineJätka »