Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Message

I have not the gift of vision,
   I have not the psychic ear,
And the realms that are called Elysian
   I neither see nor hear;
Yet oft when the shadows darken
   And the daylight hides its face,
The soul of me seems to hearken
   For the truths that speak through space.

They speak to me not through reason,
   They speak to me not by word;
Yet my soul would be guilty of treason
   If it did not say it had heard.
For Space has a message compelling
   To give to the ear of Earth;
And the things which the Silence is telling
   In the bosom of God have birth.

Now this is the truth as I hear it-
   That ever through good or ill,
The will of the Ruling Spirit
   Is moving and ruling still.
In the clutch of the blood-red terror
   That holds the world in its might,
The Race is learning its error
   And will find its way to the light.

And this is the Truth as I see it-
   Whoever cries out for peace,
Must think it, and live it, and be it,
   And the wars of the world will cease.
Men fight that man may awaken,
   And no longer want to kill;
Wars rage, and the heavens are shaken
   That man may learn how to be still.

In the silence he finds his Saviour-
   The God Who is dwelling within;
And only by Christ-behaviour
   Is the soul of him saved from sin.
There is only one Source-no other-
   One Light, and each soul is a ray;
And he who would slaughter his brother,
   Himself he is seeking to slay.

Now these are the Truths we are learning
   Through evils and horrors untold;
For the thought of the race is turning
   Away from its methods of old.
And the mind of the race is sated,
   With the things that it prized of yore,
And the monster of war is hated,
   As never on earth before.

Oh, slow are God’s mills in the grinding,
   But they grind exceedingly small;
And slow is man’s soul in the finding,
   That he is a part of the All.
Through æons and æons, his story
   Is bloody and blackened with crime;
But he will come out into glory
   And stand on the summits sublime.

He will stand on the summits of Knowledge,
   In the splendour of Light from the Source;
And the methods of church and of college
   Will all of them change by his force.
For the creeds that are blind and cruel,
   And the teachings by rule and by rod,
Will all be turned into fuel
   To light up the pathway to God.

This is the Truth as I hear it-
   The clouds are rolling away,
And Spirit will talk with Spirit
   In the swift approaching day.
War from the world shall be driven,
   From evil shall come forth good;
And men shall make ready for Heaven
   Through living in Brotherhood.