"
The scene with the woman taken in adultery he has also made human and
near in these lines, called "Charity":
"Who now shall accuse and arraign us?
What man shall condemn and disown?
Since Christ has said only the stainless
Shall cast at his fellows a stone?"
That Jesus Christ died for the world, that Calvary had more meaning for
humanity than anything else that has ever happened, Miller put in four
lines:
"Look starward! stand far, and unearthy,
Free souled as a banner unfurled.
Be worthy! O, brother, be worthy!
For a God was the price of the world!"
He caught Christ's teaching, and the whole gist of the New Testament
expressed in that immortal phrase "Judge not," and he wrote some lines
that have been on the lips of man the world over, and shall continue to
be as long as men speak poetry. A unique pleasure was mine on this
afternoon. I had noticed something that Mrs. Miller had not noticed in
this great poem. She quoted it to us:
"In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still;
In men whom men pronounce Divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I hesitate to draw the line
Between the two, where God has not!"
Miller wrote it that way when he first wrote it, in his younger days.
It was natural for Mrs. Miller to quote it that way. But I had
discovered in his revised and complete poems that he had changed a
significant phrase in that great verse.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41