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Title: The First Soprano


Author: Mary Hitchcock

Release Date: March 26, 2005  [eBook #15467]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIRST SOPRANO***


E-text prepared by Al Haines



THE FIRST SOPRANO

by

MARY HITCHCOCK

Author of _One Christmas_

Union Gospel Press
Cleveland, Ohio

1912







CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I  IN THE CHURCH
    II  THE HOUSE OF GRAY
   III  THE CONFESSION
    IV  ADELE
     V  IS GOD DEMONSTRABLE?
    VI  MR. FROTHINGHAM AND THE CHOIR REHEARSAL
   VII  A NEW SUNDAY
  VIII  "NOT OF THE WORLD"
    IX  "TWO OF ME"
     X  THE CHURCH SOCIAL
    XI  MR. BOND'S LECTURE
   XII  THE SOUL HEARS A CAUSE
  XIII  EXPERIENCE
   XIV  A "WITLESS, WORTHLESS LAMB"
    XV  "SELL THAT YE HAVE"
   XVI  THE MISSIONARY MEETING
  XVII  LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEAD
 XVIII  GOD, MY EXCEEDING JOY






CHAPTER I

IN THE CHURCH

It was Sunday morning in a church at New Laodicea.  The bell had ceased
pealing and the great organ began its prelude with deep bass notes that
vibrated through the stately building.  The members of the choir were
all in their places in the rear gallery, and prepared in order their
music in the racks before them.  Below the worshipers poured in steady,
quiet streams down the carpeted aisles to their places, and there was a
gentle murmur of silk as ladies settled in their pews and bowed their
heads for the conventional moment of prayer.  Exquisitely stained
windows challenged the too garish daylight, but permitted to enter
subdued rays in azure, violet and crimson tints which fell athwart the
eastern pews and garnished the marble font and the finely carved
pulpit.  They fell upon the silvering hair of the Reverend Doctor
Schoolman as he pronounced the invocation and read the opening hymn,
but they failed to reach the young stranger, seated behind, who
accompanied him this morning.

Faultlessly in their usual current ran the services until the time for
the anthem by the choir, and then the people settled themselves
comfortably in their pews with expectant faces and ears slightly turned
to catch every strain from the well-trained voices in the gallery
behind.  This time the selection was from Mendelssohn and a soprano
voice began alone:

  "Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove!
  Far away, far away would I rove!"

Clear, pure and true, the sweet voice floated through the church.  With
dramatic sympathy it yielded to the spirit of the melody and the pathos
of the words.  It touched hearts with a sense of undefined sorrow and
longing.  Madame Chapeau, the French milliner, who rented a sitting in
the church of her patrons, sat with eyes filled with tears that
threatened to plough pale furrows through the roses of her cheeks.

  "In the wilderness build me a nest,"

suggested the sweet voice.  Two weeks in a lonely country place had
been far too long the summer before for Madame, and a wilderness was
the last place she desired.  But the plaintive song touched a
sentimental chord and answered every purpose.  Mr. Stockman, who sat
midway of the center aisle, grasping his gold-headed cane, suffered the
keen business lines of his face to relax and looked palpably pleased.
He recalled the money contributed to the expense of the choir, and
reflected that he would not withdraw a dollar of it.  To be sure, he
remembered that the services of this soprano, daughter of Robert Gray,
the iron merchant and elder of the church, were gratuitous; but still
he was glad to associate the thought of his money with the choir that
could render such music.  And presently the chorus joined in the song,
and many voices added their harmony, to the increasing passion of the
cry:

  "In the wilderness build me a nest,
  And remain there forever at rest!"

Sensitive souls thrilled to the music, which unquestionably always
added the capstone to the aesthetic enjoyment of this, the most elegant
church at New Laodicea.  The minister sat with a studied expression of
approbation and subdued enjoyment.  The young stranger at his side sat
with eyes shaded by his hand.

The choir seated themselves with pleased relief, for there had been no
noticeable flaw in the production.  The leader's sensitive face looked
as nearly satisfied as it ever became over any performance.  The
organist slid off his bench and dropped into his chair to listen to the
sermon--or, perhaps not to listen.  But he had done his part well,
faithfully filling in all the interstices of time between numbers of
the program, so that the congregation had been bored by no moments of
silence nor thrust back upon the necessity of meditation.

There were a few words of introduction, and it was found that the
stranger was to speak.  He was just a trifle surprising in appearance,
for his coat had no ministerial cut, and was even a bit more suggestive
of business than of the profession of divinity.  But he was soon
forgiven this; for his voice was even and pleasant, and he looked at
his congregation with a pair of frank blue eyes, while he spoke with
the simplicity of a man who has somewhat to say to his fellowmen and
says it honestly.  His text excited no curiosity, for it was this:
"_The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship
the Father in spirit and in truth_."

In the choir Miss Winifred Gray had composed herself to listen.
Fortunately she was at the rear of her admiring hearers and had not to
confront their faces as she sat down.  She had enjoyed her part
exceedingly.  She loved her music, and the greater its pathos the
keener her enjoyment in rendering it.  There was a subtle sense of
power, too, which she did not analyze, in moving a whole congregation
to admiration and sympathy.  With her whole heart she had entered into
her musical work, in which the church divided attention with the
drawing-room and an occasional concert.  She sat now in pleased triumph
and had no ears for the opening words of the young man's sermon.  But
it dawned upon her gradually that he was speaking from the words, "in
spirit and in truth."  He spoke of the former worship which dealt with
externals of place and method--with "carnal ordinances imposed until a
time of reformation"; and then of a new era of worship which Christ had
brought in, wherein true worshipers draw nigh to God, not with sensuous
offerings, but "in spirit and in truth."

Winifred could not follow all that he said, for it seemed a new and
strange language for the most part, but she gathered this: that somehow
Christ had opened the way for all believers into the very spiritual
presence of God, into a holy place not made with hands (and the more
real because it was not, being God-made and eternal), and that there
worshipers stood before eyes of perfect discernment, unclothed by
outward semblance, and offered "spiritual sacrifices" unto Him.  It was
a beautiful picture, but awful.  Winifred shuddered as she thought of
the august Presence that inhabited the Holiest of All that the minister
spoke of, and wondered if she would dare approach it.  To stand in
naked spirit before eyes of flame and to be read through and through,
daring to speak no unmeant word, but only that which the heart
designed, in absolute sincerity!  Was worship in spirit such a real
thing as that?  Was she a true worshiper?  Why was she there that
morning?  She glanced about the building, with its arches and columns,
its stained windows, and almost perfect arrangement of form and color.
But the minister was saying:

"This material structure is not the house of God.  No longer is God
localized to our faith as in the days of symbol and shadow, when surely
Jerusalem was 'the place where men ought to worship.'  For the symbol
has given place to the 'truth,' and in that, 'in spirit,' men worship.
But while in every place, or, better still, without reference to
place--'neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem'--true worshipers
shall find Him, still His spiritual people form a temple for His
manifestation, wherever they are gathered, and there is He.  'In the
midst' He takes His rightful place, and that place we must accord
Him--the center of our heart's attention and worship."

Winifred resumed her question.  Why had she come?  Was it to meet that
One, to gaze in spirit upon His pierced hands and side, as the minister
was saying, and to rejoice in Him as the risen Lord?  She did not quite
know what he meant.  She went back over the morning's experience,
beginning with her dressing-room, when before her mirror she donned her
new and very pretty silk dress and arranged all her faultless toilet,
adjusting the modish hat that became so well her own type of beauty,
fitted on the fresh, dainty gloves that should clasp her beloved music
when she should open her throat and sing like a glad bird, delighting
in its song, however plaintive.  And then she had gone.  Had she
thought of Him in all this?  Winifred's honest soul said, No.  But
church?  She had thought of "church," with all that it stood for of
building, and congregation, and set order of things, and there had been
a sort of subconscious satisfaction in the fact that going to church
was a religious thing to do, and that to sing in the choir (especially
for no pay, as she did) was very meritorious.  But was it so?

The minister was saying:

"If worship is not sincere, it becomes, spiritually, an abomination.
If, for instance, our singing, instead of being a true sacrifice of
praise to God degenerates into the sensuous enjoyment of a 'concourse
of sweet sounds,' it is no longer worship, and it is not even an
innocent employment.  However fine it may be as a musical
entertainment, if offered as a _substitute for worship_ it may be
likened to the offering of 'strange fire,' which met such instant
judgment in the time of Moses."

Winifred winced under the clear, bold words.  There was a little
well-bred stir in the congregation.  Doctor Schoolman's disciplined
countenance betrayed a startled moment and then relapsed into an
expression of bland, but non-committal interest.  Winifred glanced
about to see how her neighbors were taking it.  She looked first at
George Frothingham, for he and she were unusually good friends.  His
handsome face showed only abstraction, and she knew he had not heard a
word that was said.  She glanced warily back toward the organ and saw
the player in his chair, but he was indulging in a few winks of sleep.
His duties at the theater the night before had illy prepared him for
very wakeful attention to the sermon, and other influences were telling
upon him, too, for the man of music knew the taste of wines.  The
leader of the choir was listening.  His penetrating eyes were fixed
upon the calm-faced man in the pulpit, and an unconscious scowl bent
his dark brows.  Yet it was not an angry frown, but simply intent.  He
looked half defensive, half convicted.

The minister went on:

"I fear that this is an unusual way of looking at it, and that we are
all too accustomed to pass unchallenged our professed worship.  Vice
may be so habitual and under such common sanction as to be mistaken for
virtue.  But surely in the most vital matter of our intercourse with
God we do well to let every act be tested by the truth.  It shall be so
tested eventually, whether we will or no; and even now in the midst of
the churches the Son of Man is walking, still with eyes of flame, and
still He is saying: 'I know thy works.'"

Winifred's next excursion in thought away from the sermon led her to
review her part of the morning program, and she wondered if the
minister thought of it too.  The hymns?--she had forgotten what they
were.  But the anthem--was it unto the Lord she sang her part?  Was
there an atom of sincerity in the sentiment she sang?  The words were
from a Psalm, she thought, and she did not really understand what David
meant.  Had she any clearer ideas as to what Winifred Gray might mean?
She surely did not wish the wings of a dove, literally, nor to fly away
into the wilderness.  She loved her home and many friends and had no
desire to escape from them or her surroundings.  If it meant to fly
away to heaven--?  Surely she did not wish that!  The world and "the
things that are in the world" were very attractive to the young
soprano.  She had no wish for heaven save as an alternative from hell.
What did it mean?  Was it a heart-rest that David longed for?  But she
had been conscious of no unrest--until just now.  Honestly, the truth
was that she had not meant anything!  Was it worship?  But her friends
would tell her she sang it with feeling, she argued defensively, and
then asked herself candidly, what sort of feeling?  She had sung
Mignon's song with equal sympathy the night before.  She confessed the
truth; it was dramatic instinct that led her in both songs, and the
Spirit of God in neither.

"I am a hypocrite," she cried within herself, "and no true worshiper!"

Then she thought of the positive side of her action.  While there was
no offering to God, she had received in her own heart the subtle
incense of the people's praise.  Enveloped in its cloud she had sat
until the sermon disturbed her.  She wished the young stranger had not
come to preach.  Doctor Schoolman's sermons were nice, and learned, and
elevating, and never gave her such uncomfortable thoughts!  Had he
preached this morning all might have gone on as before so pleasantly.

And now?--should it not go on?  Could she think for a moment of
stopping it all?  Impossible!  But to go on with it was--"abomination!"
That was what the preacher said.  Perhaps he was wrong, or she
misunderstood.  Doctor Schoolman would know.  But what said her own
conscience?  After all, she knew the battle must be fought out there.
Was it not sin to take sacred words on her lips and not mean them?  How
many times had she taken God's name in vain, pouring out pretended
invocation to Him, while her heart addressed only the congregation for
their approval!  But it had been so thoughtless!  He would surely
forgive.  But now she had thought about it, and it could never be the
same again.

By this time Winifred was thoroughly miserable.  She pondered over and
again what she should do, at times in imagination resigning her
position in the choir; then saying:

"Impossible!  It is absurd!  Who ever heard of its being wicked to sing
in the choir?  How could I explain myself?"

Then she reflected that she would study to be earnest, that she would
school herself to think of Him and sing to Him.  She took her hymn-book
and found the place of the last hymn, resolved to put sincerity in
practice at once.  It was chosen, without reference to the unexpected
sermon, and was the well-known psalm of love and longing which earnest
souls have sung for many years:

  "For thee, O dear, dear country,
  Mine eyes their vigils keep;
  For very love, beholding
  Thy happy name they weep.
  The mention of Thy glory
  Is unction to the breast,
  And medicine in sickness,
  And love, and life, and rest."

"I cannot sing it!" Winifred almost sobbed to herself.  "It is not
true--to me."

Then she read on.  Before, she would have been carried away with the
rhythm and the graceful thought.  But now as she read:

"Oh, sweet and blessed country That eager hearts expect!"

"It's not true--it's not true!" she thought.  "I cannot sing these
songs.  I know nothing of their sentiment.  I am not a true worshiper
of the Father.  I do not believe I know Him!"

Then Winifred covered her eyes with her hand.  "'Thou desirest truth in
the inward parts,'" the preacher was quoting.

The words sent a pang through her heart.  "God has found no truth in
me," she thought, "I have been a lie."

Then she sat in wretchedness, fighting back the tears that struggled to
escape--tears of shame, remorse, wounded self-love, and grief that her
favorite idol, a god whom she did know and had served well, was to be
taken down from its niche in the house of the Lord and cast out.  She
heard little of the remainder of the sermon, and what she heard added
to her misery; for it told of the joy of true worshipers when at last
they should stand face to face with Him whom, having not seen, they
love,--

  "All rapture through and through
  In God's most holy sight."

The sense of isolation, of exclusion from it all, was very painful; and
Winifred did not know that this very knowledge of exclusion, and its
grief, were harbingers of eternally better things.  She stood with the
others as they sang the closing hymn, and her own silence was
unobserved, as she did not always join the chorus.  She had recovered
her composure by the time the benediction was pronounced and the organ
was yielding an unusually lively postlude to whose strains she and
George Frothingham descended the stairs together.

"The old chap is almost waltzing us out to-day," that gentleman
remarked, referring to the organist.  "Winifred, you outdid yourself
to-day on that lovely thing."

Winifred smiled faintly.  "Did you hear the sermon to-day, George?" she
asked.

"Did I hear it?  Well, that's good.  Do I hear sermons when I go to
church?  But I confess to a little absentmindedness; not to equal that
of our friend at the organ, however," and George laughed.  Then he
caught sight of a group of people in the vestibule below and exclaimed:

"Hello!  There's your father and the preacher!  I believe he is going
to take him home to dinner.  Don't look for me under your hospitable
roof to-day, Winifred."

"Why?" she began.

"I have no taste for parsons.  He'll talk the backs off the chairs.
See if he doesn't.  Good-by."  And the young man strode carelessly away.

Winifred joined her mother in the vestibule, and they held a whispered
consultation as to the probabilities of the young minister's going home
with them.  It seemed evident that Mr. Gray had taken him captive.

"Take him in the carriage and let me walk, mother," Winifred said, "I
would much rather."  So she slipped away and did not meet the minister
until dinner.


Hubert Gray, Winifred's only brother, had also been at church that
morning.  This was somewhat unusual, for Hubert was a sceptic, and he
did not like to appear what he was not.  But occasionally he went to
hear what might be said and turn it over in his questioning brain.  He
was a young man of strong aversions, and one of his special dislikes
happened to be the unfortunate Doctor Schoolman.

"I hate cant," he declared.  "His very tones are studied and unnatural.
His voice quavers to order, and if I should see tears on his face I
should think he had pumped them up someway for effect.  I don't like to
be practiced on.  I should like a man to believe something earnestly
and say it honestly."

And so he stayed away for the most part, but like many a man who is a
sceptic, found that the subject of the Christ would not down, and he
could not let it alone.  So after absences he would go again to hear,
though it should be only to gain fresh occasion for his doubts or
cynical criticisms.  To-day he was the first to arrive at home and met
Winifred in the hall as she came in.

"The spiritual priesthood did very well to-day, Winnie," he said, by
way of greeting.  "I hope you all sang 'with grace in your hearts unto
the Lord.'  I am sure Frothingham did.  I saw him--eh, Winnie, what's
the matter?"

For Winifred had turned a quivering face toward her brother.

"I didn't, Hubert," she said.  "There was no grace in my heart."  And
then she hastened up the stairs to her room.

"Hm-m!" said Hubert reflectively, and repeated the observation at
intervals until dinner was served.




CHAPTER II

THE HOUSE OF GRAY

The family gathered for dinner with its usual decorum.  Winifred sat
opposite the young minister, and Hubert was beside him.  Mr. Robert
Gray carved the turkey with his usual skill and the sharpest of knives.
He began his anticipated discussion with the preacher:

"Your sermon fitted pretty closely to-day, Mr. Bond," he said, as he
separated a joint successfully.

"Did it really?" said Mr. Bond, with a smile that lit up a singularly
pleasant face.  "I am glad to hear it.  That is what sermons are for, I
believe?"

"Just so," said Mr. Gray, and he added with a little chuckle of
enjoyment, "I like it--I like it.  We need it, I assure you.  There is
no question about that.  Why, Winnie, not a bit of the fowl?  You are
losing your appetite, child.  Yes, sir, we need to be stirred up.  If
there is anything I believe in, it is sincerity.  But now, don't you
think, Mr. Bond, that you put it just a little grain too stiff?"

"In what way, Mr. Gray?"

"Well, now, I say the Apostles' Creed.  I know it by heart.  I don't
know how many hundreds of times I have said it.  It says itself.
Perhaps that is why I don't always stop to think what it does say.  But
I do not suppose there is a word in it that I do not believe.  Now if
my mind happens to wander while I am, saying it--if it happens, mind
you--"

"Father, Julia is waiting for Mr. Bond's plate," interposed Mrs. Gray
softly from the other end of the table.

"I beg your pardon."  Then, as the delinquent plate went to its
destination, "If my mind happens to wander to some little matter of
business, or something or other, while I say the Creed--_am I a
hypocrite_?"

The merchant propounded the question with a note of triumph, as though
the bold-spoken minister were rather cornered now.  Mr. Bond answered
respectfully, but with subdued amusement:

"I think, Mr. Gray, that the Lord would recognize the absence of
insincere intent, but that so far as worship goes, you might as well
set some Tibetan prayer-wheels going."

A gleam of enjoyment shot from Hubert's eyes, and a laugh almost
escaped him.

"Ah, just so--just so!" said Mr. Gray, a little discomfited.  "But
would it be better not to say it?"

"It would be better to mean it," said Mr. Bond.

"He parries well," thought Hubert.

"Winifred," said Mrs. Gray, off whose smooth nature these discussions
rolled harmlessly, "the music was very fine this morning."

Winifred, who would have preferred almost any subject to this, cast an
appealing glance at her mother, but it was unheeded.  She had hoped Mr.
Bond would not recognize her as the singer.

Mrs. Gray went on: "Mrs. Butterworth, who sits just the other side of
the partition from us, you know, was quite carried away.  She looked
volumes at me, but she just whispered 'heavenly!'  She said after
church she hoped you would come to her party next week and bring your
songs.  You have such a gift, she said."

And Mrs. Gray herself sighed religiously at the thought of Winnie's
"gift."  Winnie could have sighed, too, but it was with torture.

Mrs. Gray was a comfortable lady, absorbed in the quiet machinery of a
conventionally proper life.  She loved her family, her church, and a
moderate amount of society.  She loved things.  Quiet satisfaction
beamed from the gentle eyes on the choice silver of the dining-room, on
her blue antique china, on the costly, tasteful accessories of the
drawing-room, and, indeed, on all the well chosen appointments of the
quietly elegant home.  Interest in her own person and its adornment had
been gradually diverted toward Winifred, whose beauty, grace of manner,
and accomplishments, were an unfailing joy.  Now she sighed in quiet
gratitude to the vague deity known as Providence for Winifred's
peculiarly sweet gift.  As to the sermon of the morning, she was one of
those hearers in whose mind a sermon and its application do not
necessarily go together.

Winifred felt two pairs of eyes upon her from across the table as her
mother talked to her in a voice not intended to interrupt the gentlemen
in their conversation.  There were Hubert's eyes of darker brown than
her own and very searching, and the preacher's blue eyes that looked
inquiringly through rimless eye-glasses.  She could think of no answer
to her mother, and so bent her eyes silently upon her plate, while a
flush rose to her temples.  Mrs. Butterworth's rapturous "heavenly" was
in strong contrast to the conviction of godless insincerity which
filled her own heart.

Mercifully to her embarrassment her father began again:

"But do you not think, Mr. Bond, that we must take things as they are?
Granted that there is a great deal of unreality in the church, what are
we going to do about it?  Can one man who sees the point work a
revolution in the whole church?  Must we not just take conditions as
they are and make the best of them?"

"Perhaps we may not hope to revolutionize a whole church," replied Mr.
Bond, "but," and his face grew stern with an expression that told of a
battlefield already fought for and won, "he may refuse to add one unit
to the aggregation of untrue worshipers, or to uphold an organized
system of unreality.  I sometimes fear, Mr. Gray," and there was a ring
of sadness in his voice, "that we too readily take conditions as they
are, and make the worst of them!"

"Yes, I am afraid you are right--you are right," said the merchant
slowly.  Then he added, "but so far you have given us only a negative
remedy.  My son here could go so far with you.  He washes his hands of
the whole matter."

Mr. Bond turned to Hubert inquiringly.

"Really?" he questioned.

"Yes," said Hubert, thus thrust unwillingly into the discussion, "I am
no worshiper at all."

"And may I ask why?" queried Mr. Bond.

"Your book says that whoever comes to God must believe that He is, and
that He rewards those who seek Him.  I am not sure of either
proposition, and so I do not pretend to come to Him."

The frank eyes looked through the eyeglasses pleasantly.  "Are you sure
of the contrary?" he asked.

"No," said Hubert honestly.

"Admitting the supposition that He is, and is a rewarder of them that
seek Him, does it cover the ground of responsibility to ignore Him
because you are not sure?"

"Perhaps not," said Hubert.  "But," he added doggedly, "if He is, and
wishes to be known and worshiped, He ought to be demonstrable."

Mrs. Gray looked a little frightened.  She never liked to hear Hubert
talk about those things, and it was so mortifying to have him take such
a stand against the church and everything everybody--at least most
respectable people--believed.  She was sure he was saying something
dreadful now.  Mr. Gray looked apprehensive, too.  Winifred's
self-revelation of the morning made her feel like casting no stones at
her brother.

Mr. Bond looked at Hubert mildly.

"I think you are quite right," he said.

Here the discussion seemed to end.  Hubert could make no reply to the
man who agreed with him.  An instinct to fight for his position had
sprung up, but he was disarmed by Mr. Bond's assent to his proposition.
He was not accustomed to being met like that.  His father's loyal
policy had been to protect his household from infidel talk, and he had
not taken too much pains to ascertain his son's point of view, and if
possible, to lead him from it into light.  Hubert had found some
Christian people ready to argue with him who would admit no position he
held, however logical, believing that every arrow from the sceptic's
quiver must be a poisoned one.  He withdrew in bitterness from such
encounters.  To-day Mr. Bond's honest sympathy with his outspoken
conviction found a sensitive chord in the young man's stout-seeming
heart.

Conversation drifted to lesser things until the ample meal was
finished, and the little company broke up.  Mr. Gray was sure his guest
would wish a little rest and quiet in preparation for the evening
service, which assurance happily freed himself for the usual nap which
his soul coveted after the Sunday early dinner.  Mrs. Gray departed for
her own pretty room, her dainty dressing gown, silk draperies, and
gentle doze.  Winifred went to her room to resume the battle that was
on, Hubert betook himself to his accustomed walk.

Walking down the avenue graced by his own home, Hubert glanced across
the street and saw, to his regret, the handsome figure and airy step of
George Frothingham.  He hoped that gentleman did not see him, for he
disliked him and did not wish to be bored by a conversation.  Hubert
disliked Frothingham on two separate counts: first, because he was not
the sterling quality of man Hubert thought he ought to be, and secondly
because, being such a man as he was, he still dared raise his miserable
eyes toward Winifred.  More than any other object in the world Hubert
loved his sister, and his grief was very hot and sore when it became
apparent that she and George were "as good as engaged," as all their
circle of friends affirmed.  They were not actually so, the "George"
and "Winifred" terms resulting from an acquaintance since childhood,
and had Hubert been a praying man he would have prayed that such a
consummation might never occur.  He voiced his sentiments unmistakably
to Winifred, but on this point they could not agree.

"It is one of your unreasonable dislikes," she said, and so they came
perilously near a serious difference.

"He isn't genuine--he isn't manly," said Hubert, "there is nothing to
him.  His name ought to have stopped with the first syllable."

Winifred had looked her indignation, and mourned that Hubert could not
see the charming qualities that made Frothingham popular with many.

Hubert's wish that the young man should not see him was unrealized, and
he was speedily joined by him.

"Hello, Gray," said Mr. Frothingham, affably.  He was always affable to
Hubert for obvious reasons.  "I wonder if you are going to hear the
Reverend Professor Cutting's lecture on the Higher Criticism?  That's
rather in your line, isn't it?  You know they have found that a good
lot of the Bible is all rot."

"I think they are a pack of asses," said Hubert, savagely, his opinions
accentuated by dislike of his questioner.  "Indeed I am not going."

"Whew-w!  You surprise me, Hubert.  I thought you were a bit of a
sceptic yourself?"

"So I am, but I am not proud of the fact.  My doubts are quite enough
for my own enjoyment without listening to Prof. Cutting's unbeliefs."

"But you know he talks from the Christian standpoint.  He is not an
unbeliever."

"Isn't he!  That's just what I object to in those men.  If they would
confess themselves companions of the sceptical writers whom I have read
and speak from a Free Thinkers' platform, I would have some respect for
them.  What do they believe that they did not?  They respected the life
and teachings of Jesus, but did not believe in His inerrant knowledge
nor assumption of divinity.  I do not see how any man can claim to be a
_Christian_ and not believe that what Jesus claimed for Himself was
true.  If not true, He was either a deluded man and so unfit to lead
others into absolute truth, or He was a liar and morally unfit to
teach.  I wonder that these men can't see through a ladder, for all
their learned research."

"You are pretty hard on them, Hubert."

"I am saying the simple truth.  I tell you I have no respect for those
men.  To profess to be Christians and from within the fort batter down
its fortifications isn't honest."

"That's right," said Frothingham, who, having no certain convictions of
his own, was prepared to enjoy a racy tirade from either side.

"So you are wrong, you see," said Hubert, "in thinking Prof. Cutting's
lecture in my line.  When I get ready to open a broadside against the
Christian religion, I'll not put on a ministerial coat and collar to do
it in.  You'd be shot in war if the enemy caught you in their
clothes--and you'd deserve it!"

"That's right," laughed George again.  "Tell me when you are going to
deliver your broadside."

"It will not be very soon," said Hubert.  "I do not find such comfort
in my doubts as to give me a missionary call to spread them."

They came to a turn in the road and parted.  Hubert had had a more
animated conversation with his sister's friend than he remembered ever
to have had before.  He strode on alone through the park whither his
steps had taken him, still pursuing the same line of thought.

"No," he reflected, "why should I seek to communicate my doubts?  I
never knew a man to be worse for believing in Jesus Christ.  I believe
some men have been better for it.  Certainly I do not admire the
company I am in."

His mind reviewed a company such as would be called together by an
infidel cause, and he recoiled from it.  He saw socialist faces of the
baser type, ready but for the occasion to blossom into anarchism; he
saw clever women whose bold loosening of the yoke of conventional
religion had relaxed also the hold of conventional morals, and he was
glad Winifred was not among them; he saw the face of Doctor Bossman,
the leader of the cause, tall, massive-browed, handsome, with bold,
full, outstanding eyes, a man of defiant words, of jovial popularity,
and egregiously self-centered.  Into the young man's mind, in contrast
to the proud face, there flashed fragments of the words of the
Nazarene: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children!"  He
saw other faces not so typical, and found himself seated amongst them,
and abhorred the fraternity cemented by a common unbelief--a cold
negation.  He was unhappy.  He found no territory on which to stand.
He hated the cant and formalism that chilled him in the fashionable
church.  He hated the insolent creed of the deist, and the ignorance of
the agnostic.  He seemed to be hating almost all things with himself
included.  If he had been sure there was a God who heard mortals pray,
he would have cried to Him to deliver him from so wretched a position.
But he roused himself from his reverie and sought to throw to the winds
his unhappy feelings.  He walked back to the house endeavoring to think
of to-morrow's business, and determining to give himself to an
interesting book when he got there.


Winifred had a headache which was opportune.  By it she excused herself
from tea and from church that evening.  Her father carried her
apologies to the leader of the choir.  Mr. Gray alone of the family
listened to the evening discourse, and he listened well, for the young
minister spoke again with truth and earnestness.  The machinery of the
meeting moved smoothly, and George Frothingham sang with much feeling,
"If with all your hearts ye truly seek Him."


In Winifred's room the light burned late.  The battle waged there saw
many tears and the confirmation of the edict put forth in the morning
service that the false god must be taken from its niche in the house of
the Lord.

"I will not be a hypocrite," Winifred said to herself.  "I will not go
through a theatrical display, however refined and solemn, and call it
worship.  I am no true worshiper."

Then she burst into fresh tears, in which mingled grief that she was
not a worshiper, and sorrow that she must leave an occupation and
associations so dear.  It seemed like taking out a good part of her
life, for Winifred was young, and things loved were ardently loved.

There was one who contested the ground with her in her room that night,
and told her she was no worse than others, that they were as
thoughtless and insincere as she; that her course and theirs passed
under the common sanction of churches everywhere, and that there was no
reason why she should be singular amongst all others.  Why should she
be disturbed from the commonly accepted course by a single sermon
preached by a stranger, and he a young man?  Doctor Schoolman had never
said such things.  She might at least wait and talk it over with him or
some wise person.  He might be able to show her that God did not really
care whether people quite meant what they said in singing, and that it
was a meritorious thing, as she had always thought, to sing about Him
to other people and to sing well.  It might do people good.  Some
people had actually wept sometimes!

The last thought was very striking, for Winifred did not know well the
Word which is able to discriminate between soul and spirit, and she
mistook emotion for some sign of spirituality.  These arguments pressed
hard, and had in their favor the natural leaning of the heart that
longed to go on with the loved employment.  But there was another
longing too, and it was to be honest.  And underneath all was the true
beginning of wisdom--the fear of God.

"The minister told the truth," she said.  "And if everybody else goes
on with the farce I will do as he said to father at dinner: 'refuse to
add one unit to the aggregation of untrue worshipers.'  I'll join
Hubert outside of it all before I will go on!"

Then she wept afresh, for the vision of isolation "outside of it all"
was too painful.  The presence of God had grown awesome and the light
of His eyes intolerable, but outside was darkness unbearable.  She
flung herself down beside the bed where many a time she had "said
prayers" at night, and sobbed:

"O God, I am not a true worshiper, but I wish I were!  I have drawn
nigh to Thee with my lips while my heart was far from Thee.  I have
been a lie.  Oh, make me true! make me true!"

After this outburst of prayer she was calmer, but remained silently
upon her knees by the bedside.  Gradually there came to her memory the
substance of other words the minister had said;

"Into the presence and unto the very heart of God there is a
blood-bought way opened by our blessed Christ for the most wicked one
who wishes to take it."

"Is there a way for me," she prayed, "a way to come to Thee just as I
am?"  And the sound of her own words brought back the memory of the old
song, familiar since her childhood:

  "Just as I am without one plea,
  But that Thy blood was shed for me,
  And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
    O Lamb of God, I come!"

"O God," she cried, "I can sing that!  I do come, just as I am--I do
come!"

A sweet sense of rest, such as she had never known, stole into
Winifred's heart.  Some One seemed to be welcoming her with ineffable
tenderness.  She was not out in the dark, but was at home with God.
The awful presence she had dreaded was infinitely sweet.  At last she
stood in the Holy Place, still foolish, weak, unworthy, but with the
glory of Another's name covering her as with priestly robes, and she
worshiped.




CHAPTER III

THE CONFESSION

When Winifred awoke the nest morning it was to wonder if it were really
true--if she had come to God and He had received her.  A sweet rest
still in her heart testified to a burden lifted.  Her Bible lay open on
the little table where she had found the minister's text while fighting
her battle the day before.  A leaf or two had blown over, and she
looked down on the sixth chapter of John and read,

"Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out."

Renewed assurance came with the words.

"I believe it," she said to herself.  "I have been very false, but He
is true.  He says the truth.  I believe it."

The thought of the choir scarcely entered her mind now in her new-found
joy.  The question, to sing or not to sing, had shifted to the deeper
one of relationship to God, and the peace that came with its settlement
overshadowed everything else.  She went down to breakfast with a light
heart and very cheerful countenance.  Hubert looked at her in surprise
from under gloomy brows.  His own had been a restless night.

"Has your headache gone, dear?" asked her mother solicitously.

"Oh, long ago, Mother," said Winifred.  She wanted to tell her mother
the better news than of a headache gone, but did not know how to begin.

They talked of ordinary things until breakfast was nearly over.  Then
Mr. Gray said:

"Mr. Mercer was sorry to miss you from the choir last night, Winnie,
and hoped you were not going to be ill."

"Thank you, Father.  Mr. Mercer is always very kind."

"He hopes you will surely be at the rehearsal Friday night, as he
expects to take up some specially fine music."

Winifred's heart heat violently as she summoned courage to say:

"I do not think I shall sing in the choir any more, Father."

"Why--what, Winnie?  What's that you are saying?  You not sing in the
choir any more?"

"What are you saying, Winifred," added Mrs. Gray.

Winifred nerved herself for the statement.  It might as well he said
now as ever, while they were all together.

"Yes, Father," she said, "I do not think I can sing in the choir any
longer.  I saw very clearly yesterday that I had never been a true
worshiper.  I have never meant the words that I sang.  I have scarcely
thought about God while I sang words about Him or addressed to Him.
Many of them I could not say honestly.  It has all been for effect, and
to--to please you all.  So I--I concluded--I--couldn't go on any
longer."

It had been a very difficult speech, and Winifred's voice sank at the
end.

Mr. Gray looked very grave.

"You surprise me, Winnie," he said.  "You surprise me very much.  You
should be conscientious, surely, but you will let me say I think you
are taking the matter too seriously,"

Silent Hubert shot a reproachful glance at his father.  In his
estimation here was a case of downright honesty that called for
applause, not repression.

"I think your father is right, Winifred," said Mrs. Gray faintly, and
then she added, rather illogically, "but I do not understand just what
you mean."

"Can I take the truth too seriously, Father?" asked Winifred, still
speaking with an effort.  It was an ingenuous question, but Robert Gray
found it hard to answer.

"No," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "not truth itself, but we
may get wrong ideas of it.  But, Winnie," he added, with real sorrow in
his voice, "I hope you do not mean to tell us that you will not
hereafter try to worship God, since the past has been so unsatisfactory
to you?"

"Oh, no, Father," said Winifred quickly, with rising courage as her
experience of the night before came vividly to her.  "I have more to
tell.  I was very unhappy about it all last night, and--I prayed--she
blushed, for it was new to speak of such things--I prayed, and it came
to me that there was a way to come to God just as I was, and He would
make me a true worshiper; and I came."

Winifred's embarrassment could not quite cover her joy as she made her
confession.  The father looked relieved.

"I am thankful,--very thankful, Winnie," he said.  "You did nobly.
That was quite right--quite right.  But now I do not see that you need
give up your singing, but that you might go on sincerely where you have
failed before."

He looked a little anxious, for her singing in the church was very dear
to him.

Winifred's brow clouded.  "I fear I cannot, Father.  Not now, at least."

"No?  Well, we'll talk about it later," he said kindly, and they left
the breakfast table.

In the hall Hubert waited for Winifred with his own form of benediction:

"You're a brick, Winnie," he said, and planted a kiss upon her fair
forehead.

She smiled and returned his kiss with an affectionate caress.  Hubert's
slangy praise was dearer to her than any polished compliment from
another source.

Hubert did not understand why he hated the world and things a little
less as he walked to business that morning, the stone walk answering to
his usual sharp, decisive step.  He did not know that it was a gleam of
something pure and true, of a religion not in word but in deed, that
had flashed across his path and mitigated its darkness.

Winifred had a long talk alone with her father in the library later in
the day.  She had thought out her reasons, and understood better,
herself, the instinctive feeling that led her not to resume her place
in the choir under the altered conditions.

"I am just beginning to worship, Father," she said, "and I feel I could
do so better out of sight--for awhile, at least.  You do not know the
temptation it would be to fall back into the old way.  I am afraid I
could not stand it.  I would rather just slip into the congregation
beside you, Father, and sing to God when my heart sings, and keep still
when it doesn't."

So her father yielded the point to her conscience.

"God bless you, Winnie," he said with glistening eyes, as he stroked
her chestnut locks.  "It may be I have been a bit of an idolater,
myself."

Poor Mrs. Gray sighed, and quite gave up trying to understand
Winifred's strange position.  She hoped she would be able to give some
suitable reason for withdrawing, and not set the whole church talking
about her peculiar views.  She remembered hopefully that her daughter
had suffered from laryngitis not long ago, and she mentally nursed the
almost vanished trouble into proportions that would forbid her singing
much.  She was sure Dr. Lansing would give an opinion to that effect
now.  But, dear me! as for herself, she did not know how she should
ever sit in that church and hear anyone else sing in Winifred's place!

It was to be feared that there were many others who would find it
difficult to sit in that church if their own natural wishes and tastes
were not gratified there.  What it was to be gathered "in My name," as
the Lord Jesus had said,--into the name of Him whose flesh with its
longing and loves had been carried pitilessly to the cross, that from
its death there might spring forth for all His own life in the Spirit
unto God--what this was, few at New Laodicea knew; nor what it was, so
gathered, to behold Him in the midst.  Oh, lonely heart without the
door of His own house!  He knocks patiently, not in the hope that the
whole household will hear Him, but for "any man" who has ears to hear
and will open to Him.


Winifred had another task before her that day, and she did it promptly.
She did not know how really in her ready obedience she was walking in
the steps of "the father of all them that believe," who, when Isaac was
to be offered, rose early in the morning to go about the sacrifice.
She went straight to Mr. Mercer, the leader of the choir, and told him
of her withdrawal.  She told her story with simplicity and dignity, and
it commanded his respect.

"I honor your convictions, Miss Gray," he said.  "We shall find it hard
to fill your place, and I am very sorry you are going.  But I would not
for a moment urge you to remain.  As I say, I honor your convictions.
I only wish I had the courage of them myself."

His face grew heavy.  He knew well the deity that led him to that
place, and the anxious care that governed each Sunday's work.  To bring
his choir to the perfect standard of musical merit which his artist
soul craved was his ambition.  He knew pleasure as he approximated to
that goal, and vexation almost to despair when he fell far short.  He
knew it was not before God but at another shrine he poured out his
soul's libation.

"I know I am not a worshiper," he said.  "I have never professed to be
a Christian--oh, I am not a Mohammedan or a Hindu!--but I do not
profess to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I should not like,"
he said reflectively, "to add to a life indifferent to my Creator the
insult of a mock worship."

He bent his brows heavily to consider if such a course were really his.
"I would leave the whole thing to-day," he said vehemently, "as you are
doing, Miss Gray, if I could.  I would follow other lines in my
profession, but I am in this now and it is my living.  It means bread
and butter to those dependent on me."

He paused, and Winifred said nothing but looked at him with strong
sympathy.  He went on:

"It will not excuse me, I suppose, but whose is the greater sin?  Is it
mine, or theirs who hired me?  I thought of it professionally.  If one
honest man had met me with the question, 'Can you lead that part of our
worship to God in spirit and in truth?' I should have known that I
could not, and said so.  Then I should have turned my attention to
secular paths where secular men belong.  But there's the rub!  Not one
of them thought of it, I suppose.  What a farce it is!  The minister
yesterday talked of incense rising to God.  It doesn't get beyond their
nostrils, I think.  You know that man--what's his name?--he's a stock
broker, who sits down the right aisle?  Well, you know there was a talk
once of dismissing the quartette, and retaining only the chorus (under
my direction) to reduce expenses.  That man declared if the quartette
were dismissed he would leave the church.  He is not a member anyway, I
think, but he pays!  There is worship for you!  I tell you, the people
glut their own souls with good music, and go home thinking they have
worshiped God.  Oh, I wish there were reality in the world!"

Mr. Mercer threw his head back and ran his fingers nervously through
his wavy locks.  His eyes were burning and there was a bright red spot
on either cheek.

Winifred spoke out impulsively:

"Oh, Mr. Mercer, there is reality!  I know there is somewhere, and I--I
am just beginning--but I mean to be a true worshiper, myself."

He looked at her, and the gleam in his dark eyes softened.

"Forgive me," he said, "I spoke too strongly.  Yes, I believe there is
reality--a little--somewhere," and he smiled.  Something in her soft
brown eyes as he looked in them carried him many years back, when eyes
something like them looked down on him, while a voice sang sacred words
which he knew the heart loved well.  Yes, there was reality somewhere.




CHAPTER IV

ADELE

Winifred awoke Tuesday morning with melody in her heart.  She moved
about her room with the exhilaration of a fresh joy in living.  She
took her Bible, which still wore the genteel, unsullied dress of a
stranger, and turned to the place she wished to read.  She had not got
beyond the text of Sunday:

"The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshiper shall worship the
Father in spirit and in truth."

She pondered the text.  "Shall worship the Father," she mused.  "Oh,
how sweet!  That august One whom I feared is '_the Father_.'  He loves
me!"

She went with her book to the open window and stood, a fair priestess
in her white morning dress, and looked out over a portion of her
Father's wide domain.  Oh, how warm and bright the sunlight that lit
all things with glory!  How fair were the distant hills beyond the
city, with their varied dress of wood and meadow!  In the garden below,
how each group of flowers and the green sward answered with joy to the
caress of the sun.  How exultantly the lilies stood, and she could
catch the incense from the bed of tiny clustering flowers nearest her
window.  She lifted her face toward the sky of melting summer blue, and
sang softly:

  "Holy, holy, holy; Lord God Almighty!
  All Thy works shall praise Thy name,
        in earth and sky and sea;
  Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty;
  God in three persons, blessed Trinity!"

She looked again at the words whose entrance had given light, and read
farther: "For the Father seeketh such to worship Him."

"He has been seeking me!" she cried, and some glimmering apprehension
of the great love of the Father which seeks the fellowship of sincere
and simple children, made her bosom heave and her eyes fill with tears,
"_He loves me_," she repeated as before, and her heart nestled itself
in the great truth like a bird that has found its nest.

Presently she looked again from her window and saw Hubert walking in
the garden.

"Dear Hubert!" she said to herself.  "I wish he knew."

With an impulse she laid her book hastily down and ran down the stairs
and into the garden.  She flew noiselessly across the soft grass and
surprised Hubert from behind, clasping his arm with a cheerful "Good
morning!"

He looked down on her glowing face and kissed it.

"How bright you look," he said.  "Were you up with the birds?  I heard
you singing your matins with them."

"Did you hear me?" said Winifred, with a blush at being overheard.

"Yes.  What makes you so happy, Winnie?"

"Oh, Hubert," she cried, and she clasped his arm more tightly, "My
heart is almost breaking with joy!  I think I have begun--to know God!"

He looked at her with a surprised hunger in his dark eyes.

"And do you find the knowledge such a joy?" he asked, with deep sadness
in his own voice.

"Oh, yes, Hubert," she said.  "He is so good!"

Later in the day a small breeze swept in the front door of the Gray
Mansion, past the maid, up the stairway, and to the door of Winifred's
little sitting-room.  It came with the person of Miss Adèle Forrester.

"Hello," said a bright voice.  "Anybody here?"

Winifred rose from her quaint little window-seat with an expression of
pleasure.

"Oh, Adèle!  I am so glad to see you."

The two young ladies kissed each other and sat down to talk with the
easy familiarity of old friends.

"Dear!" cried exclamatory Miss Forrester.  "I am out of breath!--I have
raced so!  I left home an hour ago, but was beguiled by some
fascinating bargains in Butterworth's windows.  Do see that love of a
thing for ninety-eight cents.  Did you ever see such a bargain?  I
wouldn't let them send it for I wanted you to see it."

The fascinating trifle was admired, and then Miss Forrester flew at the
chief matter of her visit enthusiastically.

"Do you know what is in the wind, Winifred?  Professor Black, who leads
the choir in the Linden Street church, is going to get up a comic opera
with a cast from the various choirs, and I am invited.  We are to go to
Northville and give it in the little one-horse theater there.  Won't it
be gay?  We shall astonish the natives of that small town!  Have you
had your invitation?"

Winifred shook her head.

"How calm you are.  I am very much excited about it already.  You know
I like that sort of thing.  It isn't decided what we shall give, but
probably Pinafore, or Patience, or some old thing.  They won't care at
Northville.  Do say what you think of it, Winifred?  Don't be so
unecstatic."

Winifred smiled, not very merrily.  "I can't get ecstatic," she said.
"I shall not be in it."

"You will not be in it!" Adèle cried.  "Oh, why not?"--coaxingly.
"Doesn't your father approve of it?--or your mother?--of going off like
that, I mean?  It will be perfectly proper.  We shall be chaperoned."

"Oh, that's not it," said Winifred.  "I have left the choir."

Adèle opened her bright eyes wide in astonishment.

"Left the choir!" she exclaimed under her breath, and then leaned back
in her chair with a gesture of comical despair of expressing herself.

Winifred could not help laughing at her friend's dismay.  She said
nothing and Adèle soon recovered herself.

"A little tiff with the leader or somebody?" she queried.  "Such things
are not unknown to us.  I am prepared to take your part, Winnie, right
or wrong.  But you don't mean you've left for good?  Oh, come and sing
with us at St. John's--that would be lovely!"

Winifred girded herself mentally for her task.  She and lively Miss
Forrester had never discussed spiritual things together.  They spoke
freely of their choirs and of church, but that never seemed dissonant
with the most frivolous social things.  Now as Winifred thought of the
real Holy Place and the worship there "in spirit and in truth," it
seemed difficult to speak of it.  She began bravely, and began at the
beginning, with Mr. Bond's sermon.  She rehearsed many of the things
that he said, and told frankly of her own conviction of the truth and
how it troubled her.  Adèle listened gravely and with a sympathetic
moisture in her eyes as Winifred told, with little hitches in her voice
and evident effort at self-control, of her determination to leave the
theater of her unreal worship, and then of the way she had found into
the real presence of God and of His forgiveness.  She paused here, and
Adèle put her arms impulsively about her and kissed her.

"Winnie," she said, "you know I always loved you.  I love you better
than ever now."

Then they both cried, though they could not have explained to each
other why.  Adèle was the first to recover herself.

"I am such a goose," she said.  "I always cry.  But now, Winnie," she
added, "are you not going to keep on singing, only 'in spirit and in
truth,' as you say?"

"I hope I shall keep on singing," said Winifred, slowly, "but I dare
not trust myself, just now anyhow, to go on with the choir.  I am so
used to singing for applause"--and she blushed at the remembrance of
such a motive in the house of the Lord--"or for music's sake, I am
afraid I should find myself doing so still.  I mean to worship God
truly," and a look of determination settled the sensitive face into
resolute lines; "and I shall try to do that which will help me most to
that end.  It seems to me now that that will be to join the others
unobserved.  Perhaps I shall see it differently some day, but now I
feel it safer to put my poor, vain, little self as far out of sight as
possible and try to think of God."

"You are a dear, honest little thing!" cried Adèle affectionately.
Then she added very seriously, "but it almost seems to me that if your
objections are right they might apply to the whole system."

Winifred looked perplexed.  She had dimly thought of that.  The word
"system" recalled Mr. Bond's phrase, "an organized system of
unreality," which she had turned over in her mind a number of times.
Would he call the choir that?  She thought of the leader, who professed
nothing as a Christian; of the organist, who, she must admit, was a
drunkard; of George Frothingham with his careless indifference; and of
herself of two days ago.  Perhaps there were others--very likely there
were--who sang with grace in their hearts unto the Lord, but it
certainly looked as though that were no object in their selection.  But
she thought of Doctor Schoolman, who raised no objections and always
sat with such an expression of bland repose while they sang.  She
thought of the elders--her own father among them--and, indeed, of
common consent everywhere in all the churches; at least, all she knew.
Who was she, who was only "just beginning to worship," that she should
entertain ideas contrary to them all?

"I don't know," she said hesitatingly to Adèle, "I hope you will not
think my ideas revolutionary.  I can't judge for others--others so much
wiser than I.  But, for myself, I think I see the way I ought to take."
And so she settled the matter for herself, on her own convictions.

"Perhaps you are right," Adèle said.

She could not speak further of the opera which seemed awkwardly out of
place in the light of what Winifred had said.  After a pause she said:

"I'm afraid we are all hypocrites more or less, but it is a wonder we
had not thought of it before.  But, do you know, I've sometimes thought
it rather queer that Mr. Francis should sing in our choir?  He is a
confessed infidel.  I do not believe our rector knows it.  I do not
think he would allow it.  Mr. Francis just drifted into the choir when
we needed a basso very much.  But, when you think of it, isn't it
blasphemy to take the name of the Lord, whom he professes not to
believe in, so solemnly upon his lips in church?"

Winifred consented that so it seemed to her.

Then a sudden recollection amused Miss Forrester.  "Speaking of
worshipers," she said, "now there is my precious Cousin Dick.  How do
you think he occupied himself in the midst of Morning Prayer a couple
of Sundays ago?  The rogue!  I certainly was keeping the run of the
service, but it was edifying to see his head bowed so devoutly until he
passed a slip of paper over to me.  What do you think was on it?  Not a
suddenly inspired hymn, but some doggerel lines about

  "'A certain young woman
  Who sang high soprano.'

"I looked daggers at him, but of course he saw I wanted to laugh.  Then
he looked such a picture of rapt piety!  Oh, he is a _case_!"  And
Adèle gave way to the laughter she had smothered in church.

Winifred smiled, too, as she thought of the irrepressibly merry youth.
But her pleasure was not as unmixed as it would have been three days
before.  Henceforth, any jest to be quite enjoyed must be free from
taint of irreverence toward holy things.  She had "begun to know God,"
and the knowledge gave a sensitiveness to the honor of His name and the
things of His house.

Adèle recovered from her mirth and resumed the subject seriously.

"I am afraid we are sorry worshipers, when you come to look at it," she
said.  "If our office is really such a sacred one--and I see it must
be, if we take it seriously--why, then, we ought to be pretty good
people; earnest, and reverent, and all that, I mean.  But it doesn't
seem to be our distinguishing trait," and she smiled.  "Not mine, at
least.  I ought not to generalize too much.  I am sure there are
persons in our choirs who live beautiful, devoted lives; but the lot I
fraternize with mostly are not likely to go to the stake just yet for
their piety.  What awfully jolly dances the Emmanuel church choir gave
last winter!  I was invited two or three times and went.  But you know
it has struck me once or twice as a little odd that we church singers,
_as such_, should go into that sort of thing.  If some of us should
stray into it individually it's nothing remarkable, I suppose.  But
isn't it a bit queer that, as a company, we should lead off in those
things?  I suppose," with a twinkle of malicious enjoyment in her eyes,
"our Emmanuel church neighbors could not find vent for their joy in the
Lord in Hosannas on Sunday, and had to work it off at their heels on
week days."

Adèle enjoyed her own satire, but Winifred was too repentant to laugh.

"Oh, Adèle," she said, "it is dreadful that there has been no 'joy in
the Lord' about it.  At least, I never knew it in the choir.  Christ
was never the center of our thoughts" (she was thinking of Mr. Bond's
sermon), "the object of devotion.  If we worshiped anybody or anything
outside of ourselves it was Music."

"Orpheus?" suggested Adèle.

"Yes," said Winifred, "we were pagans, I suppose.  But oh, Adèle, God
is so good to forgive!  It seems as though He were not looking at it at
all--as if it had never been."

Adèle looked at her friend narrowly.  "Winnie," she said at length,
solemnly, "I know what has happened.  You are converted."

Winifred opened her eyes in surprise.  She had not thought to so define
her new experience.  Adèle went on:

"We don't talk much about it in our church, you know.  But I used to go
sometimes with old Auntie Bloom--she was so blind she couldn't see the
sidewalk--to a little Methodist church of some sort, Free, or Reformed,
or something, and they made a great deal of that.  Auntie Bloom used to
get rather excited over it herself sometimes when she 'testified.'  I
used to duck my head when she waved her arms about.  'A new creature!'
she used to shout.  'There's nothing like being a new creature!'"  And
Adèle quoted the old lady with good-natured mimicry.

Winifred's face glowed.  "No," she said, "there's nothing like it!--if
that is what has happened to me."

Adèle looked at the happy face covetously.  "You look as though it were
good, Winnie," she said, and added meditatively: "I think it is all
true about it.  But you know, Winnie, when I was confirmed I really
meant to be good.  It was so solemn, and I thought I never should
forget that dear old bishop's hand on my head.  But I haven't turned
out much of a saint, you know, dear."

"I never thought you were wicked, Adèle," said Winifred.

"Well, I never robbed a bank," said Adèle, "but there's no question
about my being 'this worldly' enough."

Winifred did not know just how to answer this.  It seemed a charge that
would cover both their previous lives.  In a moment's silence a
sweet-toned clock on the mantel softly struck a half hour.

"Oh, I must be gone!" cried Miss Forrester, "and we haven't talked
about half--"

"Do stay to lunch," interrupted Winifred.

"Impossible, dear.  I am due at home--half an hour ago!" and she
laughed at the discrepancy between her appointment and appearance.
"Good-by, Winnie."  And she was off.

The two, very opposite in temperament, were very warm friends.
Winifred saw beneath a light exterior a quantity of good, sound sense
and a warm heart.  She was a frequent guest at their house.  Mrs. Gray
liked her, though deploring her occasional indulgence in slang.  Mr.
Gray enjoyed her racy conversation, and Hubert professed a dislike of
her volatile qualities.  This last fact grieved Winifred, who liked her
friend to be appreciated.

"She has a rather frivolous exterior," she once explained to Hubert,
"but she is really very sensible."

"One would like to hear from the sensible interior occasionally," he
replied, and Winifred withdrew from the defense.  She was the more
grieved by his indifference to her friend because, with her quick
intuition, she had half guessed at a secret liking in Adèle for her
cynical brother.

To-day at luncheon Winifred ventured to offer him the information:

"Adèle Forrester was in to see me this morning."

"I heard her giggle," he replied laconically, and Winifred subsided
into silence.




CHAPTER V

IS GOD DEMONSTRABLE?

The scene of the morning in the garden haunted Hubert during the hours
of business that day.  Matters were attended to with his accustomed
skill, but always an undercurrent of memory presented to him Winifred's
beaming face and her announcement, "I think I have begun to know God."

"I wish I knew Him.  I wish I knew the truth," he repeated to himself
again and again.

Hubert had entered with heartiness into his father's business, and
though still young had already attained a partnership in it.  "Robert
Gray & Son," read the clear, uncompromising sign, and the name of no
firm in the city was more respected.  Hubert's devotion to business,
rather than to more scholarly pursuits, was a deep gratification to the
father, who enjoyed his son's fellowship and found help in his fresh
enterprise and keen foresight.

To-day Hubert was glad when the last matters were attended to and he
was able to go home.  At dinner he was abstracted and silent, and
retired to his own apartments.  Just off his sleeping room was a
smaller one which constituted his laboratory, for Hubert was a man of
science in his leisure hours.  This room was the one discomfort of poor
Mrs. Gray, who feared explosions or electric shocks, and sighed many a
time as she heard the door close after the entering form of her son.
To-night it closed firmly, and had not opened again before slumber
muffled the ears of the apprehensive mother, nor had the light from the
single gas burner ceased to throw out its yellow challenge to the
mellow, midnight moonlight without.  Could Mrs. Gray have looked
within, she would have seen Hubert sunk in the depths of a leather
covered chair, with his dark, frowning face leaning upon his hand.  He
was thinking.

Something like this was the matter of his thoughts:

In this little room questions had been asked and answered.  From the
standpoint of the known, or even from the conjectured, excursions into
the unknown had been undertaken, and the explorer returned with
trophies of ascertained fact.  How had it come to pass?  Obedience to
the laws of force revealed had brought its recompense of further
revelation.  How humbly, with what child-likeness, he had followed
those subtle laws propounded to him by others; laws whose deep mystery
he could in no wise understand, but which he believed, and, believing,
demonstrated.  Were there such principles to be observed in the
spiritual realm?  Were there laws of the unseen kingdom, which, if
obeyed, brought demonstration?  He gave a little gesture of impatience
as he thought of the unthinking assertion of some that they would
believe nought they could not understand!

"Stupid!" he muttered, and remembered an effort of his own, when a
school-boy, to illuminate the mind of the gardener with a few
scientific facts, only to be met with a loud guffaw of unbelief.
Surely science had never yielded her treasures to sneering unbelief,
but to humble, patient faith.  Must he so find out God?

Again he pondered: Could God, if there were a God, be expected to be
less mysterious, less wonderful, less unsearchable than the subtle
forces found in nature, and actually utilized, but never understood?

"What is electricity?" he asked himself.  "I do not know, but I can use
it.  I know it is.  So may not God be, invisible, uncomprehended, but
real, and demonstrable to the man who applies himself to know Him?"

Hubert was very near a determination to thus apply himself.  But should
God be sought for as a force or as a personality?  The old argument,
hackneyed but true, spoke to him: The presence of design argues a
designer.  No blind force ever clasped the petals of a lily together,
to say nothing of the arrangement of a universe.  Had Hubert known it,
there was a passage of Inspiration which read:

"The invisible things of him from the creation or the world are clearly
seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his
everlasting power and Godhead."

Now how to address himself to God--how to conduct this new
experiment--was the question.  He remembered the conditions of
discipleship to science, and determined that he would follow them.
First, there was child-likeness.  A fragment of Scripture, words of
Jesus Christ, came to him:

"Except ye . . . become as little children ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven."

How simple the principle.  No pride of supposed knowledge, no dogmatism
of unbelief might be brought to the door of this mysterious kingdom by
the man who would enter in.  Then, he must follow the things revealed
if he would know more.  What did he know about God?  Or what must be
true of Him, granted that He is?

"If He is," thought Hubert, "and is my Creator, then He must know me
altogether."

"Thou God seest me."

It was a text--he did not know its connection--learned years before in
Sunday-school, before his independence of spirit had withdrawn his neck
from an unloved yoke.  Now it spoke to him clearly.  Surely God (if He
were) must see him, and surely He must hear him.  He did not
consciously remember the words, "he that planted the ear, shall he not
hear?  He that formed the eye, shall He not see?"  But thoughts of like
nature passed through his mind.  A creator who could bestow such
marvelous faculties must Himself possess them in infinite measure.  And
a God who had given to His creatures such powers of communication, must
surely have means to make Himself understood.

"If He is," said Hubert, "then He is great!  He is infinite.  I cannot
measure His power in any line.  Surely He can reveal Himself to me if
He will.  Is He willing?"

In the contemplation of God the man grew less and less in his own
esteem.  Would God reveal Himself to such an atom in the wide universe
as he?  Did He care for him or about him?

"God is Love," whispered memory, from the Book, and the suggestion beat
upon the unarmored heart of the seeker, and was not unwelcome.

"I will put it to the test," he said to himself.  "I will ask Him."

He rose from his chair and thought to fall upon his knees, but was
resisted.  An unlooked for struggle arose within him.

He had said to Frothingham that he was not proud of his scepticism, but
now his independent thought arose before him, an image not willing to
be crucified.  He saw the sneers of his fellow unbelievers, should he
join the ranks of the religious.  Suppose God should reveal Himself?
Would he not be bound to serve Him?  A vision of the Man who called
Himself the Son of God arose dim and wraith-like, sorrowful, homeless,
poor--crucified!  If God revealed Himself, perhaps he must follow that
Man!  Was it worth it?  Was it not better to go on as he was, rich,
independent, self-governed?  If he asked for light, was he ready to
follow the light?

His hands clenched themselves in the struggle.  The vision of
self-abnegation was so real that it sickened him.  Home, possessions,
friendships, and his own life also, seemed demanded by the vision of
that Man.  But to turn back from the light that might be gained was to
fall into a darkness more damnable and more desolate than before.

"Buy the truth and sell it not," urged a voice, and some glimmer of
encouragement seemed in his imagination to smile from the face of the
Man of Sorrows.  In his decision the sweat broke from his brow and the
veins stood in cords of agony.  He fell upon his knees, and said aloud:

"O God, if Thou art, reveal Thyself to me, and I will serve Thee."

The solitary gas jet still flickered in the room, the moonlight shone
without, the silent household slept.  No voice answered the young man's
prayer, nor sensible Presence wrapped him about; but a crisis was
marked in one life that night and the result was to be light and peace.

Hubert had not imagined what sort of a response should be made to his
request, and it was well he had not.  But he felt a sense of relief at
a decision gained after he had uttered his prayer to God, and soon
retired to his bed.  It was not to enjoy much sleep, however, for still
the vision of the Man of Calvary haunted him, and with it a sense that
it was in His footsteps he must tread, if the truth should really be
revealed to him.  In the slow hours of the night he counted the cost of
the tower he should build, and wondered if he would be able to finish
it.  To him it was granted at the outset of the way to know something
of the rugged terms of true discipleship.

     *     *     *     *     *     *

The next morning dawned murky and cool.  A thin, struggling rain beat
against the windows of Hubert's room when he woke.  Things look
different by the cold light of day, especially if the day be rainy,
from the same things seen by gaslight.  With Hubert's instant memory of
the night before, came the temptation to dismiss its happenings as a
dream and go back to his former way of living.  But he could not do so
in honesty.  He had made a pledge to a supposed Being, whom he must now
treat as a reality until the most honest experiment proved Him not to
he, or to be inaccessible.  Clearly a line of procedure formed itself
in his mind.  He must seek to know those laws, or principles, that
governed the new realm which he sought to enter, and endeavor to adjust
himself to them.

So he took from its place on the shelves the Book that was most likely
of all to give the suggestions he needed, because it dealt specifically
with the matter in hand.  Of all those who bore witness in the Book the
most remarkable one was Jesus Christ.  So he turned to the New
Testament, and to the Gospels.  He was none too familiar with their
teachings, but he believed that of them all the Gospel of John
contained the fullest statement of abstract principles.  He would read
it.

It was still early, and he settled himself for an hour's study.  It
occurred to him to invoke afresh that One whom he was seeking for light
upon His own law.  An impulse of pride almost deterred him, but he
thought,

"If He is, and I am His creature, I can afford to be humble.  Indeed,
it is the only fitting thing."

So he bowed his head and said:

"O God, I am seeking Thee.  Help me to understand the truth."

He found the Gospel of John, and began at the beginning.  He read the
sublime statements concerning the Word, and wondered if they were true.
If true, it was the most wonderful fact in the world.  If untrue--oh,
what darkness lay in the shadow of so great light's negation!  He read
the twelfth verse, and the thirteenth, and pondered them in the light
of the foregoing statement.  If they were true, then He who was "with
God," who "was God"--he paused to consider the mysterious relationship;
mysterious, yet not thereby incredible; he would not repeat the folly
of the gardener by too ready unbelief!  If true, then God, that eternal
Word, came down to man, and "as many as received Him," to them it was
granted to become the sons of God!  They were translated into the realm
whence He came forth.

The stupendous fact--if fact?--glowed like a sun-lit prism and awoke an
ardent longing that it might be so.  Ah, to escape the limits of this
petty life!  How mean and small it seemed.  Man at his best, his
grandest, but to live out a brief day, and then go out into the
uncertain darkness forever!  If God had ordained a way into His own
infinite realm, surely it was worth the finding.

But what was it to "receive" Him?  In what sense did they in the days
of His fleshly life receive Him?  Was it in a more physical, tangible
way than would he possible to man now?  Evidently not; for of those
among whom He moved in bodily presence, the majority "received Him
not."  Certainly His mission to the earth was not for that generation
only, but for all men.  Perhaps the receiving was explained by the
companion statement, "even to them that believe on His name."

But to "believe" was not less difficult to Hubert than to "receive."
He had boasted his inability to believe that which was unsupported by
evidence, and had found bitter fault with evangelical doctrine, which,
he supposed, put a high premium upon blind credulity,--an attitude of
mind, he contended, which would render a man as open to receive the
teachings of Buddha, or Mahomet if he happened to hear them, as those
of Jesus Christ.  He might have added, or the teachings of a Payne, or
an Ingersoll, or, as a remoter example, of the serpent in Eden who
beguiled a credulous woman.

Hubert's search had become so earnest that he did not now pause to
nurse his rancor against the defenseless word "believe," and it even
flashed into his thought that, should he study diligently its use, he
might discover in it a further or different meaning than he had
credited it with.  At this point he wished for a Greek Testament, but
there was none in the house.  Later in the day, however, he surprised a
book dealer by the purchase of one, and prepared himself for further
studies in the "believes" of John's Gospel.

For the present he contented himself with reading on, striving to note
all the story and its argument, passing over much, undoubtedly, that
would have spoken volumes had he had ears to hear, but still finding
much that spoke pointedly and clearly to him.  He pondered the
testimony of John the Baptist to "the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sin of the world," and did not understand it.  But a feeling almost
of jealous envy stole into his heart toward the two disciples of the
Baptist, who, hearing the witness, followed Jesus.  His hungry soul
echoed their "Where dwellest Thou?" in the mystical sense in which he
instinctively read it, and he felt it would be joy indeed to hear that
One say, "Come and see."  Would he not come, indeed, if he were bidden!

Hubert read until the breakfast bell sounded, and then went down to
pursue his study in Winifred's bright face, and wonder how much she
really knew of the matter he was trying to search out.

"Winnie," he said to her after breakfast, "do you still think you have
begun to know God?"

"Yes," she said placidly, "I am sure of it."

"How do you know?" said he.  "How does He manifest Himself?"

"I don't know," she answered.  "I can't explain it, but He seems very
real."

"How did you find Him?  What did you do?" he questioned further.

"Oh, I just came to Him," she answered.  "And," as she reflected of
that night's compact, "I gave myself up to Him."

So that was the way Winifred found Him.  Was that the way to "believe"?
But Winifred had none of his doubts about God.  She believed that He
was, and the mental assent led to the heart surrender.  But if he
should _do_ her act of faith--?  If a man with doubts should give
himself up would he be received?  With such reflections Hubert went out
into his day's work.

Again he accomplished the day's business with faithfulness to all
details, but with the consciousness every hour of a perplexity
unsolved--a burden unlifted.  Again he was glad when the office door
closed behind him and he turned his face homeward, striding beneath his
umbrella through the now settled rain, with the Greek Testament grasped
in his hand.

An attractive wood fire burned in the drawing-room grate that evening,
but Hubert resisted its invitation and retired to his "scientific den,"
as Winifred called it, to pursue his new studies.  He set himself to
read again in the Greek that which he had read in English.  He was
struck by the fact that the word translated "believe" was also rendered
"commit" in a passage in the second chapter.  That seemed somewhat more
practical to his apprehension.

He lingered long on the interview with Nicodemus, and as the rain beat
upon the roof and window pane he listened to the words uttered on a
Judean night, so long ago, to a man who like himself sought the truth.
In the first chapter of the Gospel, in its introduction, he had caught
a glimpse of infinite stretches and light unapproachable, and it seemed
no marvel that a man, if he would enter that kingdom, _must be born
into it_!  Marvel, indeed, it might be, that such a birth were
possible, but not that it was needful.  For how could he transgress the
boundaries of the human sphere into which he had been born, and lift
himself into the higher?  It was impossible.  No, that life must
somehow come forth to him.  He must be "born from above."

As he read on into the book, still bearing in mind the character
ascribed to Jesus Christ in its beginning, he could not wonder that He
spoke with such authority.  Not "Thus saith the Lord," but "Verily,
verily, I say unto you," the new Prophet declared.  What wonder, if He
were such a Being as described, that He should offer living water to
the Samaritan woman, since "in Him was life," nor that "the work of
God" for obtaining eternal life should be narrowed down to a belief
in--a committal unto--Himself?

As he considered these things, the emphasis shifted from "believe" to
the Person in whom to believe; and it seemed to him that the teaching
must be not so much that faith was in itself a way of salvation, as
that it was a simple necessity to the taking of the Way--the One sent
forth from God; in short, that its own value was purely relative to the
One believed in.  This seemed to settle a very important question, and
drew the sceptic's attention away from his own capabilities of belief
to the claims of the proposed object of his faith.  He read His words
with an interest that was painfully intense, and almost groaned his
prayerful longing to know if they were true.

"After all," thought he, "be a man credulous or doubting, absolute
knowledge waits upon revelation--upon demonstration."

"O God," he cried finally, "if Thou art, and if Jesus Christ is, and is
such an One as described here, give me evidence!  Let me know Him and
Thee."

He lifted his book again, and this time he read:

"If any man is willing to do his will, he shall know of the teaching,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself."

If a voice had spoken aloud the words it would not have conveyed the
message more directly to his heart.  He paused, as before a pivotal
moment of destiny.

"'Willing to do His will!'"

His face whitened.  The agony of the night before was upon him.  The
way of the cross--the picture of the Man who like no other had done the
will of God, rose before him and demanded all things.

As drowning men are said to have pass in review the events of a
lifetime before them, so in a moment's time the strategic elements of
his life appeared before him, and the finger of God pressed the most
sensitive points in his nature.  He pointed to the counting room of the
keen business man, and Hubert saw himself poor for the Kingdom of God's
sake.  He pointed to the beautiful home and its inmates, and he saw
himself homeless, having "hated" father and mother and sister--ah,
sharpest pang of all!--for the sake of discipleship to the sorrowful
Son of Man.  An invisible attraction drew him after Him, and with ashen
lips but with fixed heart Hubert Gray took up his cross.

"I am willing to do Thy will," he said.  "Only let me know the
teaching."

The immediate result of Hubert's work of faith cannot be written.  It
is incommunicable.  One may point to after effects in a life
transformed, but of that supernatural witness which comes to men's
souls, stamping the words of God as very truth indeed, no description
can be given.  As jealously guarded as the crown jewels in the Tower of
London is the secret of the Lord which is revealed or hidden at His
will.  To the foolish one who "in his heart" says, "There is no God,"
no glorious revelation comes; and often even the patent fact of His
divine creatorship is not observed.  But, given a hungry soul, he shall
be filled with good things.  And the Spirit waits to charge with
electric certainty the teaching of God's truth to the man who in
meekness adjusts himself to it.

Cold and colorless glows the transparent prism in the shadow.  But let
the sun shine through it, and lo! it is alive with all the colors of
glory and beauty.  So the sunlight shone in the laboratory of Hubert
Gray that night and lit up with many rays of refracted glory the
doctrine of Jesus Christ.  Light focused itself upon the Person, and
Hubert saw, as years of painful study would not have taught him without
that light, the mysterious merging of his own identity with His; saw
mistily, what afterward he should discern more clearly, his own
worthless, sinful life vanished in the dying of the One "lifted up";
saw radiantly his own triumph and everlasting life together with the
living Christ.  To the secret abode where lives are "hid with Christ in
God," he came and saw.  The unspeakable gladness of the revelation
turned the rugged cross into a crown of glory.

The fragrance of a flower stole from his bedroom into the laboratory.
He smiled as he recognized it.

"I have not seen the flower," he said, "but its undoubted witness is
here.  I do not see Thee, Jesus, my Lord and my God, but I believe
Thee!--Thou art here."  And he worshiped Him.




CHAPTER VI

MR. FROTHINGHAM AND THE CHOIR REHEARSAL

Unsympathetic Nature was still in tears when the next morning broke
upon Hubert's new-found joy.  But so ardent was it that no weather
could dampen it.  His first waking thoughts were of the marvelous
treasure he had found.  A new life stretched out before him.  He was a
new man.  He had entered into a new world whose center of gravity was
in heaven, "where Christ is," and an indescribable, exultant gladness
filled his soul.  He had received Him, the divine Visitant from that
other world, and his own soul was quickened with the life He brought.
Henceforth he claimed kinship with Him and with the Father.  A new
motive power of living had entered into his being.  He was not
conscious of prayer, but it was in his heart, making response to the
revelation which had come to him, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
The new realm must have its own laws of living, very contrary to those
of this world, and he would know them.

First of all there was a simple, straightforward task before him and he
was eager to discharge it.  So after a hasty toilet he went down to the
library where he rightly surmised he should find his father--also an
early riser--and presented himself at the other side of the table
before him.

"Eh! Good morning, Hubert," said Mr. Gray, as he looked up from his
reading.

"Good morning, father," said Hubert.  And he added, "I have something
to tell you."

"Really?  I hope there is no ill news?"  Mr. Gray's first thought was
of business, but a second glance at Hubert's face showed there was no
unpleasant message to communicate.  And there was a strange expression
on his son's face.  He had never seen it before--not, at least, since
Hubert was a boy.  No, not even then.  What was it?

Hubert answered his father's questions of word and searching look.

"No, father," he said, "it is far from ill news.  It is this: I am no
longer a sceptic.  I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ."

"Eh?  What?  Hubert!"

The older man's face passed in lightning changes from stages of wonder
to joy, and he sprang from his chair.  He grasped his son's hand across
the table.

"Hubert!" he repeated, "my dear boy!"

His voice choked on the last word.  A certain strain of Scottish blood
forbade a warmer demonstration, but the two men's hand-clasp was
eloquent.  Presently Mr. Gray asked Hubert to be seated and tell him
all about it, wondering much meanwhile at the change very often sighed
for but seldom expected.

Hubert told his story as directly as possible, but minus many details
of his heart struggle of which his reserved nature made it impossible
to speak.  But, bare of all embellishment, the story gave great joy to
his father.  His own example as a Christian had not been a brilliant
one.  His principles were just, as men count equity, and his life
irreproachable by their standards.  But the business man seemed often
to hold the ascendency over the disciple of Jesus Christ, and Hubert
had sometimes wondered cynically wherein his father differed from
himself except in his attendance upon outward religious forms.  But the
spark of life, dull and smoldering, answered to the breath of Hubert's
good news of salvation, and he was unfeignedly glad.

They started together for the dining-room when the bell rang, but met
Winifred in the hall.  She had just come in from the garden, clad in
rain-coat and cap, roses glowing in her cheeks from the keen, damp air,
and a big bouquet of flame-colored flowers in her hands.

"We shall have sunshine without the sun," she cried to Hubert.  "These
flowers have caught his color."

"That is a parable," he answered quickly.

"Expound it please," she said.

Mr. Gray went on into the dining-room, and Hubert explained to Winifred
her mystic text.

"These flowers," he said, "give indisputable evidence of the sun's
existence, even though we cannot see it.  They could not have their
color without it.  There is a sweet soul in this house who caught the
beams of the Sun before I quite knew that He was, and she testified of
Him, reflecting His glory when I was in great darkness.  It helped me
to suppose that He existed and to try to find out for myself."

Winifred looked deeply in Hubert's dark eyes and saw the hunger gone
from them.  He smiled on her.

"Hubert," she said, "have you found Him?"

"Yes," he said.

Her flowers fell to the floor.  She threw her arms about his neck with
a sob of joy.

"Oh, Hubert, I am so glad!" she cried.  "I prayed--" and her voice
broke.

Breakfast waited in the dining-room, but Mr. Gray improved the time by
trying to explain to his wife the great change that had come to their
son.  She could not understand the phenomenon, and the process that led
to it was exceedingly misty, but she was glad if Hubert had come to see
things differently, and hoped he would join the church at once, and the
reproach of his sceptical views be wiped out forever.  She felt a
little nervous and excited at the announcement, and wondered just what
acknowledgment of it she should make.  A pink flush had stolen into her
fair face by the time Hubert and Winifred entered.  He walked straight
across the room to where she was standing and took her soft, white hand
in both his.

"Has father told you my news, mother?" he asked.

"Yes, dear Hubert," she said, and kissed him.  "I am very glad.  It has
been a grief--" and she hesitated.  She thought to say, "that you have
not been with us," but he finished the sentence for her.

"That I have not been a Christian?  I know it must have been.  Forgive
me for all the pain it has given you.  I have been wrong and blind."

The maid peered in, and Mrs. Gray was glad of the interruption and to
propose that they sit down at once.  She was glad of breakfast, too.
She saw no reason why the coffee should spoil, even though the son and
heir of the house had just now come into an inheritance exceeding the
most fabulous fortunes of earth.

The blessing was asked less formally than usual, and Mr. Gray thanked
the Lord also for the Bread of Life which had visited them.  Later in
the course of conversation he remarked:

"By the way, you will all be interested to hear that Mr. Bond, who
preached for us last Sunday, is to give a series of Bible Lectures in
the Y.M.C.A. Hall, beginning in about a fortnight.  Mr. Selton is
bringing it about.  It was through him that we had the privilege of
hearing Mr. Bond last Sunday."

"Then it was not upon Doctor Schoolman's invitation?" queried Hubert.

"Oh, he invited him, of course, but it was at Mr. Selton's wish.  He is
very influential, you know.  He heard Mr. Bond when he was in New York
last winter and was much interested in his teaching.  So he suggested
having him here for a Sunday, and himself undertook the expense."

Fortunately for this instance Mr. Selton possessed the two
qualifications, so often united in church life, of influence and wealth.

"Later," went on Mr. Gray, "he spoke with several men, including
myself, about the advisability of the Bible Lectures, having secured
Mr. Bond's consent before he left on Monday.  We saw no objection.  I
think, myself, that we need a little stirring up now and then."

"And the lectures are to be in the Y.M.C.A. Hall?" asked Hubert, with
interest.

"Yes, that is a central point, and we wish to make them union meetings."

"I am very glad to hear about it," said Hubert.


The rainy day passed, its somberness meanwhile lightened by a greater
glow than that of Winifred's flame-colored flowers, and Friday came,
radiant with sunshine.  It was passed without special incident until
evening, which was the time of the weekly choir rehearsal.  Then Mr.
George Frothingham called, as had become his wont, to escort Winifred
to the church.  That had once been Hubert's task, and bitterly he had
resented it when gradually the change came about.  Now he need have no
fear, for his sister was not going.  She had not seen Frothingham since
Sunday, and during the day had looked forward with a little unpleasant
dread to the interview that must be.  She imagined various ways in
which she should break to him the news that she had left the choir, but
none seemed satisfactory.  All her little speeches left her as the time
drew near.

He found her at the piano, where improvised melodies had been working
off her nervous apprehension.

"Not ready?" he asked, after the usual salutations.

"I am not going."

"Really?  You are not ill, I hope?"

"Oh, no!  I never was better," confessed Winifred.

"You should go above all things to-night," he said.  "Mr. Mercer is
going to give us parts of the Redemption."

The music was certainly alluring.

"I have left the choir," said Winifred faintly.

Mr. Frothingham never lost his easy self-poise over anything which this
jestingly tolerated world offered him, but he allowed himself to be
surprised now.

"You are surely not in earnest?" he said.  "You of all persons!  I
thought you were devoted to the choir.  You are not going to desert us
for some other field of conquest?"

"Oh, no!" said Winifred.

"Have you quarreled with Mercer?" he persisted.  "He _is_ cranky
sometimes.  Shall I fight him?"

Winifred had to laugh at the thought of the handsome, immaculate young
man before her in a pugilistic encounter with Mr. Mercer.

"No, you needn't do that," she said; and added, "you would get the
worst of it, I think."

"Oh, really!  Thanks very much!  Perhaps you do not know my prowess in
those lines?  But on the whole I should prefer a smaller man than
Mercer.  He shall be spared if you say so."

"You relieve me," said Winifred, laughing.

But how was she to explain the truth to Frothingham?  It was easier to
jest with him than to speak earnestly, and Winifred had an instinctive
feeling, not definitely acknowledged, that to make him understand a
spiritual idea would be impossible.

"But really, Winifred," he went on, "if it is not rude to ask, I should
like to know what great reason makes you desert us now in the very
height of your success, and, I should think, enjoyment?"

Smiles left her face, and a flush of embarrassment deepened in her
cheeks.  It was very hard to speak to him of these things--harder than
it had been to any other.

"That is just it," she said slowly.  "It has been a success for me,
artistically, and a great enjoyment.  But there has been nothing in it
for--for--Christ."  She hesitated before the sacred name.  Why was it
so hard to speak it before him?

He was silent.  They were already by the simple mention of that name in
deeper water, conversationally, than he was accustomed to.  She had to
go on.

"I have been convinced," she said, "that it has all been very wrong.  I
have been offering to God a pretended worship, when it has really been
the worship of our Art.  That must be idolatry, I think.  I can't go on
with it."

Winifred stopped decisively, and Frothingham found words to reply with
just a tinge of irony:

"I am afraid you are a bit too metaphysical for me, Winifred.  I don't
quite understand you.  Do you mean to say singing in the choir is
wrong?  If it is, it is a pretty common sin and quite generally
approved of."

"No, it isn't wrong," said Winifred desperately; "at least, it would be
the loveliest thing in the world, I think, if we were all _true
worshipers_, and meant what we sang, and sang to God.  But you know it
hasn't been anything of the sort.  We have sung for our own pleasure
and the applause of the people."

"And the money, some of us," asserted Frothingham with indifferent
candor.  "But I don't see why we should be troubled about it.  It's a
part of the machine.  It goes to make up the church worship, and a
considerable part of it.  I suppose they offer it to the Lord--or
whatever you call it--whether we individual performers mean anything or
not."

Winifred thought of the prayer-wheels.  Did the church turn the machine
and grind out praises by proxy?  How much merit did they accumulate
thereby in the eyes of God who is a Spirit, and would be worshiped "in
spirit and in truth"?  It was very perplexing.  She could not argue it
all out with him, but she said:

"If the individual worshipers are insincere, I should think the total
result" (she had a little of her father's business logic) "would be
insincerity."

He smiled at her reasoning.  "Let the clergy thrash that out," he said.
"When they or the church find fault it will be time enough for my
conscience to twinge."

"I think one of the clergy did find fault in the sermon Sunday
morning," ventured Winifred.

"Oh, that young fellow?" said Frothingham carelessly.  "I didn't find
out what he was getting at.  Doctor Schoolman always looks beatific
when we sing.  While he continues to beam I shall still consider that
singing in the choir is about the most pious act I do."

Mr. Frothingham was rather vain of the brevity of his list of pious
deeds.

"Oh, come on, Winifred," he continued, grasping her hand coaxingly,
"don't bother your head about such mystical things.  Come on and sing.
Think of the Redemption."

She did think of it, and tears struggled to come with the thought.

"I am not going," she said, without looking in his eyes.  "Don't ask
me, George."

"And you have no pity on poor me, going without you?"

"No," she answered, smiling.  "You will survive it."

"Cruel lady!" he said dramatically, and bore her slender fingers to his
lips.

She withdrew her hand with a slight flush, and he bethought him to look
at his watch.

"Oh," he exclaimed, "it's late.  Mercer will think he has lost me, too."

He made hasty adieux and was off, his light, swinging step sounding
pleasantly down the walk.

Winifred stood where he had left her, with a conflict of emotions in
her heart.  She still felt the tingle of his lips upon her hand, and
still smiled at the airy nothings he said.  But there was pain in the
compound of her thoughts; pain at a difference between them that
proclaimed its power to grow wider; pain at defeat in making a
principle understood and appreciated; pain most of all from the subtle
sense of something pure and sweet now sullied, as though too rude a
breath had blown upon a sensitive flower, or as though pearls had been
ignorantly trodden upon.

Meanwhile Frothingham, on his way to the handsome church, indulged in
characteristic meditations of his own regarding Winifred's strange
freak.  He heartily hoped she would get over it.  It was a stupid turn
for affairs to take as regarded himself; for perpetual meetings at the
choir, with the pleasant walks attached, and frequent private
rehearsals in the Gray drawing-room had furnished admirable facilities
for the courtship of whose issue he had not a doubt.  But it was far
from a misfortune that could not be mended.  He should miss her
immensely, of course, but there were other pleasant people in the choir
and he held an easy popularity among them.  Then he was too well
ingratiated in her favor and as a frequent guest at her house to be
displaced by this matter.  He should still do the attentive in every
available way.  But he hoped she was not getting fanatical.  It would
be inexpressibly stupid to have a wife over pious, with extreme views
about things.  He should like her to be religious up to a certain
point.  He thought women ought to be that.  It was a good thing to have
somebody in a house who knew something about those things in case of
trouble.  Mr. Frothingham was himself in the insurance business--at the
head of a prominent company's office for that city--and he was
accustomed to take business-like account of life risks, and to
recognize death as a hard factor to be dealt with.  Just now he
unconsciously erected a kind of spiritual lightning rod against his
future house in the piety of its expected mistress.  But he hoped she
would not get too religious--not enough so to interfere with the life
of gayety which he expected to continue for many a year.  But it did
not occur to him to relinquish her even if she should begin to show
symptoms of extreme views.  He was rather fond of Winifred--quite so,
in fact; and he was not indifferent to "the old man's ducats," as he
had confided to himself and to one or two most intimate friends.  On
the whole he congratulated himself on pleasant prospects ahead, and was
not too much disconcerted by his own appearance alone at the rehearsal.


Winifred spent the evening rather ill at ease.  Its pleasant habit was
broken up.  Had she been foolish?  Was she not taking an unheard-of
stand?  Would it have been better to go along and conform her course to
the popular conscience instead of her own, perhaps very silly, one?
She should be laughed at, and it was miserable to be laughed at or
thought eccentric.  She tried to play the piano, but imagined strains
from the Redemption interrupted her.  She went to talk with her mother,
but found her seated beside the library table with her embroidery while
her father read aloud.

Mrs. Gray managed to utter an aside:

"I had forgotten, child, that you were not going to the rehearsal.  How
strange it seems!"

Winifred drifted away again, unable to listen to what her father was
reading.  Hubert was nowhere to be found.  She went at last to her own
room and did the best thing possible.  She poured out her heart before
God, telling Him with the simplicity that had characterized her first
coming to Him her perplexity and unhappiness.

"I am miserable," she said to Him.  "I don't know whether I have done
right or not, and I miss the music so much.  Please let me know if it
is right to give it up? I do wish to worship Thee."

No flood of revelation poured at once upon her, but she took her Bible
and read.  She had learned no method of study, but read where she
chanced to open.  The portion did not say anything about choirs or
rehearsals, but it led her mind away and soothed her.  And its
atmosphere was so pure and fragrant that when the debated thing rose
again it was instantly judged by contrast.  Very different was the
spiritual air of her choir experience, as in imagination she stepped
back into it; and the fellowship of George Frothingham, Mr. Mercer, and
the drink-sodden organist, did not seem like the communion of the
saints as she found it in the Acts of the Apostles.

With the vanishing of her doubts as to the wisdom of her course came
back the gentle peace that she had known for five blessed days, and its
price was above all musical delights.




CHAPTER VII

A NEW SUNDAY

Sunday morning found four people seated in the comfortable pew which
the iron merchant was able to pay for.  And, by the way, what a
comfortable thing is wealth in the various ramifications of life, even
to one's church relationships!  No fear of the unwelcome bidding, "Sit
thou here under my footstool"--in the undesirable front seats where
one's neck must be craned backward to admit of seeing the minister; nor
of being relegated to the back pews when ears have become a little dull
with age.  How thankful should one be whose lot in life is thus
favorably cast!  But we have not admitted to our consciousness a
thankfulness that the Epistle of James is not often read; or, if read,
too literally dwelt upon.  We have found a grateful oil to pour upon
any rising waters of ill conscience in reflecting upon the beneficent
adjustment of social relationships by a wise Providence and the divine
right of money-kings.

Mrs. Gray and her neighbor, Mrs. Butterworth, exchanged serene glances
of recognition across the shallow partition that separated them, but
the latter added a look of inquiry as it was observed that Winifred was
with her family.  Mrs. Gray's heart sank at the thought of having to
explain the phenomenon when once the service should be over.  Winifred
felt that many eyes must note her presence there instead of in the
choir, and the embarrassment of the thought almost dissipated the
spirit of true worship for which she had longed and prayed.  But she
had soon forgotten to a considerable degree the people about her, and
gave herself diligently to the service.  It was not altogether without
self-consciousness, however, that she joined in the hymns, fearing lest
her own voice should be heard above others.  Mrs. Gray, too, wished
that she would not sing quite so loudly, lest it should destroy the
convenient fiction of the laryngitis.

Hubert realized that he took his place in the congregation on an
entirely new basis this day, and he endeavored earnestly to put away
all spirit of his former prejudice and to receive in meekness anything
which his Lord might say to him from His place in the midst.  He tried
to forget how utterly hollow and meaningless the formalities of the
service had heretofore seemed to him, and to discern, if possible,
within the mold of man's fashioning the operation of the Spirit of God.
With his own heart at peace with God and charged with His joy, it was
easy to look upon all about him more kindly, with an eye as critical to
find good and honor it as to discover evil.  Upon even his long-time
aversion, Doctor Schoolman, he looked with expectancy, for had he not,
after all, known for these many years Him whom he--Hubert--had but just
"begun to know," as Winifred would put it?  With ears now open, should
he not hear much which would cause his heart to burn within him?

Hubert and Winifred shared the same hymn-book, and together sang with
deep gladness hymns which ascribe praises to Christ.  But, intent upon
truthfulness, Winifred paused before sentiments not understood, or the
profession of experiences quite unfelt, and let the congregation sing
on without her.  The privilege of doing so gave her keen satisfaction,
even though it was difficult to stop in the midst of a pleasant melody.

"Better a break in the melody than in sincerity," she said to herself,
"since the Lord is here and taking note of everything."

The thought of His presence was very sweet; not at all the vision of
terror which it had seemed to her a week ago.  She found the fear of
Him not incompatible with the purest confidence and love.

The choir rendered their accustomed service, and a new soprano, on
trial, exploited her skill in solo parts.  She sang without Winifred's
refinement of artistic sense, but sang fashionably.  She sang
dramatically, and cast languishing glances at the unresponsive backs of
the congregation, blinking over her notes as though invisible
footlights dazzled her eyes.  It was not easy to find the sentiment
sung in the midst of the quavering notes, so the poor worshipers below
could scarcely offer "amens" in their hearts; but they might perhaps
consider thankfully that some sort of noise, "joyful" or otherwise, had
been made unto the Lord by their paid proxy.

Doctor Schoolman's sermon was a typical one.  Finished and elegant, his
polished sentences reached his congregation gently; not like swift
arrows from a tense bow, but rather like harmless darts taken from the
preacher's quiver and laid without violence against the hearts of his
listeners.  Very good arrows they often were from the philosophic
standpoint, but seldom fashioned from the rugged essential truths of
the doctrine of Christ.

He had a text from Scripture certainly.  But no slavish adherence to
its evident meaning, as seen by its setting, hampered the orator in his
thought.  Indeed, was it not a kindness to the old Book that still
somewhat from its pages was thought worthy to act as a peg upon which
to hang the ripe and cultivated ideas of the twentieth century?

Hubert did not find his soul much fed by the discourse, but, keen and
discriminating as his mind might be, he was not yet a Bible student and
able to disentangle the original thoughts of the preacher from the
teachings of revelation.  He found much to assent to ethically, but,
compared with the revelation in his laboratory when the pure light of
heaven shone upon the pages of John's Gospel, the rhetorical utterances
of Doctor Schoolman were as water unto wine.  They were not so
commanding but that he at last found time to glance at his neighbors to
see how they were taking the sermon.  Winifred was too near him to be
looked at, likewise his father; but he could see his mother.  Very
elegant, very composed, very approving she looked.  A calm contentment
beamed upon her mobile face, and Hubert could not help it that his
sharp eye, formed to detect minutiae, printed upon his mind even the
details of the picture she made, sitting so quietly there.  Soft,
lustrous, black silk became well the figure which a life of gentle
inactivity caused to incline to corpulence, while a modest show of
exquisite lace relieved its somberness.  There was just a tiny glitter
of costly gems, not too vulgarly showy for church, and the most
suitable of bonnets crowned the graceful head, whose waves of soft
brown hair still repudiated silver.

The minister's text led him to heaven at this point, and he drew it in
sentimental lines; a place whose essential light was not so much the
Lamb as other things; a place of reunited friends, of congenial
occupations, of tastes gratified, and of knowledge ever widening.  He
offered no uncomfortable suggestion that any of his hearers might fail
of entering there.

Hubert saw among his hearers abstracted faces not a few; interested,
studious faces; and hungry faces which looked their longing for meat
not found as yet in the Lord's house.  Among the last class he noticed
in one of the front pews a man, evidently an artisan, whose deep, large
eyes looked yearningly toward the pulpit with an appeal for bread,
while from it there came, through fine and learned discourse, to his
untutored mind a stone.  His face smote Hubert with a sudden pity, and
a hunger crept into his own heart, not alone to know Christ, but to
make Him known.  He wondered if this man had ever seen Him as he had.
Oh, if he could only tell him of Him, and turn the misery of those
longing eyes into joy!

The sermon ended.  It was never very long; for Doctor Schoolman well
knew that patience, that sits good-naturedly for hours at games or
races, or in the seats of a packed theater, has very short limits at
church.  He never taxed it, nor himself, too far.  So the closing hymn
was punctually sung, and the benediction was pronounced in tender tones
upon the congregation.

Mrs. Butterworth's curiosity blossomed afresh when the meeting was over
and she had the opportunity of speaking with Winifred and her mother.
She addressed herself to the former, to Mrs. Gray's mingled relief and
terror; relief that she herself was not called upon to find excuses,
and terror lest Winifred should make herself ridiculous.

"You were not in the choir this morning?" she said with a "why" in her
voice.

"No," said Winifred, "I have left the choir."

"Really!" exclaimed Mrs. Butterworth in a shocked voice.  "I hope not
for good?"

"Yes--I think it is for good," Winifred confessed.

"Oh, please do not say so!" cried Mrs. Butterworth, but in a suppressed
voice, for they had not yet left the church.  "What shall we do?  We
have enjoyed your singing so very much!"

"I am afraid I have been too conscious of that fact," said Winifred
frankly, while her mother looked alarmed.  "I think I shall be able to
worship God more sincerely in the congregation."

Mrs. Gray felt that the worst had come, now that Winifred had declared
her position.  She almost turned faint as she heard her speak to Mrs.
Butterworth so simply and directly of worshiping God.  To be sure they
were still in the building supposably dedicated to that end, but to
speak aloud of it in so many words seemed very bad form.  Her daughter
might sing protests of adoration in the ears of the whole congregation,
with the loudest of affected fervor, and she found no fault with it.
But the comfort of that was that nobody believed she meant it!

Mrs. Butterworth looked at Winifred keenly, and partially grasped her
meaning.

"Oh, I hope you'll not look at it that way," she said half soothingly.
"It might suit your own feelings better, but what about ours?  I have
often said," and her eyebrows arched plaintively, "that your singing
did me more good than the sermon!"

Winifred looked at the worldly, fashionable woman and wondered, not at
all cynically, how much good her combined efforts with Doctor
Schoolman's had done toward a life-transformation.

"I am sorry not to sing," she said sympathetically, "since you enjoyed
it so much, I would gladly continue if I could.  I cannot.  But there
is already someone in my place--"

Mrs. Butterworth lifted her hand in silent protest.  She looked at
Winifred reproachfully, and settled her lips as one who should say
nothing of the new singer in contrast with her favorite.  She shook her
head resignedly, and at this moment they were joined by someone else
who proffered greetings.  Winifred was glad to join Hubert and to slip
out as quickly as possible, they both as usual preferring the walk home
to the carriage.  Frothingham saw them from afar, and inwardly
commented upon Hubert's unwonted appearance at church for two
consecutive Sundays, and his own consequent loss.  He had no mind to
join Winifred with Hubert for a third.

The two exchanged views of the sermon on the way home.  It seemed very
strange to hear Hubert speak of it sympathetically.  He mentioned some
admirable points which he found in the minister's reasoning, and
refrained from saying that the change of heart he had himself
experienced had not made less hateful to him Doctor Schoolman's
affected style.

"How did you like the sermon?" he asked Winifred when he had expressed
his own opinion.

"Oh, I don't know," said Winifred hesitatingly.  "He said some lovely
things.  That illustration from Greek mythology was beautiful.  I am
sure I shall remember that.  But I wish," she added innocently, "that
he had said more about the Lord."

"So do I," said Hubert decidedly.

They walked on in silence for awhile and then Hubert spoke.

"I am not a qualified judge of sermons," he said, "but I would a
hundred times rather read the Gospel of John."

"Are you still reading it?" said Winifred,

"Yes."

"I wish we might read it together," she said wistfully.

"We might," he said.  "Shall we begin to-day?"

"By all means.  But I can't read Greek," she added doubtfully.  She had
observed the Greek Testament with its fresh markings.

He laughed.  "But fortunately I can read English," he said.  And so it
was arranged.




CHAPTER VIII

NOT OF THE WORLD

That afternoon found Hubert and Winifred with their books, looking
about for the most suitable place to read.  Somnolent sounds from the
couch in the library warned them not to locate there.  They decided on
a cool window-seat in the drawing-room overlooking the garden.  There
they settled themselves and found their places.  It was decided to
begin at the point Hubert had reached, which was the seventeenth
chapter.  Before beginning to read Hubert shaded his eyes with his hand
for a moment to ask, as had become his wont since he first sought to
know God, for light upon the Word.  Winifred understood the act and
joined him silently.

He began reading reverently and slowly.  The simple, stately words fell
very sweetly upon their ears.  They paused often, so as to understand
more fully what they read.  They read with the intent earnestness of
those who explore new territory, and who have immense interests in
things discovered.  They lingered first over the second verse:

"As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give
eternal life to as many as Thou hast given him."

"'As many as thou hast given him,'" repeated Winifred.  "What do you
think that means, Hubert?"

Hubert gazed into vacancy meditatively.  "I don't know," he announced,
very slowly; "there is a profound mystery here which I have seen in
earlier chapters.  I do not see the point of meeting between two laws
that seem almost contradictory.  But one point seems very clear, and it
meets us very simply on our human side: that is, that the one who 'is
willing to do His will' is the one whom the Father 'gives' to Jesus
Christ."

"It is very sweet," said Winifred, "to think of being given by the
Father to Him.  It seems surer, somehow, than to just give oneself."

Hubert's deep eyes kindled and glowed with a liquid fire.  "Yes," he
said in a suppressed voice, "it is wonderful."  He was standing on
ground that had not by long habit grown coldly theological, but was
instinct with life to him through a new and vital experience.

They read on:

"And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

They paused to meditate, and Winifred was the first to break the
silence.

"Hubert," she said in a low voice, "it must be we have entered upon
eternal life.  We have begun to know Him."

Her voice sank upon the last word, and her lips trembled.
Instinctively she held out her hand to her brother, and he clasped it
in his.  Tears streamed down upon her book, and Hubert was not ashamed
that his own eyes were moist.  They were silent for some moments, while
the young man beheld afresh that eternal, infinite realm out of which
the Word had come forth, and he knew himself born into it.  Earth
seemed illusory--but the scene of a moment--in the glory of that vision.

They read on and Hubert explained to his sister what he saw in the
request of the Lord Jesus to be given again the glory which He had with
the Father "before the world was."  Never in his reading of the Gospel
had he lost sight of its beginning, and he read these words, as he had
others, in its light.  He turned back and read the opening verses of
the first chapter to Winifred in explanation of the glory to be given
back, and the very fact of its being asked for, as though having been
surrendered for the time, shed a light upon passages poorly understood
before, which had shown clearly His humanity and His subjection to the
Father.

Again they read on, pondering as they read, but paused over the ninth
verse:

"I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou
hast given Me; for they are Thine."

"Do you think that means, Hubert," said Winifred, "that He does not
pray for the world?  It seems very exclusive.  But we know that God
loves the world?"

"I think," said Hubert, "that the discrimination is not _against_ the
world, but rather _for_ those given Him out of it.  He must care
specially for them.  Perhaps if we read on we shall see the special
character of this prayer for us."

The words "for us" slipped out very naturally, and he did not recall
them, so sweet and sure was the confidence of having been given into
the hands of Jesus Christ.

So they read on, and noted the petitions of the priestly prayer for His
own.  They did not sound the depths of meaning in them, for they were
yet but babes; but they observed the strong line of enclosure which
separated them from the world and the Lord's reiterated statement that
they were not of it, even as He.

"It is very strange," remarked Winifred to Hubert, "that Doctor
Schoolman has never told us about this."  But she amended quickly,
"Perhaps he has many times and I have not listened.  But I have always
thought we were all very much alike, only that some people were better
than others; never that there was such a sharp line drawn between those
who are given to Christ and the rest of the world."

"I do not think we have heard much about it," said Hubert.  "I have not
been much of a church-goer, but I think for the most part we have been
talked to as though we were all on the same plane as regards
relationship to God and Jesus Christ."

"But this line is so very exclusive," said Winifred almost regretfully.

"So very _inclusive_, you mean," said Hubert, smiling.

"An inclusive line must be exclusive also, must it not?" she persisted.

"I suppose it must," he admitted.  "The same walls that shut us in this
house shut everybody else out.  But there is a way in," he added,
intent upon the doctrine of God's free grace found true by his own
experiment.

"Yes," said Winifred, "'Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast
out.'  That gave me great comfort when I read it, Hubert.  But I was
thinking now that if I had not come to know that I was outside, I
should never have come inside."

They finished the chapter, dwelling upon the words:

"Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me
where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me;
for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world."

Their hearts burned at the love that longed for them to be with Him and
to see His glory.  And they should see it!  The distant scene glowed
with reality and seemed near.  There was One with them whom they did
not see, One who still draws near when loved disciples commune
concerning Him, and it was He who made the Scriptures an open, radiant
page.  Very pure and fragrant was the spiritual air they breathed then,
and it prepared them to judge of baser atmosphere.  "Sanctify them
through Thy truth," the Lord Jesus had asked, and as they pondered the
Word of Truth the answer to His prayer began.

When they finished their reading Winifred surprised Hubert by what
seemed an irrelevant remark.

"I do not think I shall go to Mrs. Butterworth's party, Hubert," she
said.

Her brother had no need to add, "Nor shall I," for he was not a society
man.  But he looked at her inquiringly.

"I don't know why," she replied to his look, "but it seems very
different from this.  Don't you think so?"

"I do indeed," he answered, understanding what she meant by "this."

Winifred had not arrived at analytical reasons, but had intuitively
reached a conclusion.  Just a mental picture of the coming brilliant
event at Mrs. Butterworth's; the gay scene, the intoxicating music, the
hollow courtesies, flattering words and glances, the dancing--just an
instant vision of the scene that arose in sheer contrast against the
pure holiness of the things they had been considering, and Winifred
turned from it quickly.  To have spoken her impression, and Hubert's
evident approval, helped her to hold to it in later hours of temptation.

The Japanese gong sounded musically for Sunday evening tea before they
were aware that time had flown.  They assembled with their elders who
looked not so much refreshed by their slumbers as our young friends by
their study.  The repast over, Hubert, who wished to do all things
required of a Christian, but who felt a secret repugnance to listening
again to Doctor Schoolman, sounded Winifred's mind on the matter.

"Are you going to hear Doctor Schoolman?" he asked.

"Why, I suppose so," said she.  "What else should one do?"

"What is he going to preach about?" he asked evasively.

"I don't know.  Let's look in the paper and see."

So they found Saturday's paper and saw that this evening was to have
the first of a series of discourses on "Poets and Their Teachings,"
with Tennyson as the first subject.

"I am not hungering for a literary lecture," said Hubert.  "I should
like to hear something clearly about Christ."

"We might go somewhere else," said Winifred, giving the suggestion
which he wished.

They looked at the paper again to see the advertised subjects at
various churches.  They found some sensational, that might bear
reference to the Lord or might not; some very promising, but at
churches too far away; and finally they decided upon a little church in
a street near them, whose modest announcement told simply of "preaching
at 7:30."

It was with something of a spirit of adventure and an almost troubled
conscience that Winifred deserted her usual place of attendance.  They
turned down a less fashionable street than their own and came to the
church, a small brick structure, very fresh and new looking.  A few
young people still lingered about the door, loath to go in from the
summer twilight.  Within the newness rivaled that without.  The pew
backs shone with varnish, and the aisles glowed with fresh, red carpet.
The simple pulpit was carefully polished and a bright bookmark hung
from the gilt-edged leaves of the Bible.  The choir occupied a platform
at the right of the minister, facing the congregation, and each member
held the visitors in view as they were shown to a seat.  The evening
congregation was scattering, so their advent was the more noticeable.
They were early also, which gave the young girl organist some time to
look at them fixedly across the back of the cabinet organ at which she
was seated, before beginning her voluntary.  Then she played "Alice,
Where Art Thou?" with loud and ill-assorted stops.  Had Winifred been
less bent on sincere worship, or their quest for Christ-preaching been
less serious, she would have found it difficult to keep from laughing
with the sudden sense of humor which assailed her.

The service was nearly as elaborate as the statelier neighbor-church
could boast.  The choir rendered an anthem in process of time, and
Winifred studied their faces earnestly, wondering if any thought of
reality was in their hearts as they sang.  They were nearly all young,
with thoughtless, unspiritual faces, but they sang the sentiments of
discipline and sorrow.  There was no artistic value in their singing,
and Winifred thought with a sigh, "It does not help any that the music
should be poor.  They have no more heart in it than had we with our
trained skill."

The minister was a man of moderate abilities and somewhat ungraceful
appearance.  He was tall, sandy-haired, with a half-anxious
countenance, as though the cares of the shining new edifice and of the
flock rather troubled him.  He preached with no striking originality,
but with evident earnestness, mingled with abortive efforts at
rhetoric.  He spoke good words for Christ, extolling His power to save
sinners; and the simple statements, however trite they may have sounded
to others, were music in the eager ears of those who had just come to
know Him.

At the close of the meeting he made his way to the door to shake hands
with the departing hearers, and Hubert gave him his with a cordial
grasp, and with thanks for his "excellent sermon."  The minister's face
brightened and he looked after his appreciative visitors with hope that
they might come again.




CHAPTER IX

"TWO OF ME"

Affairs moved quietly in the Gray household as the week advanced.  Mr.
Frothingham called one evening and made himself very entertaining to
the two ladies.  Mrs. Gray laughed gently at his jokes, for he was a
tireless jester (sometimes a tiresome one), and he enjoyed seeing the
serious light in Winifred's eyes change to mirth under his curious
speeches.

The two sang together, and after that she played dreamy snatches from
Beethoven while he leaned back in an easy chair and listened.  What a
harmonious and pleasant life stretched before the two together!  Mrs.
Gray lived over again through her daughter's heart days when Robert
Gray and she were learning that life was sweetest when they were
together, and she sighed in a pensive mingling of emotions as she
mentally gave Winifred up to the reign of the ancient conqueror.  She
fell asleep over the fleecy shawl she was knitting as her daughter
played, and was not aroused when Mr. Frothingham rose to go.  Winifred
and he exchanged smiling glances as they saw her closed eyes, and spoke
in low tones together.  Mr. Frothingham lingered just a perceptible
moment over Winifred's hand in parting, and looked down into her face
with an unspoken question she had never read before so clearly.  Her
eyes fell, and the flush in her fair face deepened into lovelier red.

"Good night," each said softly, and he went away.

Winifred drank in the luxury of her own sweet thoughts until his step
ceased to sound, and then went over to her mother's chair.  She stooped
and kissed her forehead.  Mrs. Gray opened her eyes.

"Dear me!  I lost myself for a moment," she said.  Then, "Is George
gone?" she added.

"Yes, mother."

Mrs. Gray looked at the clock.  "And it's time," she said with parental
duty.  "You must go to bed at once, dear."

Winifred had had a happy evening, and the reflection that looked back
at her from the glass in her dressing-room was radiant.  But, after
all, in the depths of her heart there was a tinge of something sad, an
unsatisfied sense of some good thing wanting.  What was it that the
evening lacked?  A little book upon the table suggested the answer with
a mute reproach.  In all the evening's pleasure there had been no sweet
savor of Jesus Christ.  Now as she took the book and tried to read her
heart beat coldly toward Him.  The words did not speak to her, but
seemed like misty voices far away, spoken for other ears.  The tide of
another love had come sweeping in, strong and insistent.  George
Frothingham's face smiled before her, and instead of the words she was
reading she heard his voice as they sang together:

  "I would that my love could silently
  Flow in a single word."

She looked away from the book and gave herself to dreaming until the
little clock reminded her of the hour.  Then she roused from her
reverie.

"It is too late," she thought.  "I will not try to read now.  In the
morning I will make up for it."

She knelt beside the bed for her customary evening prayer, and found
herself "saying" it as in former days.  She stopped abruptly.

"Forgive me, Lord," she said, "I did not think what I was saying."

Then a feeling of remorse, of real unhappiness, seized her.  Where was
the true worship she had coveted and found?  It had flown like a bird
from her windows.  In distress she prayed:

"O Lord, I have missed Thee!  I cannot see Thy face, I do not hear
Thee.  Do not let me lose Thee!"

Her wandering thoughts came back to the supreme need.  She was not
versed in the theology of any school, and could not have stated her
case to suit any.  But her sensitive soul barometer registered danger
in the atmosphere, and she had no rest until it changed.  Being blessed
with the grace of honesty--with "truth in the inward parts"--she poured
out her heart before God, and found much relief in so doing.  The whole
subject did not clear at once.  A process was required for that.  But a
simple understanding with her Lord that He was to be first at any cost
was re-affirmed, and it gave rest.  With the restored sense of His
fellowship she slept.

Morning dawned with the sweet twittering of birds, the breath of
syringas and roses, and a faultless sky.  It was a joy to live.

Hubert was out for an early ride, and his black horse Sahib's satin
coat shone brightly in the morning sunlight.  He took the shortest way
out of the city and was soon cantering gently down the country road
beside a singing brook, filling his eyes with the beauty everywhere,
worshiping its Maker, and wondering how he might best serve Him.

Winifred sang morning psalms to the Lord, with a corresponding melody
in her heart.  But sometimes the shadow of a question fell athwart the
prospect that seemed so shining.  It was about Mrs. Butterworth's
party.  Sunday it had seemed very clear that she should not go, but
since, with the seventeenth of John not so fresh in her mind, the
matter seemed not so settled.  How should she excuse herself at this
late day?  What would Mrs. Butterworth think?  More than that, what
would her mother think?  Would she not be much annoyed?  There was
another factor, too.  When George Frothingham was there last evening
she was so glad the party was not mentioned.  How could she have told
him she was not going?  And when she thought of him she wished to go.
He would be there, looking especially handsome in most careful evening
dress.  She could almost hear the strains of Werner's orchestra as she
imagined herself floating over the polished floor with the best of
dancers.  There was still another factor.  Hanging in her wardrobe,
sheathed carefully in a protecting sheet, was the loveliest of white
dresses.  It had been worn but once, and that in another town.  Both
her mother and she agreed that it was the very thing for Mrs.
Butterworth's party.  What a pity not to wear it!  And if staying away
from Mrs. Butterworth's were a precedent to be followed, where should
she ever wear it?  A very small reason this, say you.  But you are
mistaken.  Deeply intrenched in the feminine heart is the desire to be
beautiful, and though "holy women" since the days of old have learned
the supreme excellence of the inward adornment over the outward, the
latter is slow to lose its appeal.  Not yet, at least, had Winifred
become indifferent to it.

This morning before descending the stairs she was beguiled into taking
down the dress, just to look at it, spreading it out in fleecy, shining
folds upon the bed.  How beautiful it was!  She had not learned for her
soul's comfort that the wise man's counsel is very profound when he
instructs, "Look not upon the wine when it is red"!  Even in the
daylight tiny brilliants flashed out from their setting in foamy lace
about the neck.  Well Winifred knew what a radiant picture would stand
within her mirror-frame when the dress should be donned, and eyes
bright with excited anticipation should rival the glow of diamonds.  If
she went, she should wear the slender gold necklace with its single
pendant of diamonds which her father had given her.  But she was not
going--and for what an intangible reason!

Hubert had returned from his ride, and Winifred met him in the upper
hall and confided to him her perplexity.

"I feel as though there were two of me instead of one," she said.  "One
of us would like to go to Mrs. Butterworth's party."

"And the other one?" asked Hubert.

"Decided last Sunday not to go," she answered.

"Which one do you think is on the Lord's side?" he queried.

"The one that says not to go," she replied, without hesitation.

"I should stand by that one if I were you," he advised.

"I will," she said, and slipped her hand in his as they went down the
stairs.

At the breakfast table the dreaded discussion was precipitated.  Mrs.
Gray addressed her daughter.

"Winifred, dear," she said, "have you looked at your new white dress to
see if it requires anything to be done before Mrs. Butterworth's party?
Did we not think the girdle should be altered slightly?"

"I was looking at it this morning, mother," faltered Winifred, and
Hubert shot a sympathetic glance across the table.

"Will it need altering, do you think?"

"N--no," she hesitated, "I think it is all right."  Then she girded the
loins of her intention and added: "But I think, mother, if you do not
mind, I should prefer not to go to Mrs. Butterworth's party."

"Why, Winifred!" exclaimed her mother in surprise.  "What can you be
thinking of?  The invitations were accepted long ago.  You are not ill,
certainly?"

"Oh, no!" said Winifred.  "But I think I can excuse myself to Mrs.
Butterworth so that she will not be offended.  My chief regret will be
if it disappoints you, mother."

"But what can be your reasons?" said Mrs. Gray.  "They must be very
good if you would decline the invitation at this late day.  It will be
very rude unless you are positively hindered."

"I know it," said Winifred humbly.  "But the reasons seem very strong
to me."

She was of a sympathetic nature, and it was easy to look at things
through another's eyes.  She saw the case clearly from her mother's
standpoint, and it was difficult to muster her own defense.  But she
prayed inwardly that the One she sought to please would come to her
aid, and He did.  It was no small help, also, that Hubert,
strong-minded and firm as a rock, was on her side.  She went on
bravely, but in a low voice and with downcast eyes:

"You know I have begun to try to worship God, mother; and to know Him
just a little is the sweetest thing I ever knew.  Hubert and I were
reading the Bible together Sunday"--she glanced across at him
appealingly, and his face encouraged her--"and we read some of the
words of Jesus to His Father.  He said that we--that is, those who were
given to Him--were 'not of the world,' just as He is not.  It impressed
me very much.  I could not help seeing Mrs. Butterworth's party, and it
seemed to me like 'the world,' and that perhaps I did not belong there.
It seemed so very, very different from what we were reading, that I
thought I never could go again to such a place.  I shall be very glad,
if you don't mind it too much, mother, if I may stay at home?"

She stopped and waited for her answer.  There was silence for a moment,
and then Mrs. Gray, who had passed through various stages of
apprehension and distress as her daughter spoke, replied as calmly as
possible:

"I am sure I ought to be very glad, Winifred, to have you religiously
inclined.  But I should be extremely sorry to have you get any
fanatical ideas.  I never thought you were given to eccentric things,
and I hope you will not become so.  It seems to me that you and
Hubert"--she hesitated to include her son in the remark, but ventured
it--"are rather young Christians to decide such things for yourselves
in such an extraordinary way.  You should look at older persons.  I
suppose I am not an example"--and her tone was just a trifle icy for
such a gentle lady--"but Mrs. Schoolman will be there with her
daughters, and so will many of the most prominent members of our
church.  I really cannot approve of such an extraordinary
idea!--extraordinary!" and she repeated the word which usually
indicated the high water mark of her well-bred disapproval.

Winifred looked silently at her plate, and Mrs. Gray spoke again,
looking at her husband.

"I wish, father," she said, "that you would try and set Winifred right
on this matter.  We cannot let her go on in such a mistake.  Where will
it lead to?" and with real distress she considered the calamity of her
beautiful daughter's withdrawal from society, and the dashing her own
fond pride to the ground.

Mr. Gray had been listening thoughtfully.  Now, being appealed to, he
spoke.

"To tell the truth, mother," he said, "I do not think the idea quite so
extraordinary as you do.  When I was a boy, where I lived, if young
people were converted it made all sorts of difference as to the things
they did and the places they went to.  We didn't expect to see them at
dances, or at the theater, or any such places.  If we did, everybody
reckoned that they had backslidden.  Those things were called
'worldly.'  We have almost lost the word now, but it must be
descriptive of something, I should say.  If Winifred instinctively
takes a stand against such things, without being talked to about it, I
shall think it is the old sort of religion that she has somehow
discovered, and shall not be sorry.  I would really prefer it to be a
kind that can be distinguished without reference to the church records.
That variety is scarce enough, in all conscience!"

Winifred was surprised at her father's defense, and it unnerved her.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she nearly choked over the coffee with
which she sought to hide her quivering lips.  Hubert looked gratefully
at his father.  Mrs. Gray looked much depressed.  She expected wise
words of reproach that would settle the matter with Winifred and
perhaps save much trouble in the future.  And now he really inclined to
her view of the case!  It was disappointing.  But men, after all, did
not always see social matters as women did.  She was not accustomed to
arguing with her husband, but this case required more resistance than
usual.

"I am surprised, father," she said sorrowfully, "to hear you put it
that way.  I do not think you can realize what it means for a young
woman to drop out of society.  And I do not see how you can compare
those times you speak of with the present.  I am sure Doctor Schoolman
frequently tells us what remarkable advance we have made over those
times in every way.  I hope you do not wish to go backward!" and Mrs.
Gray felt a little flutter of triumph at her own unusual skill in
argument.  Nobody responded at once and she gathered courage to go on.

"I quite agree with that young man who spoke at our church in behalf of
the Y.M.C.A. Gymnasium.  You remember he said that the days had quite
gone by for a 'long-faced Christianity.'  I thought it a very sensible
remark."

"Winifred has not troubled us with a very long face lately," remarked
her father, glancing at her.  "It has lengthened somewhat since we
began our discussion, but I think it has been unusually cheerful for a
week or so."

Winifred colored under these personal observations.

"I do not know what it will become," said her mother, "if she denies
herself all gayety like those young persons you tell about."

"My memory of those young persons," said Mr. Gray, smiling, "is not a
very melancholy one.  Some of them were pretty severe upon themselves
and other people too, I will admit.  But the most of them seemed to
have found something so very satisfactory that these diversions were
not required.  I think Winifred is like the latter sort.  I hope so.
But, Hubert," turning to his son, "you look very much interested in
this matter, but have said nothing.  I suppose you agree with Winifred?"

"I do, sir," said Hubert readily.

"I thought so--I thought so," said his father, far from displeased with
the reply.  He did not explain to the little company that he, himself,
had been one of the "young persons" referred to, and that great had
been his comfort in the early days of the new life; but that a series
of decoys had gradually led him back to the world's excitements and
ambitions, until his professed Christianity had crystallized into the
formal, eminently respectable, but powerless mold of conventional
religion.  His memory of early, ardent days was stirred, and he gladly
warmed himself by its fires.

"But, Hubert," he went on, "you are a thoughtful young man--how do you
account for the fact that Christ, Himself, attended social functions?
He was not a recluse.  He was at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, at a
dinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee, at a feast in Bethany, and I
do not know at how many other social gatherings.  Indeed it was charged
against Him that He received sinners and ate with them.  What do you
make of it?"

"It is a difficult question, father," said Hubert.  "But I should think
if we consider in what capacity He went to those places, and what He
did when He got there, it might give us light."

"That is so," said Mr. Gray.  "In what capacity do you think He went?"

"He had come to give life to men," said Hubert with kindling eyes.  "He
must go wherever He might find them--wherever occasion presented
itself.  I do not think He sought His own gratification."

"Nor do I," said Mr. Gray.  "What about 'what He did when He got
there'?"

"He performed a miracle, for one thing, at Cana," replied Hubert, whose
diligent study of the Gospel of John now served him well.

"So He did," assented Mr. Gray.  "If our little girl could do that,
now, it might do to let her go," and he glanced at her fondly.

"Yes," said Hubert, "and He evidently became the central figure there,
manifesting His glory.  If one of His followers could capture Mrs.
Butterworth's ball for Him it would surely pay to go.  If I thought
Winnie were to do that I would certainly put on a dress suit and go
myself."

Hubert could not resist a teasing glance at his mother.  That lady was
plainly horrified.  The thought of Winifred's "preaching," as she
mentally called it, to anyone at the party, or doing any other
eccentric thing, was far more shocking than her staying away.

Mr. Gray secretly enjoyed the look upon his wife's face.

"And the other places?" he went on.

"I am not familiar with the incident in the house of Simon the
Pharisee," said Hubert.

"It is very striking and beautiful," said Mr. Gray.  "Christ forgave a
sinner--a woman of the city--and He had somewhat to say to His host,
the Pharisee, about it.  He spoke a very telling parable at that
dinner."

Mrs. Gray again looked uneasy.  She hoped Winifred would not feel it
her duty, finally, to go, if it involved a religious errand.

"And at Bethany?" Mr. Gray continued.

"He was anointed for His burial," said Hubert, gravely.

"Ah, yes!" said his father in a subdued voice.

Both men thought reverently of the scene when one who had been raised
from the dead sat at meat with Him who, for his sake and for all
others, was Himself to die; and where one of the company poured upon
His blessed feet love's grateful, costly sacrifice.  To such a feast
the true worshiper might indeed gladly go.

It was tacitly agreed that Winifred was to follow her own inclination
with regard to the party.  Mrs. Gray was far too loyal and amiable a
wife to seriously oppose her husband's wish, and the sudden fear that
Winifred, if she went to the party, might feel called upon to bear some
sort of unusual testimony to her Lord affected the case strongly.  But
she grieved much over her daughter's prospective withdrawal from the
assemblies of the "best people."

Winifred wrote a simple, truthful note to Mrs. Butterworth, and was
relieved when it was dispatched.  A sensitive dread of criticism and of
doing an unusual thing was offset by the sweet consciousness of a happy
fellowship conserved.  No rude breath from the gay assembly's sensuous
delights was to blow upon this flower of communion, so pure, so
fragrant.  So Winifred rejoiced, only an occasional shadow falling
athwart her peace when she thought of one whose increasingly intimate
fellowship threatened the life of the fair flower as surely as could
Mrs. Butterworth's party.  It was an uneasy suggestion, not a
recognized fact, and she put it hastily from her when it arose.

The evening of the party came and Mrs. Gray prepared herself and went,
not too early and not too foolishly late.  She had a faculty of
striking the happy mean in life's proprieties.  Winifred looked at her
admiringly, with the candid conviction that no better dressed nor finer
looking woman of her years would be there.  She felt a pang of sorrow,
too, in her mother's disappointment at leaving her behind, as she
kissed her good-night.  The carriage rolled away and presently bore its
fair passenger to the door of her friend's brilliantly lighted house,
where we will leave her.




CHAPTER X

THE CHURCH SOCIAL

Another social event followed hard on the heels of Mrs. Butterworth's
party, and this Mrs. Gray succeeded in inducing both her son and
daughter to attend, it being no less sacred a function than the
quarterly Church Social.  Hubert was not familiar with the institution,
but so ardently burned his love for the Lord Jesus Christ that he now
sought rather than avoided the company of those who knew Him, if so be
some word of Him might be spoken.  He longed for the fellowship of joy
with those who, like himself, had been called out of darkness into "His
marvelous light."  This was denied in the formal services of the
church, but surely the pent up devotion of the worshipers would find
some avenue of expression when they met together socially without those
restraints.  Hubert was disposed to discount his own former estimate of
church-members' sincerity, and did not doubt that many had found an
experience as genuine as his own of the grace of God.

Mr. Gray did not care to go, preferring the library and the new number
with its fascinating leaves uncut of a magazine, religio-worldly, that
had solved for last days the problem beyond the Saviour's ken of how to
serve God and mammon.  Three went, however, in the comfortable
carriage, to Mrs. Gray's great satisfaction, and drew up before the
side entrance to the handsome church.

Bright light streamed from the parlor windows, illuminating exquisitely
stained pictures of the Apostles.  Strains from a select orchestra
greeted them as they entered the house, and Hubert recognized with a
queer feeling of incongruity the overture from a well-known opera.  The
appealing notes of the violins drew his memory instantly to the
production he had lately enjoyed, but he thrust the mental vision from
him as unworthy of Christ, and tried not to listen to the seductive
strains.

"A very poor selection for a Christian gathering," he thought to
himself.  Hubert was inexperienced, and to him a gathering of
Christians meant a "Christian gathering."

The parlors presented a gayly attractive scene.  They were decorated in
red and white.  Flowers and foliage were profuse, and the handsome
toilettes of the ladies added much to the brilliant effect.  Doctor
Schoolman and his wife were receiving, and our party joined the line of
guests making their orderly way toward them.  Doctor Schoolman was very
amiable, and his wife, a vivacious little lady in satin and artificial
curls, chatted volubly with the members of the flock as they were
dutifully presented.

"You naughty child!" she cried playfully to Winifred.  "How could you
desert us with your charming voice?  Dear Mrs. Gray, you really should
chastise your daughter--you really should!"  And she shook the false
curls with mock severity.

Mrs. Gray began her own lament and disclaimer of any responsibility in
Winifred's apostasy.

"But the dear child's voice," she said extenuatingly, "has really been
very much taxed."

"It's not that," said Winifred, honestly.  But Mrs. Schoolman's eye was
caught by the guest next in line and further explanations were
unnecessary.

Meanwhile Doctor Schoolman had been greeting Hubert.

"Mr. Hubert Gray!" he exclaimed, very blandly.  "Really this is a
pleasure.  I am glad to see you."

"I am glad to come," said Hubert, looking in the Doctor's face frankly.
He wished to tell him how the Lord's people had become so vitally his.
But the reverend gentleman did not note his earnest look.

"We are honored if you can give us some of your valuable time.  You are
such a man of business, your father tells me; and of scientific
research, too, as we all know.  It is kind to let us tear you away a
little while from stocks and bonds and experiments."

"I have concluded, Doctor Schoolman," said Hubert gravely, "that there
are interests more important than business or science."

"Quite so--quite so," said Doctor Schoolman.  "I am glad you see it.
We cannot afford to give all our attention to the graver pursuits of
life.  We need relaxation.  'All work and no play'--you know the old
adage, eh?  Ha, ha!"

And the minister laughed an easy, social laugh, not at all boisterous,
but of a mirth well in hand and suited to the occasion.

Hubert looked at him almost with a frown.  But we of wider experience
are prepared to forgive the Doctor that he did not recognize the
spiritual as the more important interests which might lead a young man
to a church social.  While Hubert debated a reply which should
illuminate Doctor Schoolman as to his real motive, others were pressing
up to take the hand of the minister, and he passed on with his mother
and Winifred.  They drifted not far away, and Hubert glanced frequently
at Doctor Schoolman, watching his suave smile, almost catching the
smooth pleasantries that fell from his accustomed tongue--mild,
clerical jests, wherewith he of the pulpit assures him of the pew, "I
am as thou art."  Very nice and proper it might all be, but to the one
who longed to hear some word of Him whom he loved with such fresh,
intense earnestness, it was as gall and wormwood.

He turned away and reviewed the whole scene about him.  Mrs. Gray and
Winifred were already in conversation with a group of people near him,
and he heard his mother's soft, deprecating voice, as in reply to an
eager storm of questioning.  A flush was rising in his sister's face,
and just a touch of iron determination, not unknown to the house of
Gray, settled her shapely lips.

"Brave little soul!" he said to himself as he thought of the offenses,
anent Mrs. Butterworth's party and the choir, for which she must answer
in the court of popular opinion.

Not far from him a group of girls, very smartly dressed, standing in
interesting proximity to a corresponding group of youths, flirted and
giggled with evident enjoyment.  A soberer group farther on Hubert
found to be discussing the war situation in the East, as he drew near
in a spirit of investigation.  Some one in the party kindly drew him
into their midst, where he joined the conversation for a time.  Then
there was a diversion, the new soprano having consented to sing.  The
murmur of voices subsided for the most part, save from a party of
elderly people, hard of hearing, who continued their absorbing
conversation throughout.  Miss Trilling sang a love song with much
expression, and responded to an encore with a humorous selection.  The
young people applauded loudly, and their elders smiled with indiligent
pleasure.  Hubert continued his search, now rather despairing, for that
for which he had come.  This time he proceeded under the guidance of a
man who offered to introduce him to some whom he did not know.  They
passed a quiet little wall-flower in a sober dress and he looked at her
wistfully, seeing something in her face which made him think she knew
his Lord and would talk of Him if there were hut a chance.  But his
guide drew him on.  He listened to bits of conversation, straining his
ears in vain to hear one reference to Christ.  The conversations were
sometimes serious, more often gay, but none spoke of their Lord.

Hubert's heart withdrew within him, and he had no further inclination
to speak to any of his new-found hope.  A bitter theory was forming
itself in his mind.  This company was no different from any other in
the world.  Were they not all as he thought them in the days of his
scepticism? If they knew Him whom he had come to see as the supremest
Object of devotion in all the universe, could they forbear to speak of
Him when they met together?  Would they not be like flaming brands,
igniting one another in their fervent zeal?  He was not acquainted with
the book of Malachi, and had perhaps never read the words: "Then they
that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened
and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them
that feared the Lord and that thought upon His name."  Had he known the
words they would have seemed a satire in this company.

"They do not know Him," he thought passionately, "and I--am I under a
delusion?  Is it all a farce?"

The suggestion was intense pain, and he put it from him.  No, that One
whom he had seen in his laboratory, the Man of the cross and of the
glory, was no delusion.  To admit Him to be such would be blackest
midnight.  He held on to his revelation with an iron clasp, but he
longed to escape from an atmosphere that now stifled him.  He made his
way to his mother and Winifred.

"Shall I take you to the refreshment room?" he asked in a cold,
strained voice.

Winifred looked at him anxiously, with eyes almost as troubled as his
own.

"Yes," she said in an undertone, "and let us get away as soon as
possible."

Mrs. Gray consented genially to be escorted to the room, elaborately
decorated, where charmingly-gowned young women dispensed elegant
refreshments.  Several gentlemen, among whom Hubert recognized elders
of the church, with their wives and other ladies, passed gay bandinage
one to another as they sipped cooling ices.  Hubert took nothing, but
stood, silent and stern, while his mother, unconscious of the tempest
in his breast, leisurely and daintily enjoyed her refreshment.

"Where are the poor people?" Hubert asked Winifred in something of his
old sarcastic tone, as they left the room.

"I am afraid they are not here," said she, gently.  Then she glanced
around.  "Yes, there are some, I see.  There is Madge Nichol, that
young woman in the stylish blue dress.  She has done sewing for me, and
seemed to need the money very much.  But see how she is dressed!  It
must be much beyond her means."

Then a womanly intuition smote her, and she looked down at her own
costly dress.

"I see how it is, Hubert," she said.  "I think we are to blame.  No
girl would like to meet us in this way unless she were well dressed."

"I should advise them to stay away," said Hubert.  "They would lose
nothing valuable."

"That is what I shall do, I think," said Winifred with a sigh.  "Do let
us get away as soon as mother is ready."

"Shall I see if the carriage is waiting, mother?" said Hubert,
interrupting when he could a discussion of the best places in which to
spend the coming heated term.

"You might," Mrs. Gray replied, "I did not wish to stay late."

Hubert went out with alacrity to signal the faithful coachman, already
in waiting.

They had soon departed, and both young people were glad to get out
under the pure, gleaming stars and hasten the carriage to the dear home
where the face of the Lord had first been seen by each, and was yet to
be seen in increasing loveliness.

Hubert found his father still in the library, but asleep.  He awoke as
his son entered.

"Well, Hubert," he said, "did you have a good time?"

"No, sir," Hubert replied, "I had a wretched time."

"How was that?" his father asked.  "What happened?"

"Nothing happened that I expected.  I thought there would be some there
who knew and loved Jesus Christ, and would wish to talk of Him.  I did
not hear Him mentioned.  I might as well have been at Mrs.
Butterworth's ball so far as that goes."

"Well," said Mr. Gray, apologetically, "it was a social time, you know."

"Yes, I know it, father.  That is why I went.  Are not people usually
most sociable about the things that interest them most?  There was a
company of people, professedly born from above and expecting soon to
see the very glory of God.  They take it very coolly, at all events.  I
believe it is a sham."

"Oh, Hubert," groaned his father, "don't say that."

"I don't mean," said Hubert quickly, "that Jesus is a sham.  I
believe," and his deep eyes softened, "that He is the most real fact in
the universe.  But the belief of those people, father!  That sort of
gathering is what Doctor Schoolman calls 'relaxation,' and I think he
is right.  I am convinced that Christ is irksome to them; a subject to
be endured on Sundays, but to enjoy relaxation from at other times.  Am
I right?"

"Hubert," said Mr. Gray, slowly, "I believe you are partly right.  But
be deliberate and generous in your conclusions.  Do not judge us too
hastily or hotly."

Hubert winced as his father included himself in his own sweeping
indictment.  Mr. Gray went on:

"Some of us have known Him, even as you do, in earlier days.  But we
have lost the brightness of our vision through"--he hesitated--"through
sin.  We have followed afar off, and are very poor representatives now.
Be patient, and it may be the warm zeal of such as you will quicken us
again."

He looked at his son appealingly.  Hubert's generous heart melted.

"Forgive me, father," he said humbly.  "I have no right to judge
anybody.  Forget my tirade if you can.  And I," he added with a faint
smile, "will try to forget the Social."




CHAPTER XI

MR. BOND'S LECTURE

Hubert recovered from the cold bath into which he had been thrown like
a Spartan babe by his first contact with church sociability.  His, as a
new creature, was a vigorous constitution, and was destined to out-live
many a shock incident to the earthly career of a heaven-born man.  Both
he and Winifred returned to their joy and calm, and were looking
forward eagerly to Mr. Bond's lectures.

On the day of his arrival Mr. Gray came home to luncheon with an
announcement.

"My dear," he said to his wife, "Mr. Selton tells me that his wife has
unexpectedly been called to Chicago by her mother's illness, and they
will be unable to entertain Mr. Bond.  He suggested that we might like
to do so."

Winifred and Hubert looked up with animation.

"Indeed!  And you told him?" asked Mrs. Gray, with a housewifely
instinct of defense against invasion.

"I told him," said Mr. Gray, "that I knew no reason why we could not do
so, and that it would be a great pleasure.  I told him, however, that I
should ask you about it, and 'phone him if there were any arrangement
to prevent it."

Mrs. Gray considered.  The chief guest room stood ready, immaculate in
yellow and white, since the spring cleaning.  There was no reason why
it should be denied, but she had hoped that its repose would not be
broken until Miss Virginia White, her most aristocratic friend, should
make her promised visit.  However, it would be manifestly unreasonable
to refuse to receive Mr. Bond, and she could not offer him another room
while that stood empty.  Yes, the yellow-and-white room must be
sacrificed.

"No, Father," she said amiably, "there is no reason why we cannot take
him.  When will he come?"

"He arrives this evening by the eight o'clock train from New York.
Hubert, perhaps you would like to meet him?"

"I should," said Hubert.  "I am glad he is coming here."

"So am I," said Winifred.  "It will be lovely."

That afternoon Winifred "called up" her friend Adèle, and the telephone
transmitted a lively conversation.  The result of it was that Adèle
promised to go with Winifred to Mr. Bond's Bible lectures; at least to
one, to see if she liked it.

In the evening Hubert met Mr. Bond at the station.  They were scarcely
seated in the light trap and facing toward home when the young minister
said:

"Well, Mr. Gray, have you found God demonstrable?"

"Yes!" Hubert almost shouted, and the two grasped each other's hands in
the strong grip of a fraternity never formed by man.

"I thought so," said Mr. Bond.

"How did you know?" said Hubert.

"I thought it would be so," said the other, "and I saw it in your face
as we met.  Thank God for it."

"Amen," said Hubert fervently.

Mr. Bond led Hubert on with keen interest to tell of the process of his
search after God, and of the illumination brighter than the light of
day, that came to him when the Spirit shone with such clear luster on
the Word.  To Hubert it seemed the happiest hour of his life, as he
conversed with a man who seemed to understand the processes of his own
heart, and to be thoroughly at home in the new world into which he
himself had entered.

The drive was all too brief, but later in the evening, when good-night
had been spoken to the rest of the household, the two men sat in the
unlighted veranda and talked until midnight of Christ and the matters
of His realm.


The _tout ensemble_ of the company gathered to hear Mr. Bond's first
lecture was somewhat curious.  It was not a large congregation, but it
was representative, being drawn from the interested or curious of
nearly every kind of church or religious coterie in the city.  Keen
Bible students were there, notebooks in hand, prepared to capture any
new suggestion which might help them.  The critical were there,
representing various shades of belief and prejudice, from the quiet
repressionist, who, disdaining emotion, views with dispassionate
coldness the great tenets of the faith, to the irrepressible enthusiast
whose spiritual understanding is often lost beneath a foam of feeling;
from the instructed brother who reads his title clear with logical
accuracy in the Scriptures and glories in his standing with belieing
indifference to his state, to the anxious soul whose hope of heaven
veers with every changing wind of fitful emotion.  Each critic was bent
on discovering if the stranger would hew faithfully to the line of his
own demarcation.

There were Mr. Selton's friends, people of his own station, who
responded to his personal invitation to come, prepared to listen
courteously, to express polite thanks at the end for the pleasure
conferred, and, for the most part, to find various lions in the way of
attending again, profound as were their regrets!

Mr. Gray and Hubert both succeeded in getting the hour away from
business, and the latter arrived at the hall just as his mother, with
Winifred and Adèle, was entering and joined them.  Adèle formed a
singular figure in the midst of the assembly.  No thought of unusual
sobriety had toned down her usually stylish and somewhat striking
costume, and a large red hat of the milliner's finest skill shaded
becomingly her piquant face.  Her keen, merry eyes studied the
congregation, and she could not resist whispering a few impressions to
Winifred before the lecture began.

"Isn't this a funny crowd?" she asked.  "Such a combination!  Look at
that meek little body in the front row and the fat dowager behind her.
And do see that anarchist-looking man at the side who is looking at Mr.
Bond as though he would eat him up.  Do you know who he is?  I hope he
hasn't a bomb in his pocket."

"I don't know him, but I'll ask Hubert," said Winifred, and she passed
the question along.

"Hubert, who is that man yonder--the one with the high shoulders.
Adèle thinks he is an anarchist."

"I think so, too," said Hubert.  "At least he is a socialist of a very
virulent type.  He has come as a critic, I suppose.  He professes to
study religionists, and writes scornful letters about them to a
socialist paper."

Winifred communicated this intelligence to Adèle, who was much pleased
with her own acumen.  Presently she resumed:

"Do look at that woman ahead of us!--the one in the little bonnet, and
so distressingly neat.  She has been surveying us.  She doesn't approve
of me, but she commiserates me.  That's plain enough.  Well, I am a
sinner, no doubt, and she has found me out!  If she looks around again
do see what you think of her."

Mrs. Bland did look around again, and both young ladies observed her.
A rather shapely mouth was settled in an expression of studied repose,
and her eyes rested approvingly, or with patient toleration, on others
who were minded to come to the Bible lecture.  Her hair was parted with
conscientious exactness, and upon her whole appearance there sat the
picture of conscious piety.

"Oh, I can't stand her!" whispered Adèle in an ecstasy of dislike.  "I
should fly if I had to look at her long!  Sister Saint Serena--the
Salubrious!"

Winifred choked down a laugh at Adèle's suddenly inspired alliteration,
while Hubert looked a dignified reproach.  It was a poor preparation,
certainly, for what was to follow.  Adèle's face straightened
innocently, while Winifred still struggled to suppress her risibility.

There were few preliminaries before Mr. Bond proceeded to speak.  His
subject dealt with vital matters, with underlying truth upon which
rests all lesser fact, and he spoke with a calm certainty, unlike "the
Scribes."  His lecture betrayed a familiarity with the Scriptures such
as his auditors had seldom met with before, and a reverence for them
born not of superstition but of some apprehension of their unfathomed
depths.  Our little party listened with fascinated interest.
Especially was Hubert delighted when from the portions that had been
the favorite debating ground of his sceptical friends riches of meaning
were discovered that stamped unmistakably the divine imprimatur upon
them.  Winifred and Adèle forgot Mrs. Bland and every one else
listening; the one with sweet content in hearing anything that
concerned the One she loved, and the other with an awakened interest in
lines of thought she had never pursued before.

"He is _splendid_!" said Adèle at the close of the lecture.  "I am
coming every day.  Unless--there's that bothersome card party Thursday!
Stupid affair!  But I won't go.  What's the use?"

And so Mr. Bond secured a regular attendant.

Many were the expressions of interest, some of them very genuine.  Mrs.
Gray had listened to her guest with valorous attempts to resist the
habitual afternoon nap, and told him later how very good indeed the
lecture was and hoped he would quite understand how manifold were the
cares of a household, and how unavoidable her hindrances, should she be
unable to be present every day.  And Mr. Bond did understand his gentle
hostess very well, and often as he saw her in her home his meditative
eye rested upon her fair mother-face with an expression of chivalrous
pity and of earnest longing.

The second day's lecture found the audience sifted to some degree of
the idly curious and of a part of the critics unto whose standards the
speaker had failed to attain.  As Mr. Bond's language was remarkably
free from the current phraseology of the schools of teaching, it was
difficult for theological birds to discover at once whether indeed he
were of their feather, and a second hearing, at least, was needed.  But
no uncertain note was sounded to the alarm of any advocate of the most
orthodox written creed or of the severest unwritten code of belief, in
answer to the pivotal question of all theology: Jesus, the Son of
Man--_Who is He_?  None gave more ardent honor to that Mystery of
godliness, who

  "Was manifested in the flesh,
    Justified in the spirit,
    Seen of the angels,
      Preached among the Gentiles,
        Believed on in the world,
          Received up in glory."

If some fell away from the gathering, there were new hearers, brought
through the good report of those interested, and the company numbered
rather more than before.  Adèle's "anarchist" was again there,
fastening his pale, strange eyes upon the face of the lecturer whether
he spoke or was quietly sitting; at times half crediting its look of
candor, then relapsing into sneering hopelessness of finding an honest
man among his class.  He determined to try his favorite test of a
benevolent scheme before Mr. Bond should go away, and see if he would
abide by the Sermon on the Mount.

To-day the lecturer's theme was Redemption, and from all the cardinal
divisions of the Scriptures he drew illustrations of their one
consistent theme.  It was when he reached the Day of Atonement under
the Levitical institution, that Adèle Forrester's interest reached its
height.  He drew a vivid, simple picture, as a teacher might present an
object lesson to a child, of the offering, the priest, the waiting
congregation, the presentation in the Holiest of All, and the blessing
of the people.

Adèle leaned forward in her seat as he proceeded.  She had never seen
it just like that before.  She imagined herself one of the Jewish
congregation, with a guilty score against her which needed to be wiped
out.  What if there were a flaw in the offering?  What if the priest
were not acceptable, and she were to go back with the debt
uncanceled--with reconciliation not effected?  Her mind leaped forward
before the speaker could reach the point to the Lamb without spot or
blemish and the High Priest who "ever liveth to make intercession" for
His people.  Was that what it meant?  And was it already accomplished?
The speaker was saying:

"There is both correspondence and contrast here.  In the first case
there was indeed remission of sins, because the Lord had covenanted to
meet His people upon that ground.  But it was temporary, and the work
imperfect.  The _taking away of sins_ was not actual, but pictorial,
each sacrifice pointing forward to the effective one to come.  There
was no vital relationship between the victim and the worshiper, and the
death of one could not be made actually good to the other.  Nor could a
new life of righteousness be imparted.  So the work was imperfect,
unfinished, always looking forward to the perfect, eternal redemption
which should be wrought by the One who has power to impart the virtue
of His death and the power of His endless life."

Before Adèle's mind there came the vision of a vain, empty, earthward
life.  But clearer still she saw the Lamb bearing away all offenses and
her hopeless coming short, and the High Priest who with perfect
acceptance presented the offering of His blood for her.  Why had she
never seen it before?

Oh, what grace!  Oh, what a lightened soul!--to be free as a child
unborn of any guilt of sins!  She caught her breath with a little
convulsive sob and sank back in her seat, grasping Winifred's hand with
a tight, expressive grip.  She trusted herself with no words when the
meeting ended, but blinking back the tears that sparkled in her eyes
made a hasty exit from the hall.

The days of Mr. Gerald Bond's visit to the Grays were all happy ones.
Hubert and Winifred were living in a new world of revelation, and
delighted exceedingly in the help one well instructed and "apt to
teach" was able to give them in the mystery of the faith.  Mr. Gray,
too, enjoyed his guest's presence and brought knotty questions to him
daily for solution.  Mrs. Gray recognized the excellent spirit that was
in him, and found herself quietly wondering more than once why the
other ministers she knew did not seem equally interested in the matters
of their calling when off duty, so to speak, but were so much at home
in all the affairs of the world.  Gerald Bond seemed to live in the
atmosphere of the holy things in which he ministered, and Mrs. Gray
looked upon him with an admiration akin to awe.  But he was
nevertheless so thoroughly a man, of finest sympathy, courteous,
gentle, and withal possessed of a genial, penetrating wit which all
enjoyed, that Mrs. Gray could not simply admire him from afar, but took
him into her heart with a warm liking.  She looked forward with real
regret to the day when the yellow-and-white room would be without its
occupant.

Hubert came in for the greater share of the young man's leisure hours,
and evening often saw them pacing the garden walks, or lingering
meditatively by its fountain, in deepest conversation.  In Hubert's
soul still the question was burning, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to
do?" and beyond a thin veil of time the answer was waiting him.
"God . . . hath appointed thee to know His will, and to see the
Righteous One, and to hear a voice from His mouth.  For thou shalt be a
witness for Him."


The Bible lectures came and went, having no more rapt listener than
Adèle Forrester, who marveled at the light that had come to her,
illuminating all truth that she had formally learned and recited, and
adding wondrous things out of the Law never hinted at before.  When
Sunday came she went to church a true worshiper, and sang with all her
heart:

  "O sing unto the Lord a new song
  For He hath done marvellous things."

She did not follow Winifred's course in retiring from the choir, and
explained to her afterwards:

"It did not seem the right thing for me, dear, although I think you did
just right.  You see, I am not a star singer, for one thing, and never
sing solos.  So my temptation to show off would not be like yours with
your exquisite voice.  Though I do believe, Winifred," she said
earnestly, "that one might do that some day--sing solos, I mean--with a
sincere heart to the Lord, and not be vain about it.  And oh, it would
be so sweet!  To praise Him with one's whole heart 'in the great
congregation'--to try and tell about Him!--but, after all, there is no
verse chaste enough and no melody sweet enough to describe Him!  Oh,
Winifred, when I see _His wounds_," and Adèle covered her eyes as
though, shutting out other things, she could see Him, while her voice
sank to a sob--"it breaks my heart!  What a silly girl I have been--and
it was for me!"

Presently she resumed: "When I sang Sunday, I remembered something that
Mr. Bond had said.  I was afraid lest some inattention or failure to
just grasp and mean the sentiments I sang might make my worship
unacceptable.  But I remembered that in the Tabernacle service after
the priest had done all he could--at the brazen altar, and the laver,
you know, having his heart set right and his conduct cleansed--still
there was provided blood on the horns of the altar of incense beside
which he worshiped.  After all he could do he might still need it, I
suppose.  So I thought that although my poor service is very imperfect,
and must come far short of what it ought to be, at best, still there
will always be the blood and I shall take refuge in that."

Winifred looked at her friend wonderingly.

"That is very beautiful, Adèle," she said.  "I am glad to see it."

Adèle's words had opened a dim vista of possibility, very precious, and
had suggested arms wherewith to resist any shrinking self-fear or
accusation that might attack her by the way.  But though her "gift," as
Mrs. Butterworth and her mother called it, might some day be transmuted
into a true gift of the Spirit, she felt with instinctive spiritual
repugnance that its sphere of use would not be the former theater of
her vanity.  Adèle might still sing in the chancel the canticles of the
church, but as for her the associations of the choir of Doctor
Schoolman's church were far too unhallowed to admit of a return to
them.  To her it was so clear that she wondered a little why Adèle and
she should take no nearer ground as to their respective action.

"I suppose," she said aloud with a little perplexity, "that we must
each do what seems right, according to the clearest light we have.  We
may not both see all the truth about anything at the same time."

"No," said Adèle with a decisive shake of her head, "and we can't walk
by each other's consciences.  But talking about seeing 'all the truth'
makes me think of something.  You know I was in the Berkshire Hills
last summer?  Well, I saw Greylock from several points of view.  From
one it seemed a rather sharp spur; from another it was long and obtuse;
and from the last,--when somebody pointed out an ordinary, featureless
ascent and said: 'That's Greylock,' I could scarcely believe it.  I
imagine our views of the truth are somewhat like that.  It will take
time to walk all around it, I think."

"I think so," said Winifred reflectively.  "Then if somebody had met
you when you had seen but one view of the mountain, and had described
simply another--"

"We should have quarreled!" said Adèle.




CHAPTER XII

THE SOUL HEARS A CAUSE

Midsummer heat was advancing and the fashionable residents of the city
where our story is located--a city not too large, cleanly, healthful,
and beautiful for situation--found it necessary to leave town.  Mrs.
Gray was among the number whose constitution demanded a change from the
accustomed air and scene, and from the round of conventional home life
to the equally conventional routine of life in a summer hotel.  At
least, she supposed she required it.  And was it not the regular thing
to do?  And had she not arranged with Mrs. Dr. Greene long ago that
they should secure quarters together in the Loftimore House overlooking
the blue waters of Silverguile Lake?  But when the last trunks were
packed and, gone, and she looked around in the cool quiet of her own
home, the soft eyes were troubled and she said to Winifred:

"I wish I were not going, dear.  It is a trouble, after all.  And you
are not going!  You will come for a little while, won't you, child?"
And she gave her an already homesick caress.

Winifred promised, if it could be arranged.  Mr. Gray and Hubert both
found it impossible to leave but for a short time, and Winifred was
glad of an excuse to stay with them, presiding in the quiet house with
its summer lack of visitors and improved opportunity for her new and
engrossing pursuit.  She would go on to know God better, as she found
Him mirrored in the clear, still waters of His Word.

The days sped by all too rapidly.  Adèle did not leave for the summer,
and the two spent hours together, comparing impressions and experiences
and the light gained upon the Scripture portions which they were
reading simultaneously.  Then Winifred rehearsed to Hubert at night
their discoveries and difficulties, and he added the wisdom given to
him to their own.  Sometimes his sister quoted to him surprisingly
original and apt comments from Adèle and he wondered silently.  If he
had wished to hear from the "sensible interior," he now did so, and it
spoke from the depths of a new spiritual insight.


George Frothingham continued to pay occasional court to his ladye
faire.  The time for his customary holidays drew near, and as he
arranged for a flying European trip which he had promised himself this
year, it entered his heart to close the anticipated compact with
Winifred for the life journey together.  Very sweet were the hopes
which mingled with shrewd business calculations, and he congratulated
himself on assured prospects.

But Winifred was not happy when she thought of him.  His coming gave
her pleasure always, and it was anticipated with a shy new
consciousness since the night they had read each other's hearts more
certainly through the tell-tale windows of their eyes.  But though his
coming gave her pleasure, it left her always with a disappointment.
Concerning the one thing that had come to be the most vital interest in
her life they were not in sympathy.  Sometimes when the beauties in
Christ Jesus seemed most patent to her own soul, it seemed that he must
surely see them if represented to him.  But the mention of that Name
froze upon her lips when met with the usual bantering jest, or
indifferent acquiescence, accompanied by a look at his watch or the
sudden memory of an engagement.  The conviction could not be denied
that a wall as thick as that of a tomb stood between them in matters of
the spirit.

"He is dead," she confessed to herself in honest grief, "as dead as I
was before my quickening--just as it says in the Ephesians.  He makes
no more response to spiritual things than would one of the people in
their graves in the cemetery if I talked to them.  And what fellowship
can life have with death?  But--but--I love him!"

The Flesh cried out for the sovereignty of human love, but the Spirit
argued for the reign of Christ.  Between the two the Soul stood, a
tortured arbiter, and heard the cause.

The Spirit pleaded:

"O Soul, if to you to live is Christ, why do you bring into your life's
closest fellowship an alien to Him?  Why do you give the supremest
place of earthly relationship, pledging life-long loyalty and
obedience, to one whose mind is foreign--even 'enmity'--to the law of
Christ?  Can you follow the course of life he would plan, and still
serve Christ?  Can two walk together except they be agreed?"

"You might win him," the Flesh pleaded.  "A woman's power is very
great.  Remember he loves you."

"I have no power now," the Soul ruled.

"You might have eventually," the Flesh persisted.  "The example of a
godly life will win."

"You cannot live a godly life while you walk with him," interposed the
Spirit.  "'The friendship of the world is enmity with God.'"

Winifred was startled.  "That is a very strong text," she thought.
"But it probably doesn't mean that.  Godly women have lived Christian
lives with very ungodly husbands."

"But they did not walk together," argued a voice.  "They were only in
part united.  In the realm of the spirit--the realm that should
lead--they were divided."

"There is encouragement held out to believing wives in the Scripture,"
suggested one who knows how to quote Scripture for his purpose, "that
they may win their unbelieving husbands by their chaste behavior."

"There is no encouragement given to believing women to marry
unbelieving men," said the Spirit defensively.  "A woman whose faith
finds her so united may have hope.  But can you expect the favor of God
upon a mission undertaken in disobedience?"

"Is it quite disobedience?" pondered Winifred weakly.  "I must look in
the Bible to find all I can about it."

The Flesh resisted this course and suggested delay, at least in
searching the Scriptures about it.  She might not understand the
Scriptures.  It would be better to ask some Christian friend.

So the matter was delayed, but not for long.  For the Soul grew unhappy
with the weight of a matter withheld from the clear light of the Word,
and a mist rose between it and the face of Christ.  Any sorrow could be
borne rather than lose vision of His face, and Winifred brought her
cause at last with sobs and tears to the feet of Him who had been
crucified, determined that His word should end the case at any cost.
Then she searched the Book with what result each Bible student knows.
She found permission for a Christian's marriage "in the Lord."  But the
whole testimony of the Scripture frowned darkly upon a yoking together
with unbelievers; and what yoke was closer than the one she
contemplated?

The Spirit said amen; and Winifred remembered how all her interviews
with George Frothingham had left her not helped at all in the way of
the spirit, but rather hindered.  What would be a lifelong fellowship?
She cast to the winds all thought of inaugurating a dubious mission for
the young man's salvation through means of a forbidden fellowship, and
so the Soul, led by the Spirit, took wood and fire and repaired to the
mount of sacrifice.


The decisive evening came, and Frothingham, never more elegant nor more
winning, appeared.  He was not dismayed by Winifred's unusual
constraint, for he had noticed a growing shyness and drew his own happy
conclusion from it.  He had brought a roll of music--a new love song,
into which he poured the richness of his mellow voice while Winifred
accompanied him.  But her fingers trembled over the keys and she struck
a false note occasionally.

Later they were standing beneath the chandelier, the light falling upon
Winifred's pale face, as she answered words he had been speaking.

"No, I cannot marry you," she said, and her voice shrank from the words
as ranch for the pain they must cause him as for her own.  "It is
impossible."

His handsome face clouded with surprise and alarm.  He pleaded,
expostulated, reasoned, but in vain.  Winifred was firm, and a certain
womanly dignity hid the grief that she felt, lest its display should
afterward bring humiliating regret.  She told him as clearly as she
could the reason why she could not become his wife, and to his
unspiritual judgment it seemed a petty cause.  He was accustomed to
seeing a type of religion that could exist in harmony with the world,
and he did not see why the fact that Winifred was a Christian and had
become uncommonly interested in that sort of thing should hinder her
being the best of wives to a worldly man like himself.  They need not
quarrel about it.  As to any scruples that might be entertained in her
conscientious little head about all the gaiety he cared for, he
inwardly credited himself with skill to overcome them when once she
should be his.  But Winifred made it clear to him at last that the
matter was unmistakably and finally settled, and deep was his chagrin.
Wounded pride rose with a sense of his rejection, and he straightened
his fine figure in haughty coldness.

"Very well," he said.  "I must abide by your decision, and we will
part."

"We shall still be friends?" she asked timidly.

He did not look at the little hand she outstretched.  "If we cannot be
more than friends, we must be less now," he answered coldly.

He bade her an abrupt good-night and she watched him depart.  Still
standing where he had left her she looked through the graceful palms
that from their setting of marble partially veiled the drawing-room
from the hall and saw him standing, never so handsome as now in his
pale sternness, fastidiously drawing on his gloves according to his
wont.

Her heart made a final appeal.  Was she mad, that she should drive him
away when _she loved him_?  Let her call him back!  Love is sovereign.
Let it rule.

As a very tiny object may blot out the widest view if it be near enough
to the vision, so this glittering treasure of an earthly love swung
before her eyes, and it hid the broader prospect of fair and eternal
joys in Christ.  "Command that these stones be made bread," one had
said to her Lord when he hungered, and the same strong and subtle one
counseled now: "Take the joy that is offered!  Your heart will be
starved and desolate if you let it go.  Call him back!"

Almost her weak heart assented.

"George!" the cry rose, but it died, mercifully, in a whisper upon her
dry lips.

Frothingham had quite prepared himself to emerge from the house--for
the last time, probably--and he passed out, giving no backward glance
at the figure that stood beneath the light in the drawing-room.

Winifred roused from her statue-like stillness as the door closed
behind him.  The heavy breath of odorous flowers stole in through an
open window and sickened her.  For years after she could not dissociate
their fragrance from the sorrow of that hour.  She turned to the piano.
He had left his music--and he would never come back for it!  She turned
away and climbed the stairs with heavy steps to her own room.  And
there we will leave her, where, after the battle, a heavenly Visitor
was to come forth with bread and wine for her refreshing.




CHAPTER XIII

EXPERIENCE

Winifred's heart did not break.  Or, if it broke, it was quickly
healed, for there dwelt in the house One whose office it is to bind up
the broken-hearted.  It was not that she did not grieve, or that no
void cried out again and again to be filled.  But she learned a paradox
as the days went on: of an inexplicable peace beneath the sharpest
pain, and of a buoyant joy that would not be held down by sorrow.
Hubert looked on, making mental notes as to what had happened, but
asking no questions.

Our trio of young people who had entered a life of worship found their
hearts impelling them toward fields of service also.  Winifred sought
in many quiet ways to make known to others Him whom she had come to
know with such delight, and a casual visit from Adèle one day threw
light upon the occupation of the others.

"By the way, Winifred," Miss Forrester said, apropos of some topic
discussed, "your brother gave a splendid talk at the Cleary Street
Mission last night.  Oh, you ought to have heard him!  It was fine!"

Winifred opened her eyes widely.  "Hubert at the Mission last night?
He never told me."

"I suspect he doesn't let his left hand know what his right hand is
doing," suggested Adèle.  "But he certainly was there.  And when Mr.
McBride asked him to speak he promptly did so.  It was splendid!  Not
simply what he said, you know, but the fact that he said it--a business
man talking in a matter-of-fact, business way to other men of something
he evidently thought the most important matter in the world.  Of course
most of the people were of a far different class from his, but you
would never guess it from his words.  He didn't patronize them a bit.
I liked that so much.  And you should have seen how those men fastened
their eyes on him and listened to what he said."

"How lovely!" cried Winifred.  "I wish I had been there.  But pray tell
me, Adèle, how happens it that you were there?"

"Oh, I am a regular attendant in Cleary Street," said Adèle laughing.
"At least I go regularly on certain nights in the week and play the
organ--a wretched, squeaky, little thing--and raise my voice on Sankey
hymns also."

"You do!" cried Winifred with a mixture of amusement, dismay and
admiration in her voice.  "Well, I declare!"

"I don't see why you should be so shocked," said Adèle, enjoying her
friend's astonishment.  "Pray, why shouldn't I go?  Do you doubt my
qualifications?  I am not the musician you are, dear, but my skill is
quite up to those tunes, I assure you."

"I hope you don't wear that red hat of yours and your usual stunning
costumes, Adèle?"

"It occurred to me after I had gone a few times," said Adèle quietly,
"that it might be well to modify my gear.  I think you would approve of
my revised toilet.  It is very simple."

"Adèle, I know you can't help looking well, whatever you wear," said
Winifred, who suddenly observed a somewhat altered "gear" in evidence.
"If you should put on a Salvation Army bonnet it would look stylish.
It couldn't help itself.  But please tell me more about the Mission.
How happened you to go at all?"

"I heard Mr. McBride speak at a meeting.  He told of the work of the
Mission, and of the need of helpers--especially of somebody to help in
the music.  It occurred to me that that was the kind of assistance I
might give, and that it would be very nice to contribute in some small
way, at least, to the work of the Mission.  And," she continued very
gravely, "I volunteered and was gladly accepted."

"That is very noble, I think," said Winifred.  "But what did your
friends think?"

"I did not ask them," Adèle answered coolly.  "I have fallen from
caste, anyhow, and it doesn't matter much.  You know since I have seen
the Lord"--it was Adèle's way of putting it--"I have tried to--to
witness to Him in some way or other to my old friends; and the result
has been a pretty liberal letting alone from them.  His name does not
seem a very welcome one--outside of a church!"  Then she went on with a
gleam of indignant sorrow in her bright eyes: "That is what breaks
one's heart!  That these very people may kneel beside you in church and
recite His holy name as glibly as possible; but outside--it is
unwelcome!  Winifred, can it be a Christian life at all into any avenue
of which Christ is an intrusion?  Oh, if they loved Him--if they had
ever seen Him at all!--they would be so glad of any mention of Him!"

After a moment a gleam of amused memory succeeded Adèle's pained
outburst.  She went on:

"The other night I think I reached the climax of my fall into disfavor.
You know these summer evenings at the Mission we take the organ and
hymn books and go out before the door and have a street meeting.  Well,
on this occasion our open-air meeting was in full swing and our usual
score of auditors were lined up in the gutters and everywhere to hear.
Mr. McBride had announced 'The best Friend to have is Jesus,' and was
himself swinging his arms and singing lustily, while I played and
pumped the panting little instrument and sang as loudly as I could,
too.  Suddenly there turned down the street a handsome automobile (I
don't know why, for they never go down that street) and in it the
Misses Steele and Miss Proudfeather from Baltimore.  To crown it all,
with them was seated my precious Cousin Dick!  Our poor little crowd
huddled aside to let them pass.  They all saw me and Dick took off his
hat with great ceremony; but the ladies evidently thought they would
spare me the mortification of a recognition under the circumstances.  I
couldn't help laughing within myself, though it was a bit embarrassing.
Dick was hilarious over it.  He evidently sees nothing improper in it,
but a very good joke.  He says he expects to hear me preaching there
yet.  I told him it might be to his benefit if he did."

Both laughed.  "But just think, Adèle," said Winifred, "how infinitely
better to be in that little street crowd _with the Lord_, than driving
about in the finest motor car without Him!"

"Yes!" cried Adèle, "I wouldn't trade places for worlds!"

"I should think not," said Winifred, with scorn of the idea.

Adèle was finding out, like her friend, that the way of the cross
brings separation, and she had her own peculiar tests as to faithful
witnessing.  Her merry-hearted cousin drew her out in words more
frequently than any other, and plied her with questions concerning this
new type of religion.

"It's no new sort of religion at all," she insisted.  "It's just the
old sort you read of in the New Testament--and the prayer-book!  Only I
am afraid I never really had it before--or it had not really got me.
If people would only be sincere, Dick, you would find it is the same
sort."

"I do not think the ordinary sort is much good," said Dick, with the
air of a connoisseur in religions.

It was to be lamented that the present incumbent at St. John's had not
met with the young man's very hearty favor.  The freshly introduced
intoning struck him humorously.  He imitated it in ordinary remarks
about the house.

"Where's--my--hat?" he inquired in a whining chant, after the manner of
the unfortunate rector's plaintively intoned "Let us pray."

Adèle, always alive to the ridiculous, laughed; but still she wished he
would not be irreverent.

"The way we go through the service," said Dick, "is so as to relieve it
of as much sense as possible.  No wonder some of us turn out
hypocrites.  But you don't, Adèle.  However, I'll reserve my estimate
of your case till we see how you hold out at your new gait."

So Dick watched the "new gait," and Adèle prayed that it might be a
walk worthy of the Lord.


Meantime Hubert was pursuing his study of divinity in a normal
way--with an open Bible and the Spirit of the Author to interpret.  He
sought also the fellowship of His people and deep was his perplexity as
he found into how many countless sects the "one body" had been divided.
Very contrary to the Bible it seemed, but very helplessly he stood
before the fact that seemed as hopeless of remedy as of denial.  What
ought he, one unit among the whole, to do about it?  Kindly people
sought to draw him into their various fellowships, and he peered into
their folds and sought to find the place where his Lord was most
honored and His presence most manifest.  He found old churches, great
and cold, whose service moved with slumbrous calm, and his ardent soul
was chilled.  He found others where activity bristled and cheerfulness
prevailed, but where the world held court as obvious as in the market
square; and from these he turned away with a still sharper grief.  He
found other congregations built in strife and schism, but with some
fragrance still of the name of Jesus Christ, and rejoiced that He was
preached.

"'They feared the Lord and served their own gods,'" he said to himself,
as almost everywhere he saw the strange mingling of worship of the true
God with the too patent service of the gods of pleasure and of wealth.

He found little companies, gathered in protest from shameless
worldliness or infidel denial of the Lord, and with them he had
sympathy, but still looked hungrily for a fuller expression of the
truth than they offered.  He found himself in companies where correct,
punctilious statements of the truth abounded, and where the most
careful zeal sought to restore an apostolic order of worship.  But he
found that the statements grew dry and juiceless in their formal
exactness, and that prescribed form could not insure the animating
Spirit without which it was as useless as the phylacteries of the
Pharisees.  He concluded that truth was deeper and fresher than any
definitions of it, as the fountain excels the cistern; and that life
was sovereign over form, though in form it embody itself.

He found perfection nowhere.  After a disappointing meeting, the climax
of a series of experiences in which arguments from various schools of
doctrine had jostled against each other, and the varying phases of
practice, emotional, anti-emotional, informal and ritualistic, with the
intervening shades of difference, had presented themselves, he stood in
the veranda at home with Winifred and described to her the procession
of rival claims which a divided church presents to a Christian man's
adherence, and ended with the question:

"Where shall we find the truth, Winifred?"

"In Christ," she answered simply.

"You are right, wise little sister," he said admiringly.  "And there we
will look for it."

He turned from his quest for perfection in any detachment of the church
and sought the place where God would have him, not alone for the green
pasture to be found but for the testimony to be given.  Deeper lessons
were learned as time advanced--lessons of "grace" as well as "truth."
Keen discrimination was tempered by love toward that Body which, though
distorted and maimed, was still beloved by her Lord, and though
besieged by error was still "the pillar and ground of the truth."




CHAPTER XIV

A "WITLESS, WORTHLESS LAMB"

The air at Silverguile Lake did not altogether agree with Mrs. Gray.
Rheumatic damps rose from the water, and the mornings were chilly and
uncomfortable.  The inane round of dressing, eating, appearing in the
veranda, taking the daily drive, and other mild etcetera, grew irksome;
and, beyond all, the faces of the dear ones at home were longed for.
Winifred came for a few days, and then the place brightened like a
cloudy day that surprises the world with sunshine at its close.

Mrs. Gray was far from well when the home journey was undertaken, and
Winifred looked at her with apprehension.  But they traveled
comfortably and reached home in the evening where welcome waited.  But
an alarming chill overtook the mother before she had retired that
night, and the doctor was hastily summoned.  The chill was a harbinger
of serious illness, and the cheerful house became shrouded in dread of
coming sorrow.  Winifred devoted herself eagerly to her mother, but
professional skill was needed also.  The telephone rang frequent calls
from the office during the anxious days to inquire for the loved
patient, and life for the time was enveloped in the one painful query:
Will mother live?

The doctor gave sparing reports, but careful directions.  Winifred
moved about the house with a pale face and frightened eyes, until the
doctor told her that she evidently needed his services also, and that
she must not let her mother see her with that face.  Then she fled to
her room and poured out her pitiful need to God, and begged His grace
for calm and cheerfulness.  With unfailing faithfulness He gave her
what she asked, and she went back to minister with Him at hand to help.

"Winnie, dear, is that you?" said a faint voice from the bed.

"Yes, mother."

"Come here, dear, let me look at you."

Winifred went and sat beside her where they could look into each
other's faces.

"Dear, do you think I am very ill?  Does the doctor say so?"

"He has not said much, mother.  But he is taking every care."

"Yes, I see.  What do you think, child?"

"I do not know, mother.  But we hope you are getting on as well as
possible."

"Winnie," said she again, and her voice came with difficulty, "I think
I am very ill.  I have had sickness before, but not like this.  Things
seem slipping away."

Winifred's eyes filled with tears, but she forced them back.  "Do not
think that, mother," she pleaded.

"They are all slipping away," insisted the sick woman.  "Every
one--father, Hubert, you--everyone--everything I know--all slipping
away."

Winifred looked to her invisible Companion in an agony of entreaty for
her mother.  Presently Mrs. Gray's voice again arose plaintively from
the pillow:

"I am afraid--I am afraid, Winnie.  I don't know--the things ahead!
These,"--and her poor hands closed themselves over the counterpane as
though they would try to hold the tangible, known things--"are slipping
away, and I--am afraid."

"God never slips away," whispered Winifred.

"No?" queried the mother.  "But I--can't--see Him!  I don't--know Him."

So the secret, before unconfessed and unrealized, came out at last.
She did not know Him.  The church, the service, the minister,--the
external routine of a nominally Christian life, all was slipping away
into a mist of past that could not be retained.  And now the soul
stood, a terror-stricken stranger, before the things not known.

"I am afraid," repeated the faint voice.

Winifred longed for words of comfort, but they did not seem at hand.

The white-robed nurse came into the room with a little air of
professional authority.  "I think our patient should not talk any more
just now," she said, and Winifred retired.

She met Hubert in the hall and drew him to her own little sitting-room,
where they pleaded with God together for the eternal comfort of the
beloved sufferer.

Evening came and Winifred was again by her mother's side.

"Winifred," said the gentle voice, stronger to-night for the increased
fever.

"Yes, dear mother?"

"Winnie, dear, would you be afraid if--if you were ill--like me?--if
you were going to--"

"To die," she was about to say, but she could not speak the word.  She
shivered instead, as though a cold wind had struck her.

Winifred did not wait for the unwelcome word.

"No--I think not, mother," she said simply.

"Why not?  Is it not dark--what we do not know?"

"But I know God," said Winifred earnestly, "and Jesus Christ.  And they
are there--in the things we cannot see.  The Apostle Paul said, 'For me
to live is Christ; _to die is gain_.'"

The words brought no comfort.  "'To live is Christ,'" repeated the sick
one musingly.  "If that were so--?" she was silent for a few moments,
and then broke out hopelessly: "No, no!  To live has not been Christ!
It has been myself, and you all, and these things!  It is not gain to
die!  It is loss!--loss!--loss of everything I know!"

Her voice rose excitedly, and her glistening fevered eyes looked about
restlessly.  Winifred feared that the nurse would come, and finding her
worse, end the interview.  So she prayed that God would calm the dear
patient and give them both His needed grace for the hour.  And He heard.

"Let me straighten your pillow, mother dear," she said, and suited the
action to the word.  Her mother clasped the deft hands that arranged
things so comfortably, and looked long with yearning fondness into her
daughter's face.

"Winnie," she said finally, "could you sing just a little for me?"

Winifred choked back a sob that tried to escape.  "I will try," she
said.

She brought a little stringed instrument that her mother loved, with
which she sometimes accompanied her songs.

"What shall I sing?" she asked, seating herself beside the bed.

"I don't know," hesitated her mother.

"Would you like that little Scotch song from Sankey's book?"

"Oh, yes.  That is very sweet."

So Winifred began the plaintive words:

  "I am far frae my hame, an' I'm weary aftenwhiles
  For the langed-for hame bringin' an' my Faither's welcome
smiles."

She began with a stern watch upon her own emotions.  But, as she
proceeded, from the sadness of the hour rose a longing in her soul for
the "ain countrie" where no blight of death and tears are known, and it
poured itself out in the song.  She sang two of the long stanzas.

  "I've His guid word o' promise that some gladsome day the King
  To His ain royal palace His banished hame will bring.
  Wi' heart and wi' een rinnin' ower we shall see
  The King in a' His beauty in oor ain countrie.
  Like a bairn to its mither, a wee birdie to its nest,
  I wad fain be agangin' noo unto my Saviour's breast;
  For He gathers in His bosom witless, worthless lambs like me,
  An' carries them Himself to His ain countrie."

Mrs. Gray had been lying with closed eyes through which the tears
forced their way.  Now she interrupted:

"What does it say, Winifred?  'He gathers in His bosom?'  Please sing
those lines again."

So Winifred repeated:

  "'For He gathers in His bosom witless, worthless lambs like me,
  And carries them Himsel' to His ain countrie.'"

"Thank you!" murmured the invalid with a sigh.  "Is it true, Winnie?"

"Yes, mother, it is quite true."

"That is what--I have been."  She was speaking again with difficulty,
and her voice was very low, so that Winifred leaned forward to listen.
"I've been--a 'witless, worthless lamb!'  Will He--gather--me?"

"I know He will--if you trust Him!"

"How do you know, Winnie?"

"There is the Scripture, mother.  There is the parable of the lost
sheep, and then there is another word; 'All we, like sheep, have gone
astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid
on Him the iniquity of us all.'"

After a moment the weak voice spoke again:

"Winnie, _you_ know Him; will you pray?  Tell Him--I've taken--my own
way,--a 'witless, worthless lamb!'"

Winifred slipped to her knees beside the bed and prayed; prayed with
the greatest thankfulness she had ever known because she knew God, and
prayed for the dearest object for which she had made request.  She
reminded God with great simplicity that He had laid the iniquity of us
all who have wandered on His Anointed One, and begged Him to make good
the virtue of that act to her poor mother.  And the dying lady
listened, and believed.

"Dear mother," said Winifred fondly, "do you not see that He will
gather you?"

Mrs. Gray's head had sunk back contentedly in the pillows.  She smiled
faintly.

"Yes, I see it now," she said.  "It is very true."

In a few moments she was asleep, and the nurse resumed her watch.  But
later in the night a quiet alarm summoned the little household to her
chamber, and they watched for the moment of parting between the spirit
and its fair tenement.  Before it came she opened her eyes, and looked
at them placidly.  Her lips moved, and Winifred bent forward eagerly to
catch their words.

"I--am--not--afraid'" they pronounced, and then closed their witness
for this world forever.

The death of Mrs. Gray brought the first great sorrow to the house of
Robert Gray.  It did its work in the heart of each who remained.  It
smote the husband with a conviction of misspent years, of a united
fellowship in the things that perish so miserably instead of in those
things which remain when all else is shaken.  Had he but led his gentle
wife, as was his opportunity, in ways of the Spirit, how different
might have been their record together.  And now the end had come for
one, with no "abundant entrance," no glad prospect of long-anticipated
joys,

  "Where the eye at last beholdeth
  What the heart has loved so long,"

but with the negative testimony of a fear relieved--of wrath averted,
through the grace of a longsuffering God.  They had been guilty
together of the capital sin of an earth-centered life; and now the iron
merchant, elder of the church though he was, awoke from his long dream
of money getting and of earthly comfort to the reality of God, and of
his obligation as a redeemed soul to Him.  There crept an unfamiliar
note of yearning sincerity into the prayers wherewith he took his
heretofore formal part in the church prayer meeting, and it almost
perceptibly thinned the frozen crust of the "icily regular" service.
The men in his business noticed a new softness in his manner, and
sometimes it emboldened them to speak to him of their own cares and
sorrows, and they found sympathy.

Hubert grieved for his mother with the strength of an intense, reticent
nature.  But, as did also his sister, he found solace in God.

Winifred felt very keenly her mother's loss, missing the vanished hand
from every part of the house where she now assumed her place, seeing
everywhere reminders of her dainty touch and quiet taste, and longing
for her voice yet more and more as the days went by.  This great
bereavement came so closely on the separation from one whom she never
mentioned now, but who was far from forgotten, that often her heart
seemed torn between the two sorrows.  Sometimes waves of disheartenment
came on cloudy days of testing, when the sun was hidden and life looked
cheerless and hard.  But anon the face of Jesus Christ broke through
the clouds, and with the vision came always joy.

The three who were left drew more closely to each other, and despite
their sorrow found a sweetness of comfort together never known before.




CHAPTER XV

"SELL THAT YE HAVE"

Three years had passed, and the snows of winter had lain heavily for
weeks upon all the region surrounding New Laodicea.  It spread soft
mantles over lawns and roofs in the city, and only in the streets was
its white purity turned by the traffic of man into vileness.  On a
sharp, clear morning Hubert Gray walked through the cutting air toward
his office, and meditated thus:

"What am I doing?  What is the occupation that employs so much of my
waking time and the powers that God has given me?  'Diligent in
business,' the Scripture says.  Yes, I am certainly that, but what is
it all for?  I am trading in iron, as my father has done, and laying up
treasure on earth.  That is something--the laying up treasure on
earth--that the Lord Jesus said not to do.  But did He really mean it?
Nobody takes it very literally, I suppose.

"'Sell that ye have and give alms.'  That is what I read this morning.
'Make for yourselves purses which wax not old, a treasure in the
heavens that faileth not.'

"How much does it mean?  We cannot always press the words of the Lord
to their utmost literal meaning.  I suppose He used language a great
deal as we do, to be taken at its face value, and not screwed and
pressed and tortured into literal exactness until all the spirit is
taken out of it?  But these words sound very bald and unequivocal.  I
wish I knew what they meant.  Would I act on them if I did?  There's
the rub.  It is undoubtedly hard for a man with money to look at the
matter disinterestedly.  And Jesus said, 'How hardly shall they that
have riches enter into the kingdom of God!'

"But if a man wishes to know how to interpret these words, I suppose he
may consider other words of the Lord and their evident interpretation
and find a rule.  For instance, He said, 'Labor not for the meat which
perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life.'  He
evidently did not literally mean not to labor for daily bread, for that
is something we are told to do.  'Work with your hands, that ye
may . . . have need of nothing,' it says.  And, 'If any will not work,
neither let him eat'; and again, 'That with quietness they work, and
eat their own bread.'  So that is clear enough.  Apparently what He
meant was to emphasize the supreme need of the other kind of food--'the
meat that endures unto everlasting life.'  The one pales into such
insignificance--into nothingness!--compared with the other, that He
puts His hand over it--He puts it out of sight completely, and says,
'Look at this!  This is the supreme thing, the one thing needful!'"

Hubert grew enthusiastic as he meditated the meaning of the text and
the supreme need.  He walked faster, and trod the snowy walk
emphatically.

"What a splendid text!" he thought.  "If I go to the mission to-night
perhaps I shall speak from it.  'Labor not . . . but for'--ah! that
word 'labor,' as applied in the second phrase needs explaining also,
and Jesus did explain it.  '_This is the work of God, that ye believe
on Him whom He hath sent_.'  That is 'labor' for the living bread--to
believe on Him!"

But he returned to his former consideration.  "'Sell that ye have and
give alms.'  I wonder if the principle in the other text will apply to
that?  Did He mean, not literally that they were to sell all and give,
but rather to emphasize the supreme importance of the treasure in
heaven?  Did He push aside one and bring forward the other, saying,
'Look at _this_!  Let go the other, and lay hold of this.  Lift up your
eyes to the kingdom it is your Father's good pleasure to give you.
Take stock in that.  Little flock, you are so very rich yonder, you can
afford to give up what you have here.  Give to the poor that have no
treasure here, and perhaps none yonder.'  Ah, but my paraphrasing has
not led me far from the literalness of the text!  And how beautiful it
is!  That Man of Glory, 'Heir of all things,' poor for a little while
for our sakes, counseling His little flock to follow for a brief season
in the steps of His poverty, laying up more abundant treasure in His
eternal kingdom!"

By this time Hubert had reached his place of business and was stumbling
over the office boy in the hall.  When alone in his office, at his
desk, he leaned his head upon his hands and prayed:

"O Lord, teach me what those Scriptures mean that I may obey them.
Save me from the bias of self-interest.  Help me to live by the
understanding I had with Thee at the outset of our walk together.  What
may I do to please Thee?  My time and my energies are Thine, for I am
bought with a price.  Thou seest my possessions.  What shall I do with
them?"

He lifted his head with a lightened heart.  "He will show me what to
do," he thought.

That day at lunch Hubert propounded a question to his father.

"Father," said he, "what do you think Jesus meant by saying, 'Sell that
ye have and give alms?'"

Mr. Gray reflected.  "Hm!" he observed, "eh--well--" then, with a sly
twinkle as though rather enjoying a coat that fitted tightly, "it
doesn't sound very obscure, does it?  The language is simple.  What
would you think it meant?"

"That is a point I am studying.  If a man came to it without prejudice
or self-interest, it would seem very simple, I imagine.  But I am not
sure that it should be pressed to absolute literalness.  But, granted
that it means _something_, was it of limited application, or would
Christ say the same thing to His followers to-day?"

"Well," said Mr. Gray, whose theological studies had been greatly
stimulated in recent months, and who had fallen into the hands of a
variety of teachers, "you know some people draw pretty fine
distinctions now-a-days.  They may tell us that that does not belong to
the church.  I shouldn't wonder a bit if some of them would slip this
over our heads and let it fall on some other people.  But I should say,
if you ask me, that such a principle, if it applied to anybody, might
certainly to us; that if heavenly-mindeduess could be enjoined upon any
it might certainly upon those who are raised and seated with Christ in
heavenly places.'"

"I think you are right, father.  But now, just what is the
principle--what is the true spirit of the text?  In short, what are we
_to do_ about it?"

Mr. Gray looked at his son curiously before replying.  Was it for the
sake of _doing the word_ that he pondered its meaning?  To expound a
text and to act upon it were two separate things.  The former was
sometimes the pleasanter task.  But he answered honestly:

"I suppose the true way to understand a Scripture is to read it in its
relation to other Scripture--in the light of every other Scripture.  I
confess I have not so studied it.  And," he added cautiously, "one must
be very sure of the meaning of a word before he acts upon it."

"Certainly," said Hubert.  Then he added privately that they had not
waited to understand the text before proceeding to pile up treasure
upon earth in abundance.  "I intend to look up the subject," he said
aloud, "and see what the Bible really does teach about it; that is,
what the New Testament says.  I suppose if we searched the Old
Testament we should find earthly prosperity guaranteed the Lord's
people on the ground of obedience.  But we are under the new covenant,
with heavenly riches assured."

"Just so--just so," murmured Mr. Gray.

The next morning the subject was renewed.

"I have found, father," said Hubert, "that the apostolic church did
precisely what Jesus had told His flock to do.  They sold what they
had.  It was an effect of the coming of the Holy Spirit.  I suppose the
heavens were so opened through that illumination that earthly
possessions shriveled into nothingness by comparison.  What precept
alone could never have power to do the entrance of the Spirit did.  It
turned out the love of the world and 'the things that are in the
world.'"

An enthusiastic light glowed in Hubert's face as he spoke.  His father
eyed him curiously as on the day before.

"Just so--just so," he replied, absently.

Presently, however, he rallied to the discussion.  "But, Hubert," he
said, "do you remember what they did with the proceeds of their sales?"

"Yes," said Hubert, "they laid them at the feet of the Apostles, and
distribution was made to the needs of all the company."

"That was not an indiscriminate alms-giving," said Mr. Gray.

"No," replied Hubert.  "But the parting with their possessions of those
who had property supplied the need of those who had none.  That could
be called alms-giving, I should think."

"That seemed to be confined to the church," said Mr. Gray meditatively.

"Yes," said Hubert, "and when a beggar solicited alms of Peter and
John, they had nothing to give him!  No--I beg pardon--they had much to
give him, through the 'riches in glory.'  They gave him ability to make
his own living, which was far better than an alms.  But is there not
some other Scripture that will tell us the relative positions of the
church and the world to us in our giving?"

"I think so," said Mr. Gray.  "How is this?  'As we have opportunity
let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the
household of faith.'"

"That is to the point," said Hubert.

"But to return to the Pentecostal precedent," said Mr. Gray; "if we
were to sell out, at whose feet would you propose laying the proceeds?"
He looked slyly at Hubert.  "At Doctor Schoolman's?"

"Never," said Hubert, and then he laughed.  "I beg the gentleman's
pardon for my emphasis," he said, "but it never would occur to me to
turn over my money to him."

Mr. Gray smiled.  He felt that he had scored a good point against any
rash procedure in the matter of possessions.

"At whose feet, then," he persisted, "would you think to lay it down?"

"There's the rub," said Hubert grimly.

"Ah, just so," said his father.

There was silence for a few moments and then Mr. Gray began again:

"Those early conditions at Jerusalem have never been reproduced since
they were broken up by the scattering of the church, and I do not
remember any hint in the Epistles to the Churches that there should be
an effort to establish a similar communism in any place."

"No?" said Hubert.  "I shall search farther and see what they do say."

And he did.  A less disinterested disciple would not have pressed such
a vigorous search toward an end that might mean his own monetary
disadvantage.  But a supreme longing to know the will of God and to do
it was master of the situation.  Moreover he remembered the vision of
the cross that stood at the outset of his Christian way, and the terms
of complete abandonment of himself and his circumstances to which he
consented in his heart.

He pursued diligent and business-like methods in his study.  With the
aid of a concordance he found and tabulated what the Gospels had to say
about "money," "gold," "silver," "goods," "riches" and "treasure,"
words that might serve as clews to discover the mind of God in the
matter he searched out.  Also he read carefully the Epistles to see
what, in the more settled state of the church, was enjoined after the
dissolving of the community at Jerusalem.

His thoughtful study involved the spare hours of many days, and he
emerged from it with certain convictions which were not likely soon to
be shaken.  He set his arguments in order with a deliberation and logic
with which a lawyer might prepare his brief.  His leading conclusions
as to the teaching of the Scriptures on the subject were somewhat as
follows:

First, that the possession of riches is a disadvantage to a man as to
his entering the kingdom of heaven.  Indeed, that it would render it
impossible but for the grace of God with whom all things are possible.

Second, that the teaching of the Lord Jesus placed the seeking of
worldly goods in utter contempt and disregard as compared with heavenly
riches.  Indeed, they might well be abandoned for the sake of that
treasure.  That even the necessities of life were not the things to be
anxiously sought, but were guaranteed by God in response to the
diligent, first-in-order, whole-hearted seeking of His kingdom and
righteousness.  That this teaching, however, was guarded against
misinterpretation by practical instructions in the Epistles to work for
honest support and in order to have to give.

Third, that an instant effect of the coming of the Holy Spirit was a
practical illustration of that disdain of earthly goods inculcated by
the teaching of the Lord Jesus; and the result was not the want of any,
for "neither was there among them any that lacked."

Fourth, that that striking example, set at the head of the age as an
object-lesson for its entire course, was not literally followed by the
Churches subsequently formed, but its principle was carried forward to
them also, Paul enjoining an "equality," saying to the Corinthians,
"Your abundance being a supply at this present time for their want,
that their abundance also may become a supply for your want; that there
may be equality."

Fifth, that the giving up of possessions at Pentecost was spontaneous
and voluntary, not forced; and the subsequent giving was to be not a
legal necessity, but as the heart inclined.  The flavor of delight to
God would be lost if otherwise.  The giving would have value in His
eyes only as it was done, not of necessity, but cheerfully.

Hubert reviewed the articles of his newly formed financial creed,
feeling that it was far from exhaustive, but that its principles must
help to clear his vision as to the attitude a Christian man should take
toward this world's gain.  From the whole trend of the teaching he
gathered that the true Gospel of Christ demanded a complete reversal of
the generally accepted rudiments of worldly thrift, and that its key
word for the use of money was not "get," but "give."  Sometimes he
hesitated and turned pale before a radical step which he found his
heart prompting, and again he looked at the possessions now in his own
right and was glad he had so much to place at the absolute disposal of
the Lord he loved.

"It is not a necessity," he said.  "I may do as I will.  And I will to
do that which will serve Him best."

He read the text, "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that,
though he was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through
His poverty might be rich."  Tears, to which his eyes were unused, made
them glisten for a moment.  "Ah, if through my poverty some might be
made forever rich!" he thought.

How to put in practice what he desired to do became a problem.  He went
to his office with the sense of a new relationship to its business.  A
new Proprietor sat at the desk with him, and, afraid to act rashly, on
Him he wisely waited for the clear instructions which should show how
best His interests might be served.

The new Proprietor looked on him and saw a man triumphing where the
multitude of essaying disciples fail: not in lofty ideals, not in
emotional experiences, not in grand works undertaken; but in the
prosiest, hardest spot--albeit the touchstone of many a man's
consecration--the _money question_.




CHAPTER XVI

THE MISSIONARY MEETING

It was early summer when the Women's Foreign Missionary Society of Doctor
Schoolman's church was to have a public meeting.  On Sunday the faithful
calendar announced it, and Doctor Schoolman made special mention of it,
urging attendance.  A missionary home on furlough was to exercise a part
of his "well-earned rest" in addressing the meeting.  It was to be held
in the afternoon, but it was suggested that as many men of the
congregation as possible unite with the ladies in giving welcome to one
who had distinguished himself by faithful and valuable service on the
foreign field.

The announcement was discussed in the Gray household and Hubert
determined to join Winifred in attendance.

"Not that I believe much in it," he said, "when here all about us, and
especially in our large cities, there are plenty of objects for our
commiseration quite as wretched, undoubtedly, as those in foreign
countries."

"No doubt," said Winifred.  "It always seemed to me to be looking rather
far afield for something to do."

However, the two determined to hear the voice from China.

Wednesday, the day for the meeting, came, and Hubert left work in time to
join Winifred on her way.  They found the lecture-room of the church
rather better filled than was usual at a missionary meeting, but only a
few gentlemen were present.  Winifred had time to observe some of the
faces about her before the meeting began.  She knew the Secretary, a
woman with a keen, earnest face, always active in good works, and
indefatigable in her efforts to excite a generally indifferent church
into some glow of interest in the missionary cause.  There were a few
other faces as interested as her own.  Hubert saw the plain little body
he had singled out at the church social as one who perhaps would find it
a pleasure to talk about the Lord.  Her eyes looked expectantly toward
the quiet looking man who came in with Doctor Schoolman.

The President, rather new to her office, fingered her jeweled watch-chain
nervously as she opened the meeting.  The company sang "From Greenland's
Icy Mountains," and Doctor Schoolman offered prayer.  The Secretary read
the minutes of the previous meeting--a "Thank-offering meeting"--and it
was discovered that the sum of $90 had been realized.  The ladies
exchanged glances of satisfaction at the amount.

"Hm-m!  Their combined thanks foot up to that," thought Hubert.  He was a
business man and must be forgiven such a practical view of the case.
"The Lord must be gratified!"

"I feel, ladies," said the President, pushing a diamond ring up and down
upon her finger anxiously, "very much pleased that our poor gifts have
amounted to so much.  We cannot all do what we would, but we may give our
mites, and together they will count for something in the work.  We cannot
tell what these ninety dollars may mean to the heathen."

"Their mites!" thought Hubert, with something of his old-time irony.  He
was freshly instructed on the subject of money, and knew well the story
of the widows' mites.  "If Mrs. Greenman herself had given the ninety
dollars, I should think she was beginning to feel a tinge of gratitude
for something."

Winifred had fastened her brown eyes musingly upon the President.  She
was wondering if money might express thanks, and, if so, how much would
appropriately suggest her own gratitude to God for His "unspeakable gift."

"No gift would be large enough," she thought, and then the familiar lines
came to her mind:

  "Were the whole realm of nature mine,
  That were a present far too small;
  Love so amazing, so divine,
  Demands my soul, my life, my all."

"How true that is," she thought.  "But I suppose it is nice to give some
token, even though one cannot adequately express one's thanks."

There were some other reports and then the leading alto from the choir
sang:

  "There is a green hill far away."

"I am sure we are all glad," said the President, "to have with us Mr.
Hugh Carew from China, who has labored for years among the heathen there.
We shall be pleased to hear him tell us something of his work."

And Mr. Hugh Carew began.  He was a man uninteresting to look upon, save
that his face wore a certain indefinable expression of a man who has been
a stranger in many places; a man habituated to loneliness and to silence.
But he was evidently a man also accustomed to speak, for he addressed his
audience with easy grace.

"The pleasure is mine," he said, "in being able to present to your
interest and sympathy the dearest object of the heart of God."

Hubert started to hear the man's work, as he thought, thus spoken of.
Mr. Carew went on:

"Of course I refer not to my simple share in it, but to God's great work
of salvation in all lands."

"Ah, that is what he means," thought Hubert, and repeated to
himself--"the dearest object of God's heart!"

"You may question my definition of that work," said Mr. Carew, "but a
moment's reflection will convince you that it is true.  We may measure
the object's value by the price expended for it.  For what other than the
dearest object would God have been willing to give His most priceless
treasure--the Son of His love?  You will pardon my giving some attention
to the fundamental facts of our common salvation before speaking
specifically of the work in which I have had a part for some years in
China.  My apology is this: that wherever the returned missionary goes,
even among God's people, he finds himself obliged to defend his work to
some who regard it as an impractical and self-devised effort at doing
good, rather than the simple carrying out of the expressed will of God.
We have to go back to first principles and inquire afresh: '_What is the
will of God_?'"

"That sounds sensible," thought Hubert, who loved to hear vital
principles discussed.

"Some very simple, well-worn texts will serve for our brief study," said
Mr. Carew.  "First there is that comprehensive passage, familiarly known
and quoted in all evangelical circles: '_For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not
perish, but have everlasting life_.'  The words that I wish to emphasize
especially are two:--'_the world_.'  They show you the scope of God's
love and gift.  He loved 'the world,' not some favored race within it.
And love, which cannot rest inactive, _gave_; gave according to its own
measure--'His only begotten Son.'  We cannot be otherwise than agreed
that this love and this gift were for all, and so must include my poor
China.  Indeed, could you divide God's love arithmetically (it is a
foolish way to put it--you cannot divide infinity!) then my friends over
there might claim about one-fifth of it, I suppose, as they number about
that proportion of the world's population."

The ladies smiled indulgently at the curious way of putting it, but were
not yet persuaded in their hearts that so considerable a portion of the
love of God could be diverted from their own delightfully engrossing
race, not to China alone, but to other peoples also, as would follow by
that kind of arithmetic.  Let the missionary talk.  It would still be as
obvious to their consciousness as the glittering pompon on Mrs.
Greenman's bonnet that themselves were the consistent and natural
monopolists of the favor of their Creator!

But Mr. Carew went on: "We may find our two very illuminating little
words in another text almost equally familiar.  It is this: '_Behold the
Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world_.'  This lets us
farther into God's attitude and purpose concerning 'the world.'  Loving
all His creatures, He still saw that they were involved in ruin brought
on by sin.  If He brought them to Himself--the only event that could
satisfy love--it must be by a great and costly Redemption.  One emanating
from Himself must be projected into the ruin and death of the world and
come back to Him, spotless and unsullied, bringing with Him 'many sons'
unto the glory.  But He must purge their sins.  So He gave Him to be a
Lamb of sacrifice; that He taking the sins of the world upon Him, might
work in Himself a death unto sin that should be made good to all that
become united to Him.  Potentially, then, the sin of '_the world_' is
taken away.  If we wish to support further this point in our study
concerning 'the world' we may turn to Paul and hear, 'God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto
them.'  Or the Apostle John will tell us that 'He is the propitiation for
our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of _the whole
world_.'

"Now that we have reminded ourselves of the love, and of the gift
embracing redemption, it occurs to us to ask how are our poor brothers in
China to avail themselves of the gift or to hear of the love.  Another
well-known test, containing our two words again, tells us very clearly.
It offers the only logical answer to the question, and it is this: '_Go
ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature_.'  Love
has devised its gift and prepared it at unspeakable cost, and now
commands our feet that we may bear it to all habitable parts of the
earth.  Wherever the objects of God's love are, there the gift must be
borne.  Do we not all see that the work which we call 'Foreign Missions'
is in the direct, simple carrying out of the purpose of God, bearing the
knowledge of the gift to all for whom it is intended, that they may avail
themselves of it?  What object could be dearer to the heart of God?  What
He has Himself done shows us of what moment the matter is to Him.  How
can we ever excuse ourselves that it has been a matter of such
indifference to us?  He has limited Himself to human instruments for the
carrying to the lips of dying ones whom He loves the water from the
smitten Rock, and how have we responded?  Are we indeed His sons and
daughters, that His supreme wish should be our last concern?"

The speaker's eyes had deepened in color as he spoke.  Now they burned
with intense feeling.  His long, tenacious hands were clenched
repressively.  He went on:

"I imagine I hear an objection that the same work is being done at home,
and that there is ample field here still.  We may not trust our own
understanding to argue the case as to the value of confining our efforts
to the home field, but let the Scriptures, always ready to instruct us,
give us light.  Probably we will agree that Paul, the apostle-missionary,
is in his life an exponent of the theory of Gospel preaching.  He had an
ambition.  Hear how he expresses it: 'Yea, being ambitious so to preach
the Gospel, _not where Christ was already named_, that I might not build
upon another man's foundation; but, as it is written

  "'They shall see, to whom no tidings of him came,
  And they who have not heard shall understand.'

"He shows his Roman readers his method; telling them that from Jerusalem
unto Illyricum (just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy) he had 'fully
preached the Gospel of Christ.'  Now he was ready to look farther, his
task to those regions being accomplished.  What did he mean?  Was he
leaving behind him converted areas, whose every inhabitant magnified God
in Christ Jesus?  Far from it.  'Fully preached' though he had,
communities were still heathen, but for the lights that he had kindled
from place to place in his persecuted journeyings.  Remembering that he
is in his life the model for Gospel preaching, as he is in his writings
the messenger of Christian doctrine, must we not see that the Gospel is
for _broadcast sowing_, not for close gardening, save by the careful
hands that God will raise up in the wake of the evangelist.  Or, to use
another figure, it is the _notification, to lost heirs_, of a fortune
bequeathed them; and the responsibility of the ones entrusted with the
carrying out of the will is not so much to persuade heirs to receive
their inheritance as to notify them of it.  So the Apostle preached 'not
where Christ was named,' having a zeal to discharge his debtorship of
making known to all nations God's gift of grace.  Now over into
Spain--far, far afield, as distances then were gauged--the eager eyes of
the Apostle looked and longed for a crown of rejoicing from that land
also in the day of Christ.  In him we see the faithful exposition of the
missionary idea."

By this time Hubert was looking at the speaker very intently, with
widened, almost startled, eyes that were opening to a new idea.  Winifred
also sat with riveted gaze, her cheeks slightly paling beneath the
deepening conviction of a tremendous truth.  True worshiper that she was,
to know the truth must be to shape her life in consonance with it, and a
voice at her heart gave warning that to be conformed to this newly
revealed will of God would be pain.  But where was the theory that had
seemed so clear and sensible to both Hubert and herself when they came to
the meeting?  Hubert always had clear ideas.  What would he say to this?
Now Mr. Carew was saying:

"I have frequently heard it objected to foreign missions that there are
works of philanthropy still to be done here.  The objection is absolutely
irrelevant.  The work of missions is not an indefinite 'doing good.'  It
is the bearing of a _specific good_ to those who have not received it.
It is not, _per se_, the bettering of temporal conditions.  It is the
securing to those who believe its message the _best eternal conditions_.
It is not a matter of 'elevation'--it is a matter of translation.  Not
into a bettered life, but into a _new_ life with an eternal outlook--into
a new realm altogether, and that divine--the Gospel we carry ushers its
believers!  How would the poor, irrelevant argument I have quoted have
affected Paul?  Looking across the sea to Spain, and to Rome by the way,
he was leaving behind him in Judea, in Asia--in all the region unto
Illyricum, hungry people still unfed and the naked still unclothed.  Want
and misery still stretched out their hands to be relieved.  But they
could not stay the feet of the Apostle.  He had heard _the supreme call_!
God had a supreme gift to bestow; the world had a supreme need; and to
bring the need and the gift together was his absorbing, constraining
zeal.  Would God it were ours also!  Friends, my plea for China is not
for its temporal needs; it is not that its women's feet are bound, that
its men are opium-stupefied, or that it needs our Western ideas, as it is
waking from its Eastern way.  It is this: _God has an unspeakable gift
for its people, and we must bear it to them_."

His tall figure was leaning forward and his burning eyes chanced to rest
fully upon Hubert.  The latter started, and a half audible groan burst
from his lips.  Was it the burden of a new motive, or the sudden smiting
of a chord he knew right well?  The "unspeakable gift!"  Yes, he knew it;
and its glory was ineffable beyond the highest earthly good he had known.
Happy the man under commission to bear such a treasure, though it be to
the uttermost parts of the earth!  And the great Giver longed to bestow
it on the millions of His creatures, but waited the unwilling feet of His
messengers!  It was heart-breaking!  But was there no other way?  Why
should an infinite God limit Himself to finite man in carrying out His
great design?  Mr. Carew continued:

"You may ask why does God restrict Himself to the human instrument in
bearing the tidings, and _through the tidings the effective result_, of
the Redemption?  I cannot tell you why, but I see that it is so.  A light
from heaven may overpower a Saul of Tarsus, and he may hear words
straight from the ascended Christ.  But a Christian _man_--Ananias--must
be sent to tell him how to wash away his sins, and to minister the Holy
Spirit to him.  An angel may communicate with Cornelius, the Centurion,
but he stays his lips from uttering the Gospel of Christ.  That privilege
is reserved for the _human_ lips of Peter.  Is it not sufficient that the
Commander has said, 'Go _ye_'?  Had the task been set for angels, it
would have been accomplished long since, for _they_ do His pleasure.  But
He trusted it to us, who might be expected to be so bound by ties of
gratitude to His will that we would eagerly spring to do His bidding.
And we have miserably failed.  'Is there not another way?' we languidly
ask in the face of the command.  I do not see another way.  But the Lord
has most clearly outlined _this_ way: _That the Gospel should be preached
in all the world to every creature, and that the one who believes and is
baptized should be saved_.  To sit and philosophically consider that an
infinite God must surely find some other way if we fail in this, is not
reverence for His wisdom.  It is mutiny."

Some of the ladies looked startled at this bold setting forth of the
case, and remembered how, privately, they had given voice to the
sentiments under criticism before coming to the meeting.  The Secretary's
keen face betrayed thorough assent to what the speaker was saying, and
the President was glad that she held such a relation as she did to a
cause so evidently right, with a reverse side so evidently wrong.  The
plain little body of the Church Social beamed thorough sympathy.

"Do you say," continued Mr. Carew, "that God will be merciful to the
heathen because of their ignorance?  I believe He will, and do not doubt
that it will be 'more tolerable' for those who have never heard than for
those in this country (heathen also, in the Scriptural sense) who, having
often heard, are still rejectors of the Gospel.  But there is a greater
question involved than that of lessened stripes or mitigated woe.  Do you
say that men will be _saved_ by lack of knowledge?  The prophet said his
people _perished_ for lack of it!  Ah, if God had ordained ignorance to
be the way of salvation He might have spared Himself great cost!--cost of
the redemption sacrifice, and of its proclamation, often in martyr blood.
But He confers His boon to faith and 'faith cometh by _hearing_.'

"You say it will increase the responsibility of the heathen if they hear,
and put them in worse case if they reject the message?  Very true.  But
had that been a sufficient reason it would have silenced our Lord's 'Go
ye' at the outset of the age.  Never would the Gospel have traveled to
our barbaric fathers, and we should be without hope to-day.  But the
treasure was too great which the Saviour sought.  No thought of deeper
shadows cast by the very brightness of the light could deter Him from
holding it forth.  Beyond all cost of difficulty, danger, or the deepened
condemnation of the lost, was the value of the Church He sought--the
pearl of great price for which all other possessions might be forfeited!
Ah, friends, since the object is so dear to Him, where are our hearts
that we think of it so coldly!  The burden of my plea is _for Him_; not
for the missionary, not for philanthropy, not even so much for the
heathen themselves, as _for Him_, because He loves and longs to give but
lacks the human vessels through which to give!"

The speaker paused, and absently pushed back the hair from his flushed
forehead.  An almost tragic yearning shone in his deepset eyes.  There
was one in the congregation whose heart burned in a fellowship of grief
over the Saviour's unmet longing.  Mr. Carew continued more slowly, in a
voice intensely sad and almost broken:

"Do you sometimes quote softly for _your_ comfort, 'I will guide thee
with mine eye'?  You have thought of His eye upon you--and that is
right--to care for, protect and lead.  But have you ever watched the
glance of His eye with another thought, not for yourself, but _for Him_?
Not to see in it provision and help for you; but to see to what He is
looking, for what He is longing--what it is that will give joy to Him?
When I look in His eyes," and the speaker was looking far away from his
congregation and spoke as though half forgetting them, "I seem to hear
Him saying, 'I have other sheep--I _must bring them_!'"

His voice sank to a whisper.  Hubert felt a little convulsive movement
beside him and Winifred's hand was shading her eyes.  Mr. Carew recovered
from the emotion that nearly mastered him, and remembered his hearers and
their probable wishes.  He began again:

"But perhaps I am neglecting to tell you that which you came especially
to hear--some details concerning the actual work of God in China.  You
will pardon me, but I cannot forbear speaking wherever I go concerning
the principles underlying our work, as well as of the work itself.  One
might describe the people and their ways--and all that is valuable in
making them more real to us--and might present a score of curious things
which would perhaps beguile an hour very pleasantly, but still leave an
indifferent heart unchanged as to the real motive of missions.  However,
all that I have said will gain and not lose by our turning attention for
a time to the practical outworking of the theory."

Then the speaker gave illustrations of the way lost souls are found in
China.  Very pathetic were some of the incidents, and again and again
Winifred's eyes were dim, and an unspeakable pain gnawed at Hubert's
heart.  Fervently he thanked God for those whose darkness He had turned
to light, but sad beyond expression seemed the repeated instances which
had occurred in Mr. Carew's experience of earnest pleadings for
missionaries to be sent to various places and his absolute inability to
answer the cry.  But broader than the fact of the _wish_ of some stood
the _need_ of all!  Populous cities without one witness to the grace of
God!  Wide regions untraversed by the feet of His messengers!  Hubert had
thought New Laodicea a place of desperate need; and so it was in the
matter of vital, fruit-bearing piety.  But as he thought of the inky
darkness in which China's millions dwelt this seemed a place of light.

The meeting came to an end.  But first the President expressed the thanks
of those who had listened to the lecture, and hoped all had been stirred
to greater zeal and effort for the future in helping so good a cause.
She suggested that the mite-boxes should be redistributed.

"'Mite-boxes!'" thought Hubert and squirmed in his seat impatiently.
Then an inward voice reproved him for his contempt of small things.  He
thought of the poor that might deposit from time to time small coins that
meant much from their slender incomes.  Yes, "mites" were all right, if
they were like the "widow's," and not the meager drippings from a selfish
superfluity.  But suppose _he_ take a mite-box?  How many of them would
be required to hold the hoarded, unnecessary, unused wealth at his
command?  He could not insult the Lord and the "dearest object of His
heart" by an offering unworthy of his resources.

There was a pleasant buzz of voices at the close of the meeting and
nobody seemed to be going.  Doctor Schoolman was shaking hands with Mr.
Carew.  Doors were opened into the parlor and there was the fragrant odor
of a collation prepared.  For the benevolences of New Laodicea were
nothing like certain reluctant pumps that will give nothing until they
have been given to.  To whet an interest in such meetings as this, and to
cajole small sums from unwilling purses, it was found necessary to make a
gastronomic appeal.

Hubert and Winifred moved forward to personally express to the lecturer
their appreciation of his words.  Doctor Schoolman greeted them warmly
and introduced them to him.  Mr. Carew had noticed the two among his
hearers, and looked at them now with an unconsciously appealing glance.
His face was still flushed and the hand Hubert took was hot.

"You are not well," said the latter involuntarily.

"No," said Mr. Carew, rather absently, "I suppose not."

"I should not think this work you are doing would tend to recovery?"

"No, perhaps not," said the missionary.

Hubert looked at him inquiringly.  "Then why do you do it?" he wished to
ask, but refrained.

Mr. Carew answered his questioning look.

"I am not to be pitied," he said with a smile, "even if I should not
recover as I hope to do.  Some men are sick and die for pure folly's
sake, or for business.  They are to be pitied.  But if it were given a
man to be spent for Christ's sake--to know some faint shadow of suffering
for the same cause for which _He_ suffered as we never may--that man is
happy, I think."

"He is," said Hubert earnestly, "he is."

Mr. Carew was struck by the sincerity of Hubert's tones.  He looked at
him with a searching, yearning expression; somewhat, it may be, as the
Lord Jesus looked on the rich young man and "loved him."  Would this one
stand the test of love's requirement?

Some ladies were taking Winifred away to the parlors for refreshments,
and someone invited Mr. Carew and Hubert also.  They both accepted with
the mutual wish to prolong the conversation.  As they ate they talked of
the Living Bread which must be borne to men.

In the course of their conversation Hubert confessed: "You will be
astonished, but I have never before seen the matter as you presented it
to-day, and yet I have been a Christian for three years."

"A good many men have been Christians for many years, and yet have not
come to see the true motive of missions," said Mr. Carew.  "It is
singular how the most fundamental principles may be most ignored; I
suppose somewhat as a man thinks less of the foundation stones of his
house than of what he finds inside it.  But in spite of this if a man has
really a heart for God, when the matter is clearly presented to him he
responds to it.  God's purpose must find an 'amen' in his heart."

"That is true," said Hubert.

Presently they left the parlor, still talking together earnestly of God's
will, and inadvertently drifted into the great auditorium.  Mr. Carew
glanced about at its finished elegance.

"Perhaps," he said to Hubert, "they think _this_ instead, is doing the
will of God.  I daresay they have read that the house Solomon builds for
God must be 'exceeding magnifical,' and they think so must this be.  And,
indeed, the spiritual antitype of that house must be beautiful!  It
'groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.'  And the work of missions is
gathering its 'living stones.'  But _this_--the New Testament breathes no
word of instruction concerning this material house!  Ah, if I were to
write a general confession for our church I should say: 'We have left
undone the things we were told to do, and we have done the things we were
not told to do, and there is very little health in us!'"

Hubert smiled at Mr. Carew's words, but felt their force.  He ventured to
remark: "This building does not look as though there were lack of money
among us."

"Oh, no!" said Mr. Carew.  "Oh, no!"  He repressed his lips, as though
fearing to say more than would be courteous.  But presently he spoke
again in general terms.

"The church at home," he said, "has largely forgotten her pilgrim
character.  She has put off her sandals, and loosened her robes for
luxurious living instead of girding them for service and pilgrimage.  As
to display and indulgence at home, she says plainly, 'I am rich,' but as
to the carrying out the will of God entrusted to her for the world, she
is pitifully poor."

They were emerging from the stately auditorium, and Hubert bethought him
to look for Winifred.  They met her in one of the rooms with Mrs.
Greenman.

"Oh, Mr. Carew," said the latter, "I was looking for you.  Our ladies
appreciate so very much your talk to us!  I hope--"

Winifred and Hubert were now speaking together and did not hear more of
the President's remarks.  But before they left the place Hubert had
sought Mr. Carew again and had asked him to call at his office the
following day.

"I should like to talk with you further concerning your business," he
said.

He used the word "business" absent-mindedly, and Mr. Carew smiled, not at
all illy pleased with it.  Hubert was thinking of an investment.




CHAPTER XVII

LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEAD

Winifred and Hubert walked a part of the way home in silence.  At
length the former spoke.

"It seems to me we have been rather blind concerning the object of
missions," she said.  "What do you think of it now, Hubert?"

"I am convinced that I have taken a very shallow view of it," Hubert
replied.  "It is a marvel to me now that I could have missed so
completely the true motive of missions.  It is as clear as daylight in
the Bible.  It is humiliating to think one has been so contentedly
provincial in thoughts of God's salvation.  I am ashamed of it."

"So am I," agreed Winifred, and then they walked on in silence.  An
uneasy thought was gnawing at her heart that hardly found expression.
Had it been put in words it would have been something like this:

"How are we _to act_ with reference to new light on the will of God?
If Hubert and I are really His children, called into His fellowship,
then we must be sympathetic with His wish and do what we can to forward
it.  What would that be?"

Soon they reached the door of their home.  Home!  What a pleasant word
it is.  How easily the accustomed key turned in the latch, and how
familiarly the house belongings greeted them as they entered.  Ay,
"there's no place like home," and its cords wind themselves about us
silently, certainly, until it seems almost a sacrilege to think of
leaving it.

Hubert went at once to his room, to the spot where questions were wont
to be settled, and when dinner was announced he begged to be excused.

Winifred and her father sat alone at the table.  He inquired concerning
the missionary meeting, and she rehearsed to him much of what Mr. Carew
had said.

"Ah, very good--very good," Mr. Gray said.  "Very conclusive, I should
think."

But it did not occur to him how a conclusive argument and a life action
might stand related.  Theories cost nothing when only the mind assents
to them.  But wrought in the heart, they mold lives after them.

In Hubert's room a painful heart process was going on.  Sunk in a deep,
capacious chair, with head resting upon his hand, he set in order
before himself the axiomatic truths he had heard.

"God's supreme work is salvation," he meditated.  "The field for this
work is the world--the whole world.  Salvation is wrought--as to man's
part--through faith in a message preached.  The message requires a
messenger.  In vast proportions of the field the messengers are
wanting.  What should be done about it?  Clearly, the messengers should
rally at the command of God.  But it must be at His command.  Men
cannot go self-sent."

This thought gave a brief respite to the haunting sense of a
responsibility.

"_Whom shall I send and who will go for us_?" The double questions
heard by Isaiah in the temple repeated itself now in Hubert's mind.

"There are two questions there," he said.  "'Whom shall _I send_, and
who will go for us?'  A man can only answer, finally, the second.  God
must answer His own first query,--although Isaiah did suggest, 'send
me.'  Must not any loyal child _if he hear_ his Father's appeal say,
'Here am I'?"

Hubert's head sank lower upon his hand.

"Have I heard the voice of His need?" he asked, but hesitated to answer
his own question.  "Yes," he said finally, aloud, in a strained voice,
"I have heard.  I can never un-hear His words.  I may disregard them,
make myself forget them, but I can never go back to the place of twelve
hours ago and be as though I had never known His mind.  I have been in
His temple--I, a worshiper purged by His infinite grace, I have seen a
vision of His will, and have heard the voice of His need.  I can never
undo the fact."

Lines that somebody had written repeated themselves in his mind:

  "Light obeyed increaseth light;
   Light rejected bringeth night.
   Who shall give me power to choose,
   If the love of light I lose?"

Why did he still hesitate?  Why did his "here am I" linger for hours
unsaid?  A sense of the reality of present things and of home
surroundings swept over him.  These were the possible things.  But
those--?  He shuddered.  Dim, misty, in a veil of unreality lay China,
a distant land.  What relation had he with it?  There were
missionaries, a strange, separated, unusual folk, specially created for
the purpose, no doubt; but _he_, a practical, everyday, intensely real
sort of being--what had he to do with things so far away?  Oh, no!  It
was not for him.  Let him put aside the overwrought fancies of the day,
and return to practical life again.

He almost rose from his seat as though to emphasize his sober thought,
but an impression restrained him.

"And so I lose My witnesses!" he imagined his Lord saying with grief.
"They are walking by sight and not by faith, and the seen, tangible
things hold them.  Who will stretch out his hands to lay hold upon the
things of eternal life?"

Hubert sank in rebuked silence under the spell of the afternoon's
disclosure.  It was reality, if he were a Christian.  It must be faced.
But how the seen things wrestled with the heavenly vision!  Habit, long
association, and tender love mingled a cup of sacrifice that he must
drink.  Could he leave all these for the sake of the joyful message of
his Lord?

Now imagination pictured the leavetaking.  How the familiar scenes of
his home and native city remonstrated with his choice!  In fancy he
wrung for the last time his father's hand, he bade one last farewell to
the flower-dressed grave of his gentle mother, and--and _Winifred_!

A dry, tearless sob shook him.  O sweet sister, loved most of all since
the days when, her jealous-eyed protector, he walked beside her to the
school, shared sturdily but keenly her childish woes and fought all
battles for her!  Loved now with a closer, spiritual tie in their
mutual devotion to their blessed Lord!  How could he give her up?  How
could he leave her undefended now by his watchful love?

The scene of three years ago when he handed the sword of his
self-served and self-defended life to Jesus Christ, and purposed in His
heart to follow Him at any cost, was vividly rehearsed in his memory.
Possessions, home, kindred, all things, were nominated in the bond of
the whole-hearted surrender to his Lord.  The time had come to hold to
those honest terms.

Hubert rose from his seat with a pale face, and a death-like sinking at
his heart.  "Yes, Lord Jesus," he uttered with dry lips, "I am at Thy
command.  Forgive my coward halting.  If Thou wilt send me, I will go."


On the other side of the hall, in her pretty room, Winifred had prayed:
"We have seen the glance of Thine eye, O Lord, and know Thy longing.
Open our eyes to see how we may serve Thee, and strengthen our hearts
to bear--nay, to love!--Thy will.  If we must give each other up"--a
long pause, broken by storms of weeping, intervened--"then let us
see--oh, _let us see Thy face_!"


When Winifred and Hubert first met in the hall next morning some gleams
of comfort had already stolen into both their hearts.  He put his arm
about her as they descended the stairs together, and at the foot they
paused.

"Dear little sister!" he said caressingly.

Her eyes filled at his unusual tenderness; for Hubert's love, however
fervent and well believed-in, was not demonstrative.  She looked up in
his face with a long, serious question.  He answered it by asking:

"Shall I go?--for Him, Winnie?"

"Yes, Hubert," she said earnestly, "oh, yes!"  But the color flickered
in her cheeks and her lips grew white.

They stood for a moment together but neither spoke.  Together they
presented afresh their offering to God, and He knew that it was costly.

At breakfast neither spoke of the matter that was uppermost in their
hearts.  But later Hubert sought his father in the library and made
known to him the step he had taken.

Grief, dismay, and almost anger, struggled in the older man's heart.
He looked at his son with sorrowful sternness.

"Then--then, Hubert," he said very slowly, "you have concluded to leave
me."

A pang shot through Hubert's heart, keener than any thought of his own
pain, but he answered steadily:

"I have concluded, father, to follow Christ."

Mr. Gray frowned.  He was not conscious of frowning at the name of
Christ, or at so pure a sentiment as that uttered, but grief made him
insensible to what he did.

"And is that," he asked with some irony, "the only way you can find of
following Him?  Can no one follow Him at home?"

"I do not see that he can if he is called abroad, father."

"And are you called?" he asked sharply, still the pain at his heart
dulling any sense of shame that he could speak unsympathetically of
such a thing.

Hubert answered gently.

"I believe I am, father," he said.

Mr. Gray stared at his son silently.  His face grew ashen and the hand
upon the table before him trembled visibly.  Hubert stood in an agony
of mute sympathy.  At last the father rose without a word and prepared
to leave the room.  His face looked older by a decade than an hour
before.  Hubert made a movement to detain him and opened his lips to
speak; but the other waved him aside with a quick gesture of the
trembling hand.  And so they parted.

Hubert looked after his father with a breaking heart.  He had thought
the crisis of his grief was passed when alone in his room he wrestled
out the problem for his own heart.  But now a heavier weight rested
upon his soul.  Must he break his father's heart?  Must the hope of
happy comradeship in future years be put aside, and with the
disappointment his father age and weaken irrecoverably?  He saw him
walk down the path slowly and heavily, and a feeling of awful guilt
swept over him.  Was he his father's murderer?  Was he following a
delusion that would make himself an exile and lay his father
prematurely in his grave?  The thought overpowered him.  He sank
helplessly in a chair and groaned out his burden to the Lord.

"O Lord," he prayed, "am I walking in Thy footsteps, or am I a deluded
wretch, bringing sorrow, and it may be death, to those I love most?"
He paused, and his head sank deeply.  "Lord, this is grief," he
groaned.  "This is grief.  I have not known it before."

And so it seemed.  Thoughts of his own loneliness and possible
hardships seemed light compared with this.

"Grief!" he repeated, as though he found relief in the pitiful uttering
of the word whose depths he was sounding.  Then memory framed a passage
which held the same word.  "A man of sorrows," it repeated, "and
_acquainted with grief_!"

How sweet the words sounded!  And how dear the imagined face of Him of
whom they were spoken!

"Tell me of Thy grief," he whispered.  "Didst Thou cause grief?"

Words of Scripture again came to his help.

"Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul," he heard Simeon say
to the mother of his Lord, and it dawned upon him that when Jesus faced
the cross with its agony He must have felt through His tenderest of
hearts the sword-piercing of His Mother's sorrow.  Ah, yes!  He caused
grief.  And as He took His own way to the cross He raised a standard
for those who follow of pitiless separations and of broken ties, if
need be, for His kingdom's sake.  "_If any man cometh unto Me, and,
hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My
disciple_."

Texts that Hubert had passed lightly before were now illuminated with
meaning and power as the occasion rose for them to be translated into
life.  He found a rare sweetness of comfort in those which assured him
that he need not fear he was out of the path of the Saviour's
footprints, though he found them blood-marked or washed with many
tears.  He turned to some familiar words which he wished to see before
him again in plain black and white.  They were found toward the end of
the ninth chapter of Luke.

"Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father," said one in response
to his Lord's "follow me."  And said Jesus, "_Let the dead bury their
dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God_."

"Let the dead bury their dead!"  What a strange expression, and what
could it mean!  Hubert pondered the text, no longer in keen agony of
mind, for his distress had lightened as he saw even on the painful way
the light of God's will shining.  Anything could be borne, if the face
of the Lord still shone upon it!

"What does it mean?" he queried in deep meditation.

Slowly a meaning, not the full one, doubtless, but suited to his need,
dawned upon him.  Let the spiritually dead attend to the affairs of
death.  Let them follow the conventional, natural round, and answer
always to the cries of human love and longing.  Let them keep to
earthly ties and earthly work.  But let the living be about the affairs
of life!  A ministry waits that only living hands can serve.  Let
filial hearts render unto earthly love that which is due, but see that
_thou_, child of God, render also unto God the things which are God's.

"There are a thousand things," thought Hubert, "that unregenerated men
can do quite as well as any.  Indeed, they have an affinity with
earthly things that is lacking in the heaven-born man.  To trade in
iron and amass wealth does not require a living man.  I will let others
do it.  The supreme business of my Father calls, and I must be about
it.  But my earthly father?  Shall I wait first to bury him?  The Lord
says, No."

Hubert studied his pattern in His life as well as words.

"He was subject to His parents," he reflected, "until the time came for
His ministry and He had reached mature years of responsibility.  Then,
when He had entered upon His task, not even His mother's voice could
turn Him from it.  When His friends thought Him beside Himself, and she
with them sought to take Him away from His work, He said, 'Who is My
mother? . . .  Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my
brother and sister and mother.'  But He still was not unfilial.  When
not even the thought of the sword through her heart could take Him from
the cross, He made provision for her, commending her to John's faithful
love."

Hubert's eyes grew soft again with thoughts of his father.  There was
no need to think of provision for him, for he had enough.  But he
longed to give him always the joy of a son's tender love and
companionship.  Still the supreme call was inexorable, and another
Father's business demanded filial fellowship.

"Thou must care for him, Lord," he said, and with a sudden impulse he
knelt beside the library table and prayed that God would take away all
the sting of his father's grief, and give him joy instead; joy in
fellowship with the great Father in His giving.

After prayer he was much relieved and went to his work as usual,
admitting to his office soon after his arrival Mr. Carew, who called in
response to his wish of the day before.  Hubert had more to offer than
the financial gift contemplated.




CHAPTER XVIII

GOD, MY EXCEEDING JOY

A heavy cloud hung over the house for days.  Mr. Gray was silent and
sad.  All attempts to renew the conversation of that painful Thursday
morning were waived aside.  Hubert was at a loss to know how to proceed
with his project, but he and Winifred gave themselves to diligent
prayer.  As to the latter, sharp as was her grief at the thought of
parting with her brother, her love for God was stronger, and she did
not hesitate for a moment in her consent that he should go.

"I do not know any other answer to give to God," she said.  "Surely I
have nothing too precious for Him, when He has given all to me.  And
you know," she said with a radiant smile, "Hubert and I can never lose
each other!  We cannot lose what is in Christ!"

She made these remarks to Adèle Forrester, to whom the matter of
Hubert's call to foreign service was communicated.  Her friend listened
very quietly.

Adèle had been steadily growing in God's grace since the day when His
way of salvation dawned so brightly upon her.  She was the same
merry-hearted young woman as before, but a certain womanly sweetness,
never really lacking beneath the gay exterior, developed in
ever-increasing winsomeness.  A capacity for intense enjoyment found
new sources for its filling in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and she
pursued faithfully and happily the ways she saw of serving Him.  To-day
she received Winifred's news with evident sympathy, but with a reserve
of feeling not expressed.

"Our Bishop preached a splendid missionary sermon two weeks ago," she
remarked.  "He made things very plain indeed.  I think we all felt that
we had been almost traitors in not rallying to the Lord's standard
better than we had done.  Even Dick paid some attention, for he said
after church--you know what a tease he is--'_now_ I hope you see where
you ought to be!'"

"Oh, Adèle," said Winifred, "I haven't thought to ask you in months how
the choir is getting along.  The mention of Dick reminds me.  Do you
still enjoy your singing?"

Adèle laughed.  "My 'occupation's gone,'" she said.  "We are supplanted
by a boy choir.  The present minister likes that better.  A saucy
little fellow who brings our evening paper and fights his business
competitors once in a while is one of our successors.  He looks quite
cherubic in a surplice."

"And you?"

"I sing praises in the congregation, and what is left over I sometimes
offer in the mission."

"So you still keep up your service at the mission?"

"Oh, yes!"

Adèle did not add how much appreciated were those services, nor how she
had added visitation amongst the families represented at the mission to
the evident blessing of not a few.

Their conversation drifted back to the subject of Hubert's leaving, and
Adèle entered a compact of prayer for the right development of all
things relating to it.

Gradually the Spirit of God wrought in the heart of Robert Gray.  He
was led to think of the darkness of unbelief out of which his son had
been brought, and to consider how fitting a thing it was that a life
thus renewed should be held at the command of God.  But it was hard to
think of him as a foreign missionary!  Mr. Gray had believed
theoretically in the cause of missions and had given a yearly
subscription to the society representing it.  But to give his son--ah,
that was a different matter!  At the first shock of the thought he had
recoiled, and a naturally stubborn heart kept the question at bay for a
time.  But he could not long fight with God.  The fellowship lost while
he steeled his heart against the unwelcome demand was too great a price
to pay.  Gradually it came to him that the greater weight that bowed
his soul and took the joyous spring from life was not Hubert's proposed
leaving, but the hiding of God's face.

"In thy favor is life," he prayed.  "Any bereavement would be better
than for Thee to hide Thy face from me."

And the Face shone out again as his softened will loosened its
tenacious grip of that it held.  But still he was a man of strong
opinions, and slow to be convinced that his clear-headed, business-like
son was the one to follow the still hazy-seeming, far-off life of a
missionary.

It was a happy day when the ban was lifted from the subject and Hubert
was free to discuss it with his father and arrange business matters for
a separation.  A new element in the matter taxed the sympathy of the
hard-headed business man, when it became apparent that his hitherto
practical son intended not only withdrawing his active partnership from
the firm of Robert Gray & Son, but to sell his interest in the concern,
liberating the proceeds for the use of God.

"What folly!" said the elder man frankly.

"Do you remember our discussion of the Scripture about it?" replied
Hubert, smiling.  "I think I submitted to you the conclusions drawn
from a study concerning it.  I might as well act upon my convictions,
or I shall lose them.  You know what James says about the 'hearers
only' of the word?"

"Yes, I know what he says," said his father a little testily.  "But
about this money question there must be a sensible middle course
somewhere between a fanatical giving away everything you have and a
close-fisted holding on to it all.  Give to the Lord of your first
fruits, certainly.  That is a good thing.  But a man ought to look out
for himself."

"Yes," said Hubert, "I believe there is a rational course to be
followed, and perhaps the Lord may not wish to hereafter provide for me
miraculously that which I now have in hand naturally.  I do not see all
the details clearly yet.  But certainly over and above my own
necessities--which will be simple--there is something to lay at once at
the feet of the Lord.  I am glad I have so much for Him."

"Don't let your enthusiasm run away with your common sense.  Try to be
practical."

"I think I am practical," said Hubert, smiling again, "although it is
hard for a man to judge his own actions.  It seems to me the practical
way to give is to give.  The people whom I consider impractical are
those who, having an abundance for themselves, dole out pittances for
the Lord and regret they are so little!  The poor, perplexed ladies in
the missionary society vex their brains in planning how to 'raise'
something for Him.  They take mite-boxes themselves, and they encourage
the gifts of the poor, the children, the babies--and even the dolls, I
am told!  It is very pathetic.  But why does it never occur to them--to
those who can afford it, I mean--to _give_?  That is what I should call
practical.  I suppose Mrs. Greenman did not find much difficulty in
'raising' enough money to pay for her swell reception the day after the
missionary meeting, I saw the street lined with carriages and heard an
orchestra playing inside as I passed.  We can imagine the decorations
and the fine gowning.  Now that was practical.  What she wanted was a
fine display, and she practically put her hand in her pocket and paid
for it.  But she says they cannot all do what they would like for
missions!  Why do they plead poverty there?  Mrs. Greenman would not
like to have her husband poorly rated in Bradstreet's, and I am sure
she did not wish to have her guests the other day think of poverty.
But before the Lord--ah, maybe that is what they think it is to be
'_poor in spirit_!'  But if they would be honest!  If she should say,
now, in the missionary meeting: 'The amount raised is not what we might
have given, but it is all we really wish to give in view of the
luncheon parties, fine dresses, and all that sort of thing, that we
find more important,'  I think that way of putting it would be
practical, and honest withal."

Mr. Gray actually laughed, and the sound was music to his son's ears.

"Very good, Hubert," he said.  "You had better give them a lecture."

"Had I not better give them an object lesson?" Hubert suggested instead.

"There is one thing you cannot do," Mr. Gray said with a sly triumph.
Hubert looked at him inquiringly.  "You cannot give away your mother's
legacy.  The terms of the will provide for that.  The property cannot
be alienated."

Hubert looked at his father blankly for a moment.  The fact stated he
had quite forgotten.

"You are right," he exclaimed.  Then his brow cleared of its blank
surprise and he laughed.  "That settles it about the rest," he said.
"The income from that property will amply support me and any poor
interests a humble missionary may have."

"Just so," said his father.  "Or it might maintain a poor fool who had
missed his calling and was sent home."

Hubert laughed again.  "Quite so," he assented.

And so the clouds broke away from over the house of Gray.  A restored
mutual understanding gave relief amounting to joy even in the face of
coming separation.

Hubert's enterprise, like a great ship, could not be launched hastily.
Months of preparation passed in which the business matter was finally
settled and other affairs adjusted.  It was finally concluded that the
entire business of Robert Gray & Son should be sold, as the senior
partner did not wish to carry it on without his son.

"It is not a question of the poor-house if you do give it up now,
father," Hubert said to him, and he assented.

The missionary-to-be found himself called to many places to speak on
behalf of the cause, and he did so with great readiness.  His intense
ardor caused his words to burn their way into many hearts.  Again and
again his own heart was overwhelmed within him by the greatness of his
theme.  Cold figures became burning facts as he looked at the wide
areas untouched by the Gospel.  The slighted wish of his Lord became an
anguish in his soul.  That men and women should call themselves by His
name and still live unto themselves, never grieved by His message
undelivered, His errand of love undone, was a shame intolerable.
Sometimes when the passion for his Lord's will swept his soul, and he
beheld in contrast the idle hands of the church, paralyzed by pleasure
or filled with self-interests, in secret he cast himself upon his face
and wept as only a strong man, unused to tears, can weep.

The heart of Robert Gray turned with increasing fondness to his
daughter who still saw her place to be at his side.  A great comfort
was she to him in these days of trial.  For herself, Winifred was
finding out afresh "the sweetness of an accepted sorrow."  The joy of
the Lord was inexpressible.  She could scarcely understand the gladness
that filled her soul after sacrifice "more than when their corn and
their wine increased."

"Why are you so radiant?" Adèle asked in one of their many conferences.

"I do not know," she answered, blushing at being surveyed so
admiringly.  "But do you remember that Psalm, Adèle, that says:

  "'O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me,
  Let them bring me unto thy holy hill'--

"that is getting very near to God, Adèle--

  "'And to thy tabernacles.

"That is nearer still; but listen to that that comes next:

  "'Then will I go unto the altar of God,
  Unto God my exceeding joy.'

"I think this is the reason why I am so happy.  His light and His truth
have led me to His holy precincts and I have gone to His altar--to the
altar of burnt offering.  And, Adèle,"--her eyes filled with tears of
an inexpressible gladness--"it is _there_ we find Him to be our
'exceeding joy.'  I cannot explain it--I cannot even tell it--but He is
'_my exceeding joy_!'"

"I know," said Adèle, her own eyes filling.  "I have found Him there.
And I think one reason why so many Christians seem to have no joy is
because they have not come to His altar in the sense you mean.  Perhaps
they have seen Christ there for them in some sense, but have never
quite taken their place there with Him.  Do you remember, too,
Winifred, that it was when the burnt offering began on that great
occasion in Hezekiah's time that 'the song of the Lord began also?'"

"Oh, yes!" Winifred responded.  "'The song of the Lord!'  It has surely
begun here, Adèle."

And so it had, indeed.  That evening as Hubert returned from a busy day
in town he found his sister singing;

  "'O joy that seekest me through pain,
  I cannot close my heart to thee;
  I trace the rainbow through the rain,
  And feel the promise is not vain
  That morn shall tearless be.'"

"Singing, little sister?" was his greeting.

"Yes, Hubert.  That has been much of my occupation to-day."

"That is good," he replied.  "By the way, I heard some news in town
to-day."  He endeavored to speak carelessly, but looked at her
apprehensively.

"Yes?  What is it?"

He walked to the window and examined a flower with apparent interest.

"I hear that George Frothingham's engagement to Miss Randolph, the
banker's daughter, is announced."

"Yes," said Winifred calmly, "I saw that in the morning paper.  You
need not have been afraid to tell me, Hubert.  His engagement is a
matter of perfect indifference to me."

"Thank the Lord!" Hubert exclaimed impulsively.

"Amen," she responded, still calmly.

On another evening Hubert returned with still another piece of news.
He had gone to the Cleary Street Mission to speak, and was late in
returning.  Winifred, who loved to hear accounts of all his meetings,
waited up for him.  She was in her little sitting-room when he
returned.  He came straight to her door and answered her ready "come
in" with a light step and glowing face.  He plunged at the special
matter of joy at once.

"Winifred," he said, "I am not going to China alone."

The color changed in her face at the sudden announcement.

"Who--who is it, Hubert?  Is it--?"

"Adèle."

"Oh, Hubert, I am so glad!" she cried joyfully, and kissed him in warm
congratulation.

Then suddenly the thought of her own loss intruded.  Must she give her
up also?  Her eager gladness turned to a burst of tears.  How swept of
all whom she had loved, except her dear father, seemed the home scenes
now.  She would gladly have restrained herself for Hubert's sake, but
the sudden grief was uncontrollable.  She sobbed convulsively, as when
years ago some childish grief had broken in storms upon her and Hubert
had stood by in tearless but painful sympathy, suggesting boyish
consolations, ready to sacrifice any plaything or possession that might
mend her broken heart.  Now he stood helplessly before this passionate
outburst.

"Forgive me, Winifred," he said contritely, "it is cruel of me to take
her away."

"No, it isn't," sobbed Winifred.  "It is just--what I--wished.  Only--I
shall--miss her so!"

"Of course," he replied pitifully.

The storm subsided, and Winifred looked at her brother apologetically.

"I am ashamed," she said, still with long catches in her breath.  "I
couldn't help it.  I am not sorry--she is going--I am very glad!"

"You are very brave," he said.

"But it's true," she persisted.  "It's all over now, Hubert.  I shall
not cry like that again.  Let us talk about it."

They talked about it till the small hours came.  Winifred's face
cleared of every trace of sorrow, and she loved to think of the cheer
and help that Hubert would have in the far-off land.  No braver heart
of all they knew could have been found to share his pilgrimage; and
they imagined how Adèle's keen sense of humor might turn many a sorry
happening into mirth.  Also she had served an apprenticeship here among
the poor and outcast whom she had come to love and who loved her well.

"Winifred," said Hubert suddenly in the midst of their conversation,
"Gerald Bond is to preach for Dr. Schoolman next Sunday."

For some reason best known to himself he watched her countenance
narrowly as he made the announcement.  But her fair face showed only
sweet unconsciousness.

"Really?" she said.  "I am very glad."

"We must have him with us if we can.  I long to talk with him about
these new things."

"Certainly.  You must invite him, Hubert."

"Winnie," said her brother, "I seem to have a spirit of prophesy upon
me to-night.  Almost I can see the path before us with some of its
lights and shadows.  Oh, there will be compensations for all sorrows!"

"I know it," she said earnestly.

"You will say it is my own great joy that God has given that makes me
prophesy.  Perhaps it is.  But I see this, Winnie; He will never be in
our debt when we yield our all to Him.  Sweet surprises, unlooked for
joys, will be thrown in all the way.  Goodness and mercy shall follow
us all our days!"

"I believe it, Hubert, and then--we shall dwell in the house of the
Lord forever!"

He drew her to the low open window, and they stepped together into the
balcony.  The lights of the city were still burning, but in the east a
flickering star was proclaiming the not distant advent of a greater
light.

"Do you see the parable in lights, Winnie?  See how brightly the street
is lighted.  No one need lose his way or bemoan the darkness, though it
is night.  But yonder is a prophet of a fuller light.  He is saying,
'The sun will come.'  Here is my parable: It is night, surely, while
our Lord is still away.  But He gives us light.  No way will ever be
cheerless for you and me, little sister.  I know He will give me as I
go numberless pleasures, fresh interests, and boundless consolation in
Himself for all that is left behind.  And for you, Winifred, I almost
see some rare, sweet blessings over your dear head, just ready to fall
upon it."

"Yes," said Winifred, "I am sure it's true.  I have been singing to-day,

  "'Glory to Thee for all the grace
  I have not tasted yet!'"

"These are like the lights in the city, Winnie, but there is a day-star
in our hearts that is foretelling the perfect day.  Presently the grace
of the journeying shall give way to the eternal glory--to the
homecoming!  Look, sister, do you see that impulse of the dawn, as
though the darkness pulsated with premonition of its coming?"

"Yes," said Winifred, with deep gladness in her voice.  "The coming of
the Lord draweth nigh."



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