he world owned, was not a thing to pass over lightly.

After all, why should she _not_ be afraid of death? Then that strange
gentleman who had persisted in ranking her among the praying people! he
had left his shadow. Why did she not pray? She wondered over this in a
vague sort of way; wondered how it seemed to kneel down alone, and speak
to an invisible presence; wondered if those who so knelt always felt as
though they were really speaking to God.

There were times when Ruth was exceedingly disgusted with these
perplexing thoughts, and wanted nothing so much as to get away from
them. She resented this intrusion upon her quiet. This day was one of
those in which she was impatient of all these things, and she had made
her toilet with great satisfaction, and said within herself
complacently: "We are to have one hour at last devoted to this mundane
sphere and the mortals who inhabit it; most of the time these
Chautauquans talk and act as though earth was only a railroad station,
where people changed cars and went on to heaven. Dr. Cuyler is going to
refresh us with some actual living specimens of humanity. He can't make
a sermon out of that subject if he tries."

But Ruth Erskine had not measured the power of the earnest preachers of
Jesus Christ. As if Dr. Cuyler could talk for an hour to thousands of
immortal souls, and leave Christ and heaven and immortality out.

To Ruth these three words constituted a sermon, and she got them that
day. Not that he had an idea that he was preaching Christ, except
incidentally, as a man refers almost unconsciously to the one whom he
loves best in all the world but Ruth knew he was. It came in little
sudden touches when she least expected it, when heart and soul were
wrought upon with some strong enthusiasm by the splendid picture of a
splendid man--as when he told of Spurgeon. It was a glowing description,
such as thrilled Ruth, and made her feel that to have just one glimpse
of that great man, with his great marvelous power over humanity, would
be worth a lifetime.

Suddenly the speaker said: "The secret of that man's power lies, first,
in his study of the Bible." Ruth started and came down like a bomb-shell
from her wondrous height. The Bible! copies of which lay carelessly on
every table of her father's elegantly furnished house unstudied and
unthought of. How very strange to ascribe the power of the great
intellect to the study of one book that was more or less familiar to
eve