e up churches have more than this in them. _I_
think it is all a deception, but it is a blessed one to have. I know
these people at Chautauqua have it, hundreds of them. I see the same
look in their faces that my father had in his, and if I could only get
the same delusion into my heart I would hug it for my blessed father's
sake; but don't you ever go into the church and subscribe to these
things that they will ask of you until you have felt the same need of
help and the same sense of being helped that they have. If you do, and
there is a God, I would rather stand my chance with him than to have
yours."

And Marion seized her hat and rushed out into the night, leaving Ruth
utterly dumbfounded.

CHAPTER XXII.

ONE MINUTE'S WORK.

Marion struck out into the darkness, caring little which way she went;
she had rarely been so wrought upon; her veins seemed to glow with fire.
What difference did it make? she asked herself. If there was nothing at
all in it, why not let Ruth amuse herself by joining the church and
playing at religion? It would add to her sense of dignity, and who would
be hurt by it?

There was a difficulty in the way. Turn where she would, it confronted
Marion during these days. There was a solemn haunting "if" that would
not be put down. What _if_ all these things were true? She by no means
felt so assured as she had once done: indeed, the foundations for her
disbelief seemed to have been shaken from under her during the last
week.

Remember, she had never spent a week with Christians before in her life;
not, at least, a week during which she was made to realize all the time
that they were Christians; that they stood on a different platform from
herself.

Now, as she tramped about through the darkening woods, meeting
constantly groups of people on their way home from the meeting, hearing
from them snatches of what had been said and sung, she suddenly paused,
and so vivid was the impression that for long afterward she could not
think of it without feeling that a voice must certainly have spoken the
words in her ear. Yet she recognized them as a sentence which had struck
her from Dr. Pierce's sermon in the morning.

"God honors his gospel, even though preached by a bad man; honors it
sometimes to the saving of a soul. But think of a meeting between the
two! the sinner saved and the sinner lost, who was the means of the
other's salvation." It had thrilled Marion at the time, with her old
qu