mned. To the preacher this punishment of the helpless heathen seemed
only just.

"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" he cried, and he stopped
to suppose, for the sake of argument, that Adam had not sinned: surely no
one would have disputed the justice of receiving the blessings which his
godliness would have entailed. Then he began to prove the right of the
potter over the clay. He had forgotten his congregation; the horror of
the damnation of the heathen was lost in the fear that one soul should
perish. He saw only Helen; she was in danger, she was far from God, but
yet the price of admission to heaven could not be altered, though his
heart broke for longing that she should be saved; the requirements of the
gospel had not softened, the decrees of Omnipotence were as unchangeable
as the eternal past.

His words, glowing with his love and grief, were only for her. The
thunders of God's justice shook his soul, while he offered her the
infinite mercy of Christ. But he did not shrink from acknowledging that
that mercy was only for those who would accept it, nor presume to dictate
to God that all sinners should be saved, forced into salvation, without
accepting his conditions.

"What right," he said, "have we to expect that mercy should exist at all?
What madness, then, to think He will depart from the course He has laid
out for himself, and save without condition those who are justly
condemned? Yet justice is satisfied, for Christ has died. O Soul, accept
that sacrifice!" He had come to the edge of the pulpit, one pale hand
clinched upon the heavy cover of the Bible, and the other stretched
tremblingly out; his anxious, grieving eyes looked over the solemn,
upturned faces of his listeners, and sought Helen, sitting in the dusky
shadow by the open window, her face a little averted, and her firm, sweet
lips set in a line which was almost stern.

Some of the women were crying: an exaltation purely hysterical made them
feel themselves lost sinners; they thrilled at John's voice, as though
his words touched some strained chord in their placid and virtuous lives.

"Come," he said, "stand with me to-day under the pierced hands and
bleeding side of Infinite Mercy; look up into that face of divine
compassion and ineffable tenderness, and know that this blood-stained
cross proclaims to all the centuries death suffered for the sin of the
world,--for your sin and mine. Can you turn and go away to outer
darkness, to wa