world,
indeed of the world itself--the seemingly vile upholding and ministering
to the life of the pure, the gracious, the fearless. Aware from his
tone more than from his pronunciation that he was a fellow-countryman, I
ventured to speak to him, and in a home-dialect.

'It's a wonnerfu' sicht. It's the cake o' Ezekiel ower again.'

He looked at me sharply, thought a moment, and said,

'You were going my way when you stopped. I will walk with you, if you
will.'

'But what's to be done about it?' I said.

'About what?' he returned.

'About the child there,' I answered.

'Oh! she is its mother,' he replied, walking on.

'What difference does that make?' I said.

'All the difference in the world. If God has given her that child, what
right have you or I to interfere?'

'But I verily believe from the look of the child she gives it gin.'

'God saves the world by the new blood, the children. To take her child
from her, would be to do what you could to damn her.'

'It doesn't look much like salvation there.'

'You mustn't interfere with God's thousand years any more than his one
day.'

'Are you sure she is the mother?' I asked.

'Yes. I would not have left the child with her otherwise.'

'What would you have done with it? Got it into some orphan asylum?--or
the Foundling perhaps?'

'Never,' he answered. 'All those societies are wretched inventions for
escape from the right way. There ought not to be an orphan asylum in the
kingdom.'

'What! Would you put them all down then?'

'God forbid. But I would, if I could, make them all useless,'

'How could you do that?'

'I would merely enlighten the hearts of childless people as to their
privileges.'

'Which are?'

'To be fathers and mothers to the fatherless and motherless.'

'I have often wondered why more of them did not adopt children. Why
don't they?'

'For various reasons which a real love to child nature would blow to the
winds--all comprised in this, that such a child would not be their own
child. As if ever a child could be their own! That a child is God's
is of rather more consequence than whether it is born of this or that
couple. Their hearts would surely be glad when they went into heaven to
have the angels of the little ones that always behold the face of their
Father coming round them, though they were not exactly their father and
mother.'

'I don't know what the passage you refer to means.'

'Neither do I. But it must mean somethi