f I believe in faith-cure. There
is the Bible. It abounds in the divine healing. Nowhere are we told that
faith shall some day cease to work wonders. The arm of the Lord is not
shortened. O ye of little faith! the victory is within your reach, if
you will but rise and seize upon it. I see a vision of a new Church yet
to come that shall believe, and, believing as those of old believed,
shall see wonders such as the faithful of old saw. The sick shall be
healed; women shall receive their dead raised to life again. Why not
now? Rise up, O believing heart, and take the Lord at his word!"

Perhaps Mrs. Frankland did not intend that declamation should be
accepted at its face value; certainly she did not expect it.

After a hymn, beautifully and touchingly sung, and a brief prayer,
ladies put on their sealskin sacques, thrust their jeweled hands into
their muffs, and went out to beckon their impatient coachmen, and to
carry home with them the solemn impressions made by the discourse, which
were in most cases too vague to produce other than a sentimental result.
Yet one may not scatter fire with safety unless he can be sure there are
no dangerous combustibles within reach. The harm of credulity is that
it is liable to set a great flame a-going whenever it reaches that which
will burn. A belief in witches is comparatively innocuous until it finds
favorable conditions, as at Salem a couple of centuries ago, but, in
favorable conditions, the idle speculations of a pedant, or the
chimney-corner chatter of old women, may suddenly become as destructive
as a pestilence.

It was in the sincere and susceptible soul of Phillida that Mrs.
Frankland's words had their full effect. The lust after perfection--the
realest peril of great souls--was hers, and she was stung and humiliated
by Mrs. Frankland's rebuke to her lack of faith, for the words so
impressively spoken seemed to her like a divine message. The whole
catalogue of worthies in the eleventh of Hebrews rose up to reprove her.

"I suppose Mrs. Frankland's been talking some more of her stuff," said
Agatha at the dinner that evening. "I declare, Phillida, you're a victim
of that woman. She isn't so bad. She doesn't mean what she says to be
taken as she says it. People always make allowances for mere preaching,
you know. But you just swallow it all, and then you get to be so poky a
body has no comfort in life. There, now, I didn't mean to hurt your
feelings," she added, as she saw t