ome the sons of God! They were translated into the realm
whence He came forth.

The stupendous fact--if fact?--glowed like a sun-lit prism and awoke an
ardent longing that it might be so. Ah, to escape the limits of this
petty life! How mean and small it seemed. Man at his best, his
grandest, but to live out a brief day, and then go out into the
uncertain darkness forever! If God had ordained a way into His own
infinite realm, surely it was worth the finding.

But what was it to "receive" Him? In what sense did they in the days
of His fleshly life receive Him? Was it in a more physical, tangible
way than would he possible to man now? Evidently not; for of those
among whom He moved in bodily presence, the majority "received Him
not." Certainly His mission to the earth was not for that generation
only, but for all men. Perhaps the receiving was explained by the
companion statement, "even to them that believe on His name."

But to "believe" was not less difficult to Hubert than to "receive."
He had boasted his inability to believe that which was unsupported by
evidence, and had found bitter fault with evangelical doctrine, which,
he supposed, put a high premium upon blind credulity,--an attitude of
mind, he contended, which would render a man as open to receive the
teachings of Buddha, or Mahomet if he happened to hear them, as those
of Jesus Christ. He might have added, or the teachings of a Payne, or
an Ingersoll, or, as a remoter example, of the serpent in Eden who
beguiled a credulous woman.

Hubert's search had become so earnest that he did not now pause to
nurse his rancor against the defenseless word "believe," and it even
flashed into his thought that, should he study diligently its use, he
might discover in it a further or different meaning than he had
credited it with. At this point he wished for a Greek Testament, but
there was none in the house. Later in the day, however, he surprised a
book dealer by the purchase of one, and prepared himself for further
studies in the "believes" of John's Gospel.

For the present he contented himself with reading on, striving to note
all the story and its argument, passing over much, undoubtedly, that
would have spoken volumes had he had ears to hear, but still finding
much that spoke pointedly and clearly to him. He pondered the
testimony of John the Baptist to "the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sin of the world," and did not understand it. But a feel