s ecstatic joy
on the Mount of Transfiguration, and then, alas! his awful sin when he
deserted Jesus in that dark terrible morning of the great trial. Oh,
those bitter hours! Peter could not forget them."

Job trembled; he knew what the preacher meant, he knew how Peter felt.

"But," continued the speaker, "how sweet there came back to him the
memory of another morning by the same Galilean waters, as he mused in
the twilight, and heard the Savior call, not in anger but in love,
'Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?' And back again, there where he
had first loved Him, Peter came to the old life of love and loyalty.
Memories of Pentecost, memories of life's trials and joys, ever
transformed by the spiritual presence of his Master, made Peter cry
from the depths of his soul, 'Unto you therefore which believe, he is
precious.'"

And Job in his heart said, "Amen."

Then the preacher went on, showing how that which endears anything in
this world to our hearts should make Jesus doubly precious. He talked
of money--of the treasure of the Sierras, and how much one thought it
would buy; but after all, how little of love and hope and faith it
could bring into a heart--those things which alone last as the years
go on.

It was a pathetic little story he told of a baby's funeral up in one
of the lonely, forsaken, sage-bush deserts, where, alone with the
broken-hearted father amid the bitter winds and snows of a bleak March
morning, he laid the only babe of a stricken home to rest in the
frozen earth, many miles from any human habitation; of how the father
leaned over and said, as the box vanished into the ground, "Sing 'God
be with you till we meet again,'" and how, as they sang it, out
against the winter storm the light of heaven came into that man's
face. "Tell me," the minister asked, as he leaned over the pulpit,
"how much gold could buy the comfort afforded by that hymn and that
hope?" And Job, thinking of the thousands he had handled at the Yellow
Jacket, felt that that hymn was worth it all.

Then the preacher talked of diamonds and of the preciousness of Jesus;
of the trinkets hid away in many an old trunk, precious because of
memories that clustered around them; and Job thought of his mother's
Testament. He said the life-memories that cluster around Jesus are
more precious than any other; and Job said "Amen" to that. At last he
talked of friends and how they are worth more than gold or diamonds or
relics of the past;