y house be destroyed I have a mansion built by
God . . . eternal in the heavens. And herein I groan with earnest
longings, desiring to cover my earthly raiment with the robes of my
heavenly mansion. . . . _And He who has prepared me for this very end is
God._"

The dead man missed his End. That old dead woman missed it too. And the
millions around us still alive are missing their End to-day. "This very
End"--think of it--Mortality swallowed up in Life--Death only an
absence, Life for ever a presence--Present with the Lord who has
prepared us "for this very End."

Can we enjoy it all by ourselves? Will there be no sense of
incompleteness if the many are outside, missing it all because they
missed their End? Will the glory make us glad if they are somewhere far
away from it and God? Will not heaven be almost an empty place to one
who has never tried to fill it? Yet there is room, oh so much room, for
those we are meant to bring in with us!

And there is room, oh so much room, along the edge of the precipice.
There are gaps left all unguarded. Can it be that you are meant to guard
one of those gaps? If so, it will always remain as it is, a
falling-point for those rivers of souls, unless you come.

Are these things truth or are they imagination? If they are
imagination--then let the paper on which they are written be burnt,
burnt till it curls up and the words fall into dust. But if they are
true--then what are we going to do? Not what are we going to say or
sing, or even feel or pray--_but what are we going to do?_

[Illustration: The ceremonial bathing. They are all old women, but the
very oldest old woman in India bathes most vigorously. After this
bathing is over, they are purified from the defilement contracted by
going to the house of the dead.]

CHAPTER VII

"The Dust of the Actual"

"This may be counted as our richest gain, to have
learned afresh one's utter impotency so completely
that the past axiom of service, '_I can no more
convert a soul than create a star_,' comes to be
an awful revelation, so that God alone may be
exalted in that day."
_Rev. Walter Searle, Africa._

WE have just come back from a Pariah village. Now see it all with me.
Such a curious little collection of huts, thrown down anywhere; such
half-frightened, half-friendly faces; such a scurrying in of some and
out of others; and we won