hey make the journey, these three women, to the borders
of Moab. Here Orpah tells Naomi good-bye. She parts from her with
real grief and regret, for she loves her genuinely. I think I can hear
her sobbing as she takes her lone way back to her own people.

Then it is Ruth's time to say good-bye. I see her as she flings her
arms about the neck of Naomi and there she clings. "There, there,"
says the older woman, "you must be gone now. Your sister is going.
She will turn the bend of the road in a minute. Go after her and God
grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband."

But Ruth clings only the tighter. And then she makes a confession. It
is a confession of love. And nothing finer in point of tenderness and
beauty was ever uttered by human lips. I hope you are not too old to
thrill over a love story. John Ridd's devotion to Lorna Doone still
stirs my heart. And there is the confession of a heroine in another
story that we can never forget. "Tell him I never nursed a thought
that was not his; that daily and nightly on his wandering way pour a
woman's tears. Tell him that even now I'd rather work for him, beg
with him, walk by his side as an outcast, live on the light of one kind
smile from him, than wear the crown that Bourbon lost."

That is a beautiful confession. It is made by a woman to a man. But
this was made by a woman to a woman. And strangest of all, it was made
by a daughter-in-law to a mother-in-law. Ruth has this distinction, if
none other, that she loved her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law, mind
you, that creature who has been the butt of evil jokes in all
languages; the one who has proved the dynamite for the wrecking of not
a few homes. This confession is the confession of a daughter-in-law to
a mother-in-law.

It is the confession of youth to age. It is spring-time clinging to
winter. It is June flinging its arms in a passionate tenderness around
the neck of November. "It is time you were going," said Naomi. And
Ruth's arms clung all the closer and this exquisite bit of poetry fell
from her lips, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from
following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou
lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people and thy God my
God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord
do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."

You cannot beat that. No confession of lov