lations of religion. I reckon the Lord knew what He was about
when He turned His back and let Satan fill creation with snares and
pitfalls and sorrows and temptations. If we did not fall into so many
of them we should never get the proper contrite spirit to seek of our
own will and accord after salvation. He would have been obliged to
thrust it upon us and we might have been no better than the angels,
without the great privilege of sinning our own sins or choosing our own
virtues.

William was especially qualified for this business of leading hope
after it had done with all earthly ties. He was intellectually opposed
to what we know as reality. He entertained topographical convictions
concerning the New Jerusalem, and he could give information about the
Father's House as the old family homestead of the soul so definitely
that one could see the angels on the gables and the Tree of Life
shading the front yard. The simplest man in the congregation listened
with enthusiasm and found himself recollecting it as if he were
recalling scenes from his first life. But eternity is a danger none of
us can avoid, and it never seemed spiritually intelligent to me for
Christians to struggle so in that direction. Indeed, they do not,
really. That Heaven-desiring enthusiasm is but the name of the
pathetic courage with which they go to meet death because they have to
go.

I recall the thanksgiving prayer of Brother Billy Fleming in this
connection. In every experience meeting one part of his testimony was
always in standing type--the ambition to be at home in glory, and
particularly to rest in Abraham's bosom. But when a long fever brought
him almost within kissing distance of Abraham's beard he made a mighty
prayer that God would spare his weak and unprofitable life. Not only
that, but William was called in to add his own petitions, which he did
throughout the night of the crisis of the fever. I remained in the
next room with Sister Fleming, a little silent saint who went about the
world like a candle moving in a dark place, merely letting her light so
shine. When the night deepened and we sat in it, clasped hand in hand,
listening to the prayer concert in the sick man's room, I ventured to
propound a question.

"Sister Fleming," I whispered, "I can understand why you want Brother
Fleming to live, and why the rest of us do; but I can't understand why
he has changed his mind so completely and wants so much to live
himsel