ken into the church and kept there till they get well spiritually and
decent morally. Then they might be discharged as other cured people
are, to go back into the world to do the world's work properly instead
of improperly.

As it is, one trouble with all the churches is that they have too many
incurable saints in them, men and women who pray too much and do too
little, who cannot forget their own selfish salvation enough to look
after other people's without feeling their own spiritual pulse all the
time they are doing it. Of late I've sometimes suspected that it is
nearly as debilitating to stay in the church all the time as it would
be to stay in a hospital all the time.

But I am telling now how things were twenty-five and thirty years ago.
After conversion an honest Methodist's life was divided into two
parts--the seasons when he was "in grace" and the seasons when he was
out of it. Naturally, the preacher had his hands full looking after
such members instead of having his hands full, as he does now,
attending committee meetings and mission classes and what not, for the
ethical uplifting of the native poor and the foreign heathen. For, if
old Brother Settles, of Raburn Gap Church, was up and coming, resisting
temptation and growing like Jonah's gourd spiritually, apt as not young
Brother Jimmy Trotter, of Bee Creek Church, had backslid and gone on a
spree.

There was never a night when William's family-prayer instinct did not
include both of them with equal anxiety, and often he would reach back
into past circuits for some especially dear sinner and remind the Lord
to have mercy on him also, while He was at His mercies. He could
forget the saints he had known, easy enough, but he clung year after
year to the sinners he had found, name by name.

If the redeemed really do wear crowns in Heaven, with jewels in them to
represent the souls they have helped to save, I know William's will not
look very handsome. There will be no flashing diamonds or emeralds in
it, but he will have it set with very common stones to symbolize the
kind of souls that were most dear to him. There will be a dull jade
for the young country woman that he brought back home from the city and
saved from a life of sin, and, maybe, a bit of red glass for Sammy
Peters, the young man with whom he was wont to go through such orgies
of repentance on account of Sammy's many scandalous transgressions.
And he will have a piece of granite beaten do