which so many Christians
place in the mother of our Lord. To Robert, Janet was one who
knew--one who was far ben??? with the Father of lights. She perceived
his intentions, understood his words, did his will, dwelt in the
secret place of the Most High. When Janet entered into the kingdom
of her Father, she would see that he was not left outside. He was
as sure of her love to himself, as he was of God's love to her, and
was certain she could never be content without her old man. He was
himself a dull soul, he thought, and could not expect the great God
to take much notice of him, but he would allow Janet to look after
him. He had a vague conviction that he would not be very hard to
save, for he knew himself ready to do whatever was required of him.
None of all this was plain to his consciousness, however, or I
daresay he would have begun at once to combat the feeling.

His sole anxiety, on the other hand, was neither about life nor
death, about this world nor the next, but that his children should
be honest and honourable, fear God and keep his commandments.
Around them, all and each, the thoughts of father and mother were
constantly hovering--as if to watch them, and ward off evil.

Almost from the day, now many years ago, when, because of distance
and difficulty, she ceased to go to church, Janet had taken to her
New Testament in a new fashion.

She possessed an instinctive power of discriminating character,
which had its root and growth in the simplicity of her own; she had
always been a student of those phases of humanity that came within
her ken; she had a large share of that interest in her fellows and
their affairs which is the very bloom upon ripe humanity: with these
qualifications, and the interpretative light afforded by her own
calm practical way of living, she came to understand men and their
actions, especially where the latter differed from what might
ordinarily have been expected, in a marvellous way: her faculty
amounted almost to sympathetic contact with the very humanity.
When, therefore, she found herself in this remote spot, where she
could see so little of her kind, she began, she hardly knew by what
initiation, to turn her study upon the story of our Lord's life.
Nor was it long before it possessed her utterly, so that she
concentrated upon it all the light and power of vision she had
gathered from her experience of humanity. It ought not therefore to
be wonderful how much she now un