ar to ruin, driving
them even to a madness in which they have died. Jesus alone knows
the Father, and can reveal him. Janet studied only Jesus, and as a
man knows his friend, so she, only infinitely better, knew her more
than friend--her Lord and her God. Do I speak of a poor Scotch
peasant woman too largely for the reader whose test of truth is the
notion of probability he draws from his own experience? Let me put
one question to make the real probability clearer. Should it be any
wonder, if Christ be indeed the natural Lord of every man, woman,
and child, that a simple, capable nature, laying itself entirely
open to him and his influences, should understand him? How should
he be the Lord of that nature if such a thing were not possible, or
were at all improbable--nay, if such a thing did not necessarily
follow? Among women, was it not always to peasant women that
heavenly messages came? See revelation culminate in Elizabeth and
Mary, the mothers of John the Baptist and Jesus. Think how much
fitter that it should be so;--that they to whom the word of God
comes should be women bred in the dignity of a natural life, and
familiarity with the large ways of the earth; women of simple and
few wants, without distraction, and with time for
reflection--compelled to reflection, indeed, from the enduring
presence of an unsullied consciousness: for wherever there is a
humble, thoughtful nature, into that nature the divine
consciousness, that is, the Spirit of God, presses as into its own
place. Holy women are to be found everywhere, but the prophetess is
not so likely to be found in the city as in the hill-country.

Whatever Janet, then, might, perhaps--I do not know--have imagined
it her duty to say to Gibbie had she surmised his ignorance, having
long ceased to trouble her own head, she had now no inclination to
trouble Gibbie's heart with what men call the plan of salvation. It
was enough to her to find that he followed her Master. Being in the
light she understood the light, and had no need of system, either
true or false, to explain it to her. She lived by the word
proceeding out of the mouth of God. When life begins to speculate
upon itself, I suspect it has begun to die. And seldom has there
been a fitter soul, one clearer from evil, from folly, from human
device--a purer cistern for such water of life as rose in the heart
of Janet Grant to pour itself into, than the soul of Sir Gibbie.
But I must not call