f--Jonah. But I
will tell you what _I_ think of Jonah: if the Scriptures had said that
Jonah swallowed the whale, it would be just as easy to believe as it is
that the whale swallowed Jonah."

"So it would, Sister Smith," I answered weakly, "just as easy."

"And now, my young Brother, you preach the Scriptures--the old genuine
inspired Authorized Version, word for word, just as God spoke it!"

Sister Smith has gone to Heaven, but in spite of her theology. Dear
old soul, she sent me many a loaf of her salt-rising bread after that,
for she had as warm a heart as ever beat its brave way past eighty.

But she had neither a perfect Book, nor a perfect Creed, nor a perfect
Salvation. She did not need them; nor could she have used them; for
they would have posited a divine command to be perfect--a too difficult
accomplishment for any of us, even for Sister Smith.

There is no such divine command laid upon us; but only such a divinely
human need springing up within us, and reaching out for everything, in
its deep desire, from dust-cloths dyed black to creeds of every color.

This is a life of imperfections, a world made of cheese-cloth, merely
dyed black, and stamped in red letters--The Dustless-Duster. Yet a
cheese-cloth world so dyed and stamped is better than a cloth-of-gold
world, for the cloth-of-gold you would not want to dye nor to stamp
with burning letters.

We have never found it,--this perfect thing,--and perhaps we never
shall. But the desire, the search, the faith, must not fail us, as at
times they seem to do. At times the very tides of the ocean seem to
fail,--when the currents cease to run. Yet when they are at slack
here, they are at flood on the other side of the world, turning already
to pour back--

". . . lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast; full soon the time of the flood-tide shall be--"

The faith cannot fail us--for long. Full soon the ebb-tide turns,

"And Belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know"

that there is perfection; that the desire for it is the breath of life;
that the search for it is the hope of immortality.

But I know only in part. I see through a glass darkly, and I may be no
nearer it now than when I started, yet the search has carried me far
from that start. And if I never arrive, then, at least, I shall keep
going on, which, in itself maybe the thing--the Perfect Thing that I am
seeking.

[Illustration: Spring ploughing]

VI

SP