rishes under the most
diverse conditions.

Beth thought much on religion in those quiet days, and read much,
looking for spiritual sustenance among the garbage of mind with which
man has overlaid it, and finding little to satisfy her, until one
night, quite suddenly, as she sat holding her mind in the attitude of
prayer, there came to her a wonderful flash of illumination. She had
not been occupied with the point that became apparent. It entered her
mind involuntarily, and was made clear to her without conscious effort
on her part; but it was that which she sought, the truth that moves,
makes evident, makes easy, props and stays, and is the instigator of
religious action, the source of aspiration, the ground of hope--the
which was all contained for Beth in the one old formula interpreted in
a way that was new to her: _The communion of saints_ (that
inexplicable sympathy between soul and soul), _the forgiveness of
sins_, (working out our own salvation in fear and trembling), _the
resurrection of the body_ (reincarnation), _and the life everlasting_
(which is the crown or glory, the final goal).

"But God?" Beth questioned.

"God is love," she read in the book that lay open on the table before
her.

Then she clasped her hands over the passage and laid her head on them,
and for a long time she sat so, not thinking, but just repeating it to
herself softly: "God is love," till all at once there was a blank in
her consciousness; thought was suspended. When it returned, she looked
up, and in herself were the words: "God is Love--no! _Love is God!_"

In the joy of the revelation, she arose, and, going to the window,
flung it wide open. Far down the east the dawn was dimly burning; the
faint sweet breath of it fanned her cheeks; her chest expanded with a
great throb, and she exclaimed aloud: "I follow, follow--_God_--I know
not where."

* * * * *

Beth had a task before her that day which she did not relish in the
anticipation. She was going as a stopgap to speak at a large meeting
to oblige Angelica. She had the credit of being able to speak, and she
herself supposed that she could in a way, because of the success of
her first attempt; but she did not consent to try again without much
hesitation and many qualms, and she would certainly not have consented
had not her friends been in a difficulty, with no one at hand to help
them out of it but herself. But to be drawn from her hallowed
sec