place, nor could his searching eyes discover her anywhere in the church. Mary Bradley, too, was absent. Had both these women, from whom he had drawn so much comfort and inspiration in the past, on whom he had leaned in absolute confidence, of whose supreme loyalty he had never had the shadow of a doubt; had they too fallen by the wayside, too weak and skeptical to follow him to the end of the heaven-ordained path he had chosen to tread? Would God Almighty be the next to desert him?
For the first time in all his hapless crusade his heart began to fail him, a strange and insidious weakness crept in upon him. His hand trembled as he lifted the book and read:
"The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him."
The sound of his voice came back to him in dull echoes from the waste of vacant pews.
"Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places" His voice failed him, and he paused. But it was only for a moment. With stern resolution he fought back his weakness, gathered new strength, and went on with his service.
His sermon that morning—he had prepared it early the preceding week—was based upon the parable of the householder and the tares.
"God help us," he said in closing, "if we have mistaken the command of our Lord, and have gone out to gather up the tares, and, inadvertently and foolishly, have rooted up also the wheat with them. It were doubtless better that they should have grown together till the harvest time, when the Lord of the harvest, himself, would have gathered and separated them."
Then he sent out the alms-basins, and they came back to him to be presented at the altar, lined with a pathetic pittance.
As it was the first Sunday in the month he proceeded with the administration of the Holy Communion. He
