of us. We do not like to see the open door of death that leads to it. So every good preacher is the shepherd of our misgivings, the leader of our forlornest hopes

d His back and let Satan fill creation with snares and pitfalls and sorrows and temptations. If we did not fall into so many of them we should never get the proper contrite spirit to seek of our own will a

the old family homestead of the soul so definitely that one could see the angels on the gables and the Tree of Life shading the front yard. The simplest man in the congregation listened with enthusiasm and found himself recollecting it as if he were recalling scenes from his first life. But ete

thin kissing distance of Abraham's beard he made a mighty prayer that God would spare his weak and unprofitable life. Not only that, but William was called in to add his own petitions, which he did throughout the night of the crisis of the fever. I remained in the next room with Siste

do; but I can't understand why he has changed his mind so completely and wants so much to live himself. I ha

uble to even forgive 'em, they air so foolish. I know Billy from A to Izzard, and, so far from layin' on Abraham's bosom, he couldn't git along with him till daybreak. He jest gits that talk out of his ambition and imagination, although, humanly sp

ublic thanksgiving prayer at the altar in Red

the objection to the "holiness people," they are presumptuous in professing a too intimate likeness and relation to God. I have never seen a sanctified man or woman yet whose putty-faced spirituality bore nearly so noble a resemblance to Him as the sad, thunder-smitten soul of some sinner who had had his vision of unattainabl

in their faces, and then I looked through the open windows at the fair fields spread like love promises of peace to us in this life, and it seemed to me that possibly they had missed the cue somewhere and I declined to make even a spiritual investigation of that country beyond where the scenes of William's sermons were always laid. Very soon I experienced, also, a woman's fear that eventually I should lose some near and dear sense of my husband. There is, in fact, a highly-de

d Hunger in

now. It seems that an up-to-date church member regards dying so private as to suggest the idea that some disgrace attaches to it. The minister calls, indeed, speaks cheerfully and conventionally of the Hereafter as of an opulent and famous city with a salubrious cli

ven to die by the doctor's orders and according to convention, repressing

of God. And at the very last they are crowded by their great thoughts of Him, excited by the encroaching fact of His tremendous nearness. They need a priest, some one who has been "ordained" to lead them into the

red that if the dying man was unconverted, an "outbreaking" sinner, he was wont to omit the harder doctrines, and generously lift him to the Lord in prayer upon the easy pledge of

he dark of death nights as he journeyed forth to whisper hope into pale ears, and to offer his strange, unearthly consolation

r says he can't last till daybreak, and he's hollerin' for a

the anvil block while it was being done, and gently try to wheedle him toward Heaven. Now, however, at last he was to have the best of the argument. Davy was dying, about to be turned out of the house and home of his spirit, and he wante

ied away as if he had doves on his feet

e summer morning whitened and wear

e faith," he a

from somewhere within, silenced me. I never meddled with the coals on William's altar. And not long after the shrivi

hout the witness of the Spirit." There was a row of dahlias behind the blue-belled sagebushes requiring attention, and we had been so normally earth-happy digging about their roots. Willia

particularly to the passing one. She must be ready to do anything from cooking the next meal to shrouding the corpse. The latter is a particularly garrulous business, and I was horrified to discover that it was so gruesomely entertaining to the women of the church and neighbors who helped. My first corpse was the young wife of a farmer, who had di

the sight of them cackling about the awfully disheveled bed and i

ad the grandest look. It sorter staggered me till I thought at last it was maybe the rest that come to her after the pain of sinnin' had gone out of her body. But you'll not be so squeamish about the way folks look when they air dead after a while. We had one pastor's wif

d the supreme tragedy of the hour for them was not her approaching dissolution, but it was that o

s. If he had called me so from a grave where I had lain a thousand years I should have had to put on my dust, rise and answer him. He sat beside the bed and looked as Peter must have looked at Dorcas as she lay dead in the upper chamber of her house at Joppa. It was not the text he quoted, nor the hymns he chanted, but it was the way he did it. Clearly he

een more brightness than it was lawful for a mortal to behold. So long as we are on this earth it seems to me better to fol

is people. It was not a sense of duty or conscience or courage that caused him to face the deadly disease with such fortitude, but it was the instinct of the shepherd for his flock. And he readily permitted me to accompany him with the curious indifference to consequences shown by those who have had their heads grandly t

his secret in him. It belongs to history and will not be buried. One old woman, Sister Fanny Claris, who had been a faithful member of our church for year

rs and all kinds when it was in my conscience to be more particular and take it 'close communion' style like the Baptists. Besides, I have believed in the doctrine of election all my life, and I ain'

ngle day, in your church with its easy ways a

tautness of conviction concerning certain terrible doctrines to meet the emergency of her dogmatic needs. And so she passed unshriv