A Circuit Rider's Wife

omewhere that grow like immoral perennials and poison the goodness in them. They are the people who backslide so often, who repent so thoroughly, and who flour

een discovered as fallen. But among the backsliders of the class I have mentioned you will find the bravest moral heroes of the spiritual world, men who have the courage to repent and try again with an enthusiasm that is sublime in the face of the lack of confidence expressed in them on all sides. They are a distinct cl

evel look that hero warriors have. And that was his trouble. He was made for emergencies, not for the long, daily siege of life. He was equally capable of killing an enemy or of dying for a friend, but he could not live for himself soberly and well for mo

say that such people have not got souls, but if they get to Heaven at all it will be in the form of granitoid nuts,

ee"; it was his effort to raise himself to the tenth power, because he had an instinct for raising himself one way and another. If, at the end of a week, he did not appear at the parsonage door

lory. In dealing with them he had a patience a little like the patience of God, never reproaching them or threatening them with the t

tainer." He probably was at the moment he told him so, but having studied the nature of spiritual annuals I may be pardoned my doubts.

ied out to meet her, put a ring on her finger and killed the fatted calf? I doubt it. I doubt if she would ever ha

e world you can see them, these frailer p

eld was her desert. For eight years no respectable woman had crossed it or spoken to her till the day William and I and the red-headed horse arrived at her door. She stood framed in it, a gaunt figure hardened and brow

come to take dinne

murmured vaguely. Then, seeing me descend al

our chairs and serving us. After that she sat, a tragic figure, through every service at Redwine, even creeping forward humbly to the communion. She was not received, however, in any of the homes of the people. She might "go in peace"-whatever peace her loneliness afforded-that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, and t

rked the course of our lives in the itinerancy was not the poverty and hardships through which we passed, it was the periodic backsliding of William. This is a pathetic secret that I never mentioned during his lifetime. I did not even know for many years that all Methodist preachers who are not hypocrites have these recurrent down-sittings before the Lord when they become sorry pe

e first circuit. We were spending the night with a family in the usual one-room log cabin. We occupied the company bed while our host and hostess occupied one in the opposite corner. By this time I had become resigned to this close-communion hospitality and must have slept soundly. But some time after midnight I was awakened by t

" I cried aloud. "

s of the Spirit. I must close the meeting tomorrow, just as the people are beginnin

" I whispered, th

d had for

, William just a man like other men. I had come of a worldly-minded family who supported the church and sustained a polite it somewhat distant relation to Heaven. Religion was our relief like the Sabbath day, but it was never our state of being. And I was blandly of the earth earthly, but I suddenly discovered that the chief fascination of William for me was that he was not of the earth earthly, that his dust was distressed and stirred by strange

e you been doing wrong? Somet

ncerity, "but I thought I had been observin

ot trifle with you about the witness of His

iar with them as I pretended. But the affectation comforted him and certainly it was no injury to the Maker of the heav

nly occasions in my life when I have put on the whole armor of God so that I might

e next day? At last I reached a comforting conclusion. That is one peculiarity of the human, he never rests upon any other kind of conclusion. What he thinks may be so, but if it is not comforting he thinks further on into the daybreak of Eternity till he gets something better, more satisfactory for his needs. This is why we shall always keep on finding God. There is something lacking in us to which God only answers. The conclusion I came to was this, that we are not all called to do the same things, that William was called to preach and pray, and the witness of his Spirit approved