here, but it makes me want to see the whole League become as good as it is big.  I don’t want to be dazzled by the size of it, because I know how many other members are just as little use as I’ve been.  Only when I get home I hope I’m going to be a different sort of an Epworthian, and I can’t help wishing that we all felt that way about being more good in the League.  We can make it a hundred times more useful to the church and to our Master.”

Many others spoke like that, some of them because they could find nothing more intimate to say, some here and there those who, like J.W., could not quite trust themselves yet to talk of their deeper personal experiences.

And then Joe Carbrook arose.  He spoke easily, as Joe always did, but it was a new Joe Carbrook, and only the Delafield delegation understood how amazing was the change.

“This Institute has made me all sorts of trouble,” he said.  “I had nothing else to do, and without caring anything about it, except to get some new fun out of it, I came along, intending to stir up some of you if I could, and I knew I could.  But I’ve seen what a fool I was.  Every day I’ve seen that a little more distinctly.  And last night, just as I was leaving one of the boys after the camp fire he said something about what I might do with my life.  I don’t know how seriously he meant it.  Maybe he doesn’t, either.  I went off without answering him.  There wasn’t any answer, except that I knew I wasn’t fit even to think about it.  And then, thank God, I met a man who understood what was wrong with me.  He’s our pastor.  I haven’t been anything but trouble to him at home, but that made no difference to him.  And he introduced me, down yonder by the lake, to a Friend I had never known before, some one infinitely understanding, infinitely forgiving.  He showed me that before I could find what I ought to be I’d have to come to terms with that Friend.  And I have.  Whatever happens to me, whatever I may find to do, I want now and here for the first time in my life to confess Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord!”

The Bishop preached a great sermon, but it is doubtful whether the Delafield delegation rightly appreciated it.  They were too much occupied with the incredible fact that Joe Carbrook had been converted, and had openly confessed it.

More was to come.  The afternoon meeting, long established in the Institute world as the “Life Work Service,” was in the hands of a few leaders who knew both its power and peril.  An invitation would be given for all to declare their purpose who felt called to special Christian work.  The difficulty was to encourage the most timid of those who, despite their timidity, felt sure of the inner voice, and yet prevent a stampede among those who, without any depth of desire, were in love with emotion, and would enjoy being conspicuous, if only for the brief moment of the service.

For once a woman made the address—­a wise woman, let it be said, who made skillful and sure distinctions between the Christian life as a life and the work of the Christian Church as one way of living that life.