Now and then a missionary came down to Diver’s Bay, and preached in the open air, or, if the weather disappointed him, in the great shed built for the protection of fish-barrels and for the drying of fish.  No surprising results had ever attended his preaching; the meetings were never large, though sometimes tolerably well attended; the preacher was almost a stranger to the people; and the wonder would have been a notable one, had there been any harvest to speak of in return for the seed he scattered.  The seed was good; but the fowls of the air were free to carry it away; the thorns might choke it, if they would; it was not protected from any wind that blew.

A few Sundays after Gabriel became the charge of Clarice, the missionary came and preached to the people about Baptism.  Though burdened with a multitude of cares which he had no right to assume, which kept him busy day and night in efforts lacking only the concentration that would have made them effective, the man was earnest in his labor and his speech, and it chanced now and then that a soul was ready for the truth he brought.

On this occasion he addressed the parents in their own behalf and that of their children.  The bright day, the magnificent view his eyes commanded from the place where he stood to address the handful of people, the truth, with whose importance he was impressed, made him eloquent.  He spoke with power, and Clarice Briton, holding the hand of little Gabriel, listened as she had never listened before.

“Death unto sin,” this baptism signified, he said.  She looked at the child’s bright face; she recalled the experience through which she had passed, by which she was able to comprehend these words.  She had passed through death; she had risen to life; for Luke was dead, and was alive again,—­therefore she lived also.  Tears came into the girl’s eyes, unexpected, abundant, as she listened to the missionary’s pleading with these parents, to give their little ones to their Heavenly Father, and themselves to lives of holiness.

He would set the mark of the cross on their foreheads, he said, to show that they were Christ’s servants;—­and then he preached of Christ, seeking to soften the tough souls about him with the story of a divine childhood; and he verily talked to them as one should do who felt that in all his speaking their human hearts anticipated him.  It was not within the compass of his voice to reach that savage note which in brutal ignorance condemns, where loving justice never could condemn.  He had an apprehension of the vital truth that belief in the world’s Saviour was not belief in a name, but the reception of that which Jesus embodied.  He came down to Diver’s Bay, expecting to find human nature there, and the only pity was that he had not time to perform what he attempted.  Let us, however, thank him for his honest endeavor; and be glad, that, for one, Clarice was there to hear him,—­she heard him so gladly.