There was not long waiting, however.  Her eyes began to dilate and her face to glow; she was almost a worshiper of eloquence, and surely no one ever sat for two hours and listened to a more unbroken flow of rich, glowing words, shining like diamonds, than fell lavishly around the listeners that Friday morning at Chautauqua.  But a few minutes and Marion’s pencil began to move with speed.  This was the thought that had thrilled her: 

“First, light; then liberation from chaos; then grass; and then God stopped his work and gazed with delight on the picture he had drawn.  Think what a picture it must have been!  There was nothing but rocks ground down when God said, ‘Earth, grow!’ Then straightway the mother power fell down upon the earth, life pulsed in her veins, and the baby shoot of grass sprang up, and the rocky earth wrapped herself in her garment of emerald, and God, stopping his work said, ’Useful, beautiful!’”

When the speaker touched upon the doctrine of the resurrection Marion’s pencil paused, and she leaned eagerly forward to get a glimpse of his face.  That doctrine had seemed to her doubting heart the strangest, wildest, most hopeless of the Christian theories.  If clear light could shine on that, could there not on anything?  Her face was aglow with interest not only, but with anxiety.

This morning, for the first time in her life, she could be called an honest doubter.  She had fancied herself able to believe any thing of which her reason had been convinced; but she found, to her surprise and dismay, that so fixed had the habit of unbelief become, it seemed impossible to shake it off, and that she needed to be convinced and reconvinced; that her questionings came in on every hand, seized upon the smallest point, and tormented her without mercy.  What about this strange story of the resurrection?

As she listened a subdued smile broke over her face—­a smile of sarcasm.  How very absurdly simple the argument from nature was, how utterly unanswerable!  And after the sentence, “Tell me how that wonderful field of waving grain came from the bare kernels of corn, and I will tell you how my blessed baby shall rise an angel,” Marion said in tone so distinct that it struck on Flossy’s ear like a knell, “What a fool!” Not the speaker, as the dismayed and disappointed Flossy supposed, but herself.

“The measure of every man is his faith,” said Dr. Deems.  “The greatest thing a human being can do is not to perceive, nor to compare, not to reason, but to believe.”  And again Marion smiled.  If this were true what a pigmy she must be!  She began to more than suspect that she was.

“Don’t waste time,” said the Doctor, “in trying to reconcile science and the Bible.  Science wasn’t intended to teach religion.  The Bible wasn’t intended to teach science; but wherever they touch they agree.  God sends his servants—­scientific men—­all abroad through nature to gather facts with which to illustrate the Bible.”