Marion began to write again, but it was only in snatches here and there; not that there was not that which she longed to catch, but she could not write it—­the sentences just poured forth; and how perfectly aglow with light and beauty they were!  This one sentence she presently wrote: 

“In the black ink of his power God wrote the Book of nature; in the red ink of his love he wrote the Bible; and all this power is to bring us all to this love.  Oh, to rest in arms like these!  Are they not strong enough?”

Suddenly Marion closed her book and slipped her pencil into her pocket; she could not write.  And although she thrilled through every nerve over the majestic sentences that followed and was carried to a pitch of enthusiasm almost beyond her control, when the jubilant thunder of thousands of voices rang together in the matchless closing words, “Blessing, and glory, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God, forever and ever.  Amen.”  She made no further attempt to write; her heart was full; there rang in it this eager cry, “Oh, to rest in arms like these!” Strong enough?  Aye, indeed!  Doubts were forever set at rest.  The Maker of all nature could be none other than God, and the God of nature was the God of the Bible.  It was as clear as the sunlight.  Reason was forever satisfied, but there lingered yet the hungering cry, “Oh, to rest in arms like these!”

And Flossy said not a word to her of the resting place.  Not because she had not found it strong and safe; not because she did not long to have her friend rest there, but because of that despairing murmur in her heart.  “What is the use in saying anything?  Had she not heard with her own ears Marion’s sneering sentence in the face of the unanswerable arguments that had been presented?” I wonder how often we turn away from harvest fields that are ready for the reader because we mistake for a sneer that which is the admission of a convicted soul?

By afternoon Ruth was rested and ready for meeting; if the truth be known it was her troubled brain which had tired her body and obliged her to rest.  She had begun to take up that problem of “Christian work.”  The platform meeting of the evening before, and, more than anything else, Dr. Niles’ address, had fanned her heart into a flame of desire to do something for the Master.  But what could she do?  She and Flossy had talked it over together after they reached their room at the hotel; in fact they talked away into the night.

“I don’t know,” Flossy said, with a little laugh, “but I shall have to depend on the ‘unconscious influence’ which I exert to do my work for me.  I don’t know of anything which I can actually do.  Dr. Niles made a great deal of that.”

“Yes,” Ruth, said, “but you see, Flossy, the people whose unconscious influence does any good are the ones after all who are moving around trying to do something.  I don’t feel sure that he lets the unconscious influence of the drones amount to much, unless it is in the wrong scale.  Dr. Niles made a good deal of that, you remember.”