his rightness is sufficient for them; they need not go about, worrying, to establish their own.  The minute they give up their wrongness, and fall into its line, it works for them as no working of their own could do.  God doesn’t forgive a soul ideally, and leave it a mere clean, naked consciousness; He brings forth the best robe and puts it on; a ring for the hand, and shoes for the feet.  People try painfully to achieve a ghostly sort of regeneration that strips them and leaves them half dead.  The Lord heals and binds up, and puts his own garment upon us; He knows that we have need,” Miss Kirkbright repeated, earnestly.  “Salvation is a real having; not an escape without anything, as people run for their lives from fire or flood.”

Sylvie had listened with a shining face.

“You get it all from that one word,—­’raiment.’  Your words—­the words you find out, Miss Kirkbright—­are living things.”

“Yes, words are living things,” Miss Kirkbright answered.  “God does not give us anything dead.  But the life of them is his spirit, and his spirit is an instant breath.  You can take them as if they were dead, if you do not inspire.  Men who wrote these words, inspired.  We talk about their being inspired, as if it were a passive thing; and quarrel about it, and forget to breathe ourselves.  It is all there, just as live as it ever was; it is given over again every time we go for it; when we find it so, we never need trouble any more about authority.  We shall only thank God that He has kept in the world the records of his talk with men; and the more we talk with Him ourselves, the deeper we shall understand their speech.”

“Isn’t all that about ’inner meanings,’—­that words in the Bible stand for,—­Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?”

“Well?” Miss Kirkbright smiled.

“Are you a Swedenborgian?” Sylvie asked the question timidly.

“I believe in the New Church,” answered Miss Euphrasia.  “But I don’t believe in it as standing apart, locked up in a system.  I believe in it as a leaven of all the churches; a life and soul that is coming into them.  I think a separate body is a mistake; though I like to worship with the little family with which I find myself most kin.  We should do that without any name.  The Lord gave a great deal to Swedenborg:  but when his time comes, He doesn’t give all in any one place, or to any one soul; his coming is as the lightening from the one part to the other part under heaven. Lightening—­not lightning; it is wrongly printed so, I think.  He set the sun in the sky, once and forever, when He came in his Christ; since then, day after day dawns, everywhere, and uttereth speech; and even night after night showeth knowledge.  I believe in the fuller, more inward dispensation.  Swedenborg illustrated it,—­received it, wonderfully; but many are receiving the same at this hour, without ever having heard of Swedenborg.  For that reason, we may never be afraid about the truth.  It is not here or there.  This or that may fail or pass away, but the Word shall never pass away.”