“Oh-o!  I begin to see.  Why, papa, don’t you see?  That must be what that verse means—­the express image of His person—­His character!” and Dorothy turned to her father, her face all aglow as she grasped this new thought.

“No, don’t go just yet,” she pleaded, as Katherine made another effort to release her hand.  “Tell me this, please:  if everybody became good, perfect in character, would their bodies grow perfect, too? would sick people get strong and well and happy?”

“I believe God’s Word teaches us so,” said Katherine, softly, and wondering why Prof.  Seabrook did not put a stop to a conversation which he must know was trespassing upon forbidden ground.

“How could they?  I wish I knew how,” said the child, plaintively.

“You know Paul tells us, ’Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,’ and to ‘put off the mortal and put on the immortal.’”

“‘Put off the mortal,’” repeated the girl, with a look of perplexity, “but how?”

“It is a growth, dear; it is to put out of mind, one by one, every wrong thought, and think only good thoughts—­God’s thoughts—­and in this way one grows good, pure and perfect.  Let us take a simple illustration,” Katherine continued, as she saw how eagerly the child was drinking in her words.  “You have seen a lily bulb?”

Dorothy nodded.

“It is not at all pretty, and one would throw it away as of no account, if he did not know of the precious little germ and its possibilities hidden away inside.  We know how, when the warm sunlight shines upon the spot where it has been put away in the earth, when the dews and soft rains fall upon it, something begins to happen down there in the dark; the ugly bulb begins to change, to soften and melt away; one by one the brown husks drop off and disappear as the tiny germ within, awakening to a new sense of life, starts upward to find more light and freedom and a purer atmosphere.  Then two small leaves of living green—­harbingers of better things—­begin to unfold; after that a sturdy stalk, with a bud of promise, appears, and all the time reaching up, up towards the brightness beyond and above, until at last the pure, perfect and fragrant lily bursts into bloom.”

“That was very prettily told, Miss Minturn; but your figure is incomplete, for, after all, you have only a material flower—­it is far from being spiritual or immortal,” Prof.  Seabrook here interposed.

“Ah!” said Katherine, lifting a pair of sweetly serious eyes to him, “it is only a simple illustration—­a little parable pointing to spiritual development and perfection, and the pure and flawless lily is but the type of that which mortal ‘eye hath not seen.’  The homely bulb corresponds to the mortal man, wrapped up in the density and husks of materiality; the tiny ’germ is the symbol of that ray or spark of immortality that is in every human consciousness and which, governed by the perfect law of Life, ‘whose eternal mandate