the revealer of the Father, and a hush fell on the listening men;
he spoke of the Founder of the great brotherhood, and by the very
reality, by the fervor of his convictions, touched a new chord in
many a heart. It was no time for argument, the meeting was almost
over; he scarcely attempted to answer to many of the difficulties
and objections raised by Raeburn earlier in the evening. But there
was in his ten minutes' speech the whole essence of Christianity,
the spirit of loving sacrifice to self, the strength of an absolute
certainty which no argument, however logical, can shake, the
extraordinary power which breathes in the assertion: "I KNOW Him
whom I have believed."

To more than one of Raeburn's followers there came just the
slightest agitation of doubt, the questioning whether these things
might not be. For the first time in her life the question began to
stir in Erica's heart. She had heard many advocates of
Christianity, and had regarded them much as we might regard
Buddhist missionaries speaking of a religion that had had its day
and was now only fit to be discarded, or perhaps studied as an
interesting relic of the past, about which in its later years many
corruptions had gathered.

Raeburn, being above all things a just man, had been determined to
give her mind no bias in favor of his own views, and as a child he
had left her perfectly free. But there was a certain Scotch
proverb which he did not call to mind, that "As the auld cock crows
the young cock learns." When the time came at which he considered
her old enough really to study the Bible for herself, she had
already learned from bitter experience that Christianity--at any
rate, what called itself Christianity--was the religion whose