Bible and the Common Prayer Book.

She turned them over, wondering what were the mysteries that this print
held from her. It was to her mysterious as the stars.

Esther Waters came from Barnstaple. She had been brought up in the
strictness of the Plymouth Brethren, and her earliest memories were of
prayers, of narrow, peaceful family life. This early life had lasted till
she was ten years old. Then her father died. He had been a house-painter,
but in early youth he had been led into intemperance by some wild
companions. He was often not in a fit state to go to work, and one day the
fumes of the beer he had drunk overpowered him as he sat in the strong
sunlight on his scaffolding. In the hospital he called upon God to relieve
him of his suffering; then the Brethren said, "You never thought of God
before. Be patient, your health is coming back; it is a present from God;
you would like to know Him and thank Him from the bottom of your heart?"

John Waters' heart was touched. He became one of the Brethren, renouncing
those companions who refused to follow into the glory of God. His
conversion and subsequent grace won for him the sympathies of Mary
Thornby. But Mary's father would not consent to the marriage unless John
abandoned his dangerous trade of house-painter. John Waters consented to
do this, and old James Thornby, who had made a competence in the curiosity
line, offered to make over his shop to the young couple on certain
conditions; these conditions were accepted, and under his father-in-law's
direction John drove a successful trade in old glass, old jewellery, and
old furniture.

The Brethren liked not this trade, and they often came to John to speak
with him on the subject, and their words were----