"My hearers, we grow old," said the preacher. "Be it summer or be it
spring with us now, autumn will soon settle down into winter, that
winter whose snow melts only in the grave. The wind of the world sets
for the tomb. Some of us rejoice to be swept along on its swift wings,
and hear it bellowing in the hollows of earth and sky; but it will
grow a terror to the man of trembling limb and withered brain, until
at length he will long for the shelter of the tomb to escape its
roaring and buffeting. Happy the man who shall then be able to believe
that old age itself, with its pitiable decays and sad dreams of youth,
is the chastening of the Lord, a sure sign of his love and his
fatherhood."

It was the first Sunday in Advent; but "the chastening of the Lord"
came into almost every sermon that man preached.

"Eloquent! But after all, _can_ this kind of thing be true?" said to
himself a man of about thirty, who sat decorously listening. For many
years he had thought he believed this kind of thing--but of late he
was not so sure.

Beside him sat his wife, in her new winter bonnet, her pretty face
turned up toward the preacher; but her eyes--nothing else--revealed
that she was not listening. She was much younger than her
husband--hardly twenty, indeed.

In the upper corner of the pew sat a pale-faced child about five,
sucking her thumb, and staring at the preacher.