"Mrs. Mallory should take her place in the Pool of Bethesda among the blind, and the halt, and the withered. She should get her eyes opened to a larger outlook on life; her crooked walk made straight; and her withered sensibilities quickened into fresh life. Then she would soon cease to try you with her morbid conscience.

"Mrs. Mallory should give up defacing her Bible with the ink of her own ideas or the ideas of others. Human conceptions, however helpful, should not find a permanent place, even in your own individual copy of the Word of God. The particular line of truth they emphasised, may have been the teaching intended for that particular hour of study. But, every time you turn to a passage, you may expect fresh light, and a newly revealed line of thought. If your eye is at once arrested by notes and comments, or even by the underlining of special words, your mind slips into the groove of a past meditation; thus the liberty of fresh light, and the free course of fresh revelation, are checked and impeded. Do not crowd into the sacred sanctuary of the Word, ideas which may most helpfully be garnered in the classroom of your notebook. Remember that the Bible differs from all human literature in this: that it is a living, vital thing—ever new, ever replete with fresh surprises. The living Spirit illumines its every line, the living Word meets you in its pages. As in the glades of Eden, when the mysterious evening wind (ruach) stirred the leaves of the trees, making of that hour 'the cool of the day'—you can say, as the wind of the Spirit breathes upon your passage through the Word: 'I hear the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.' Then, passing down its quiet glades, straightway, face to face, you meet your Lord. No unconfessed sin can remain hidden in the light of that meeting. No conscience can continue morbid if illumined, cleansed, adjusted, by habitual study of the Word.

*

"There! I have calmly given my view of the matter, as being 'by profession, a guide of doubting souls, an expounder of problems of casuistry,' and all the other excellent things it pleased you to call me.

"Now—as a man—allow me the relief of simply stating, that I should dearly like to pound Mrs. Mallory to pulp, for her utter ingratitude to you."

*

This sudden explosion on David's part, brought out delighted dimples in Diana's cheeks; and, thereafter, whenever Mrs. Mallory proved trying, she found consolation in whispering to herself: "David—my good, saintly David—would dearly like to pound her to pulp!"

Chapter XXIX - What David Wondered

*

One more episode, culled from the year's correspondence, shows the intimacy, constantly bordering on the personal, which grew up between David and Diana.