Hester’s heart was full when she found the woman she went to see, and she was able to speak as she had never spoken before. She never troubled her poor with any of the theories of salvation, which, right or wrong, are not the things to be presented for men’s reception—now any more than in the days of the first teachers who knew nothing of them. They serve but to obscure the vision of the live brother in whom men must believe to be lifted out of their evil and brought into the air of truth and the room for growing deliverance.

Hester spoke of Christ, the friend of men, who came to save every one by giving him back to God, as one gives back to a mother the stray child who has run from her to escape obeying her.

The woman at least listened. And then she sang to her. But she could not sing as she had sung a little while before. One cannot have or give the best always—not at least until the soul shall be always in its highest and best moods—a condition which may perhaps be on the way to us, though I am doubtful whether the created will ever stand continuously on the apex of conscious existence. Perhaps we may be full of God always and yet not always full of the ecstasy of good, or always able to make it pass in sweet splendours from heart to heart.

Hester was walking home when, passing through a court on her way, she heard the voice of a man, which she again recognized as that of Mr. Christopher. Glancing about her she discovered that it came from a room half under ground. She went to the door. A little crowd of dirty children was making noise around it, and she could not hear all of what was going on, but she did hear enough to tell that the doctor was speaking to a small group of the poor, pleading with his fellows not to sink in misery but to live and rejoice, even in their present state. She went in.

It was a low room, and though the crowd was not large, the air was stifling. The doctor stood at the far end. Some of his congregation were decently dressed, but most wore their ordinary clothes. Only a handful seemed to be listening to him. That the speaker was in earnest there could be no doubt. His eyes were glowing, his face was gleaming with a light of its own, and his gestures were full of meaning The whole rough appearance of the man was elevated into dignity. Simplicity and forgetfulness of himself were manifest in both carriage and speech, and he kept saying the simplest things to them about God’s desire to love them. He told them that they were like orphan children, hungry in the street, raking the gutter for what they could get, while behind them stood a grand, beautiful house where their father lived, waiting for any one of them to turn and run in to him.