eased to know, about her natural
condition as one born of a sinful race, and her inherited liabilities on
that account?

Myrtle smiled like a little heathen, as she was, according to the
standard of her earlier teachings. That kind of talk used to worry her
when she was a child, sometimes. Yes, she remembered its coming back to
her in a dream she had, when--when--(She did not finish her sentence.)
Did he think she hated every kind of goodness and loved every kind of
evil? Did he think she was hateful to the Being who made her?

The minister looked straight into the bright, brave, tender eyes, and
answered, "Nothing in heaven or on earth could help loving you, Myrtle!"

Pretty well for a beginning!

Myrtle saw nothing but pious fervor in this florid sentiment. But as she
was honest and clear-sighted, she could not accept a statement which
seemed so plainly in contradiction with his common teachings, without
bringing his flattering assertion to the test of another question.

Did he suppose, she asked, that any persons could be Christians, who
could not tell the day or the year of their change from children of
darkness to children of light.

The shrewd clergyman, whose creed could be lax enough on occasion, had
provided himself with authorities of all kinds to meet these awkward
questions in casuistical divinity. He had hunted up recipes for
spiritual neuralgia, spasms, indigestion, psora, hypochondriasis, just as
doctors do for their bodily counterparts.

To be sure they could. Why, what did the great Richard Baxter say in his
book on Infant Baptism? That at a meeting of many eminent Christians,
some of them very famous ministers, when it was desired that every one
should give an account of the time and manner of his conversion, there
was but one of them all could do it. And as for himself, Mr. Baxter
said, he could not remember the day or the year when he began to be
sincere, as he called it. Why, did n't President Wheelock say to a young
man who consulted him, that some persons might be true Christians without
suspecting it?

All this was so very different from the uncompromising way in which
religious doctrines used to be presented to the young girl from the
pulpit, that it naturally opened her heart and warmed her affections.
Remember, if she needs excuse, that the defeated instincts of a strong
nature were rushing in upon her, clamorous for their rights, and that she
was not yet mature enough to und