k a step that was not a
punishment for another's fault. I may have had many wrong thoughts, but
I cannot have done many wrong deeds,--for my cage has been a narrow one,
and I have paced it alone. I have looked through the bars and seen the
great world of men busy and happy, but I had no part in their doings.
I have known what it was to dream of the great passions; but since
my mother kissed me before she died, no woman's lips have pressed my
cheek,--nor ever will.

--The young girl's eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost without
a thought, but with a warm human instinct that rushed up into her
face with her heart's blood, she bent over and kissed him. It was the
sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness, and I
should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her. The Little Gentleman
repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw him shed.

The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the
sick man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his head
and was still. All the questions he had meant to ask had faded from
his memory. The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his
fellow-creature's fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue.
He could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent.
The kiss of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that
angels watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to
summon before the tribunal of his private judgment. Shall I pray with
you?--he said, after a pause. A little before he would have said, Shall
I pray for you?--The Christian religion, as taught by its Founder, is
full of sentiment. So we must not blame the divinity-student, if he was
overcome by those yearnings of human sympathy which predominate so
much more in the sermons of the Master than in the writings of his
successors, and which have made the parable of the Prodigal Son the
consolation of mankind, as it has been the stumbling-block of all
exclusive doctrines.

Pray!--said the Little Gentleman.

The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones,

Iris and the Little Gentleman that God would look on his servant lying
helpless at the feet of his mercy; that He would remember his long years
of bondage in the flesh; that He would deal gently with the bruised
reed. Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers upon this their child.
Oh, turn away from him the penalties of his own transgressions! Thou
hast laid