. Twilight was descending on the white campus, on the
snow-capped town. Away in the west, beyond the clustered house-tops,
there had formed itself the solemn picture of a red winter sunset. The
light entered the windows and fell on the lad's face. One last question
had just been asked him by the most venerable and beloved of his
professors--in tones awe-stricken, and tremulous with his own humility,
and with compassion for the erring boy before him,--

"Do you not even believe in God?"

Ah, that question! which shuts the gates of consciousness upon us when
we enter sleep, and sits close outside our eyelids as we waken; which
was framed in us ere we were born, which comes fullest to life in us as
life itself ebbs fastest. That question which exacts of the finite to
affirm whether it apprehends the Infinite, that prodding of the evening
midge for its opinion of the polar star.

"Do you not even believe in God?"

The lad stood up, he whose life until these months had been a prayer,
whose very slumbers had been worship. He stood up, from some
impulse--perhaps the respectful habit of rising when addressed in class
by this professor. At first he made no reply, but remained looking over
the still heads of his elders into that low red sunset sky. How often
had he beheld it, when feeding the stock at frozen twilights. One
vision rose before him now of his boyhood life at home--his hopes of
the ministry--the hemp fields where he had toiled--his father and
mother waiting before the embers this moment, mindful of him. He
recalled how often, in the last year, he had sat upon his bedside at
midnight when all were asleep, asking himself that question:--

"Do I believe in God?"

And now he was required to lay bare what his young soul had been able
to do with that eternal mystery.

He thrust his big coarse hand into his breast-pocket and drew out a
little red morocco Testament which had been given him when he was
received into the congregation. He opened it at a place where it seemed
used to lie apart. He held it before his face, but could not read. At
last, controlling himself, he said to them with dignity, and with the
common honesty which was the life of him:--

"I read you a line which is the best answer I can give just now to your
last question."

And so he read:--

"Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief!"

A few moments later he turned to another page and said to them:--

"These lines also I desire to read to you w