hours and listened to a more unbroken flow of rich,
glowing words, shining like diamonds, than fell lavishly around the
listeners that Friday morning at Chautauqua. But a few minutes and
Marion's pencil began to move with speed. This was the thought that had
thrilled her:

"First, light; then liberation from chaos; then grass; and then God
stopped his work and gazed with delight on the picture he had drawn.
Think what a picture it must have been! There was nothing but rocks
ground down when God said, 'Earth, grow!' Then straightway the mother
power fell down upon the earth, life pulsed in her veins, and the baby
shoot of grass sprang up, and the rocky earth wrapped herself in her
garment of emerald, and God, stopping his work said, 'Useful,
beautiful!'"

When the speaker touched upon the doctrine of the resurrection Marion's
pencil paused, and she leaned eagerly forward to get a glimpse of his
face. That doctrine had seemed to her doubting heart the strangest,
wildest, most hopeless of the Christian theories. If clear light could
shine on that, could there not on _anything_? Her face was aglow with
interest not only, but with anxiety.

This morning, for the first time in her life, she could be called an
honest doubter. She had fancied herself able to believe any thing of
which her reason had been convinced; but she found, to her surprise and
dismay, that so fixed had the habit of unbelief become, it seemed
impossible to shake it off, and that she needed to be convinced and
reconvinced; that her questionings came in on every hand, seized upon
the smallest point, and tormented her without mercy. What about this
strange story of the resurrection?

As she listened a subdued smile broke over her face--a smile of
sarcasm. How very absurdly simple the argument from nature was, how
utterly unanswerable! And after the sentence, "Tell me how that
wonderful field of waving grain came from the bare kernels of corn, and
I will tell you how my blessed baby shall rise an angel," Marion said in
tone so distinct that it struck on Flossy's ear like a knell, "What a
fool!" Not the speaker, as the dismayed and disappointed Flossy
supposed, but _herself_.

"The measure of every man is his faith," said Dr. Deems. "The greatest
thing a human being can do is not to perceive, nor to _compare_, not to
_reason_, but to _believe_." And again Marion smiled. If this were true
what a pigmy she must be! She began to more than suspect that she w