ything at once."

"We are small creatures, and can only pick up atoms as we go, whether of
things outward or inward. People talk about taking 'comprehensive
views'; and they suppose they do it. There is only One who does."

Faith was silent.

"Did it ever occur to you," said Mr. Armstrong, "how little your thought
can really grasp at once, even of what you already know? How narrow your
mental horizon is?"

"Doesn't it seem strange," said Faith, in a subdued tone, "that the
earth should all have been made for such little lives to be lived in,
each in its corner?"

"If it did not thereby prove these little lives to be but the beginning.
This great Beyond that we get glimpses of, even upon earth, makes it so
sure to us that there must be an Everlasting Life, to match the Infinite
Creation. God puts us, as He did Moses, into a cleft of the rock, that
we may catch a glimmer of His glory as He goes by; and then He tells us
that one day we 'shall know even as also we are known'!"

"And I suppose it ought to make us satisfied to live whatever little
life is given us?" said Faith, gently and wistfully.

Mr. Armstrong turned toward her, and looked earnestly into her eyes.

"Has that thought troubled _you_, too? Never let it do so again, my
child! Believe that however little of tangible present good you may
have, you have the unseen good of heaven, and the promise of all things
to come."

"But we do see lives about us in the world that seem to be and to
accomplish so much!"

"And so we ask why ours should not be like them? Yes; all souls that
aspire, must question that; but the answer comes! I will give you, some
day, if you like, the thought that comforted me at a time when that
question was a struggle."

"I _should_ like!" said Faith, with deeply stirred and grateful
emphasis.

Then they drove on in silence, for a while; and then the minister,
pleasantly and easily, brought on a conversation of everyday matters;
and so they came to Cross Corners, just as Mrs. Gartney was gazing a
little anxiously out of the window, down the road.

Mrs. Gartney urged the minister to come in and join them at the tea
table; but "it was late in the week--he had writing to finish at home
that evening--he would very gladly come another time."

"Mother!" cried Faith, presently, moving out of a dream in which she had
been sitting before the fire, "I wonder whether it has been two hours,
or two weeks, or two years, since we set off from