this man we are talking about, and
find out what part of them, in God's sight, is pure and strong and to be
maintained, and what part is unworthy and to be cast away. Is it easy,
even in such a small matter as this?"

Captain Rexford took off his hat in tribute to his theme, and stood
bareheaded. He looked what he was--a military man of the past and more
formal generation, who with difficulty had adapted himself to the dress
and habits of a farmer. He was now honestly doing his utmost to bring
himself to something still more foreign to his former experience.

"To put it in a practical way, papa: if our Lord were coming to-morrow,
how would you advise me to meet Alec Trenholme to-day?"

"Of course," began Captain Rexford, "in sight of the Almighty all men
are equal."

"No, no," she pleaded, "by all that is true, men are not equal nor are
occupations equal. Everything has its advantages and disadvantages. It
is not as well to be stupid as to be wise, to be untaught as to be
taught, to be ugly as to be beautiful; it is not as good to kill cattle
as to till the soil, and it is not as good to be a farmer as to be a
poet. It is just because moralists go too far, and say what is not true,
that they fail. External things are of more importance to their Creator
than they are even to us."

Captain Rexford brushed his hat with his sleeve. The thing that he was
most anxious to do at that moment was to pacify his daughter.

"But if you feel this difference so keenly, Sophia, what then perplexes
you?"

"I want to know how to deal with these differences, for the way we have
been accustomed to deal with them is false. This case, where one brother
is at the top of our little society and the other at the bottom, shows
it. Not all false--there comes the difficulty" (her face was full of
distress), "but largely false. If we have any spiritual life in us it is
because we have heard the call that Lazarus heard in the tomb, but the
opinions we will not let God transform are the graveclothes that are
binding us hand and foot."

"My dear, I certainly think it right that we should live as much as
possible as we should wish to have lived when we come to die, but I do
not know that for that it is necessary to make a radical change in our
views."

"Look you, dear father, if we were willing to step out of our own
thoughts about everything as out of a hindering garment, and go forth in
the thoughts in which God is willing to clothe us, we