of immortality
and infinite love. "Love is everlasting life," he would say, "love is
eternal."

His poor old mother did not understand him, and she was often troubled
on his behalf. She used to plead with him to stay with her more and
not to give up his life so completely to others.

"Why," she would argue plaintively, "even the great clergymen who
preach in the grand churches, and who are said to be the best of men,
do not risk their lives and love others as you do. They seldom come
here where everybody is so poor." Once he asked her to tell him what
the clergymen taught, and when she tried to explain the creeds of the
different denominations, he shook his head and turned pale with
perplexity and pain.

"I cannot understand," he said sorrowfully. "It all makes my heart
ache. It seems to me that the church-members, too, are in the dark.
Love is food for the soul and they are starving. People everywhere are
dying in crime and pain and no one offers to help them."

One day, after he had been laboring for a week without sufficient food
and sleep among the fever-stricken poor, he fell ill, and his mother
thought he was about to die. She ran, her gray locks streaming in the
wind, to the parsonage of a little church near by and inquired for the
minister, but was told by his wife that he had been gone for several
weeks to a watering place in the mountains. The old woman ran on
further, till she came to a great church whose majestic spire seemed
to touch the clouds. A stately rectory was near. Soft music, mingled
with merry voices, came out to her through the open doors. Awkwardly
and tremblingly she went up the polished marble steps and rang. A
servant in livery told her gruffly that his master was dining with his
bishop and other distinguished personages, and that she would have to
wait.

She replied with a groan that she feared her son was dying. The man
went to his master and came back saying, "He cannot see you now."

She sat down in the great hall and tried to pray. Before her hung a
costly painting representing Jesus with a child in his arms, a lamb at
his side. She smelt the fragrance of flowers, and heard the clinking
of wine-glasses, the tinkling of silver and rare china, short speeches
and laughter.

"The dean, it seems," she heard the bishop say, "was reproving one of
the young clergymen for becoming intoxicated. The young scamp's reply
quite took the dean off his feet. 'If I mistake not, sir,' said the
y