xt. '_What shall separate us
from the love of Christ? For I am persuaded that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall
be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord._' 'That,' Bunyan says, 'was a good word to me.'

Death cannot do it!--that is good!

Life cannot do it!--that is better!

'And now I hoped,' says Bunyan, in concluding his narrative of this
experience, 'now I hoped that long life would not destroy me nor make me
miss of heaven.'

V

Paul dares the universe. He defies infinity. He summons, in pairs, all
the powers that be, and glories in their impotence to dissolve the
sacred tie that binds him to his Lord.

He calls _Life and Death_ before him and dares them to do it!

He calls the _Powers of this World_ and the _Powers of Every Other_;
none of them, he says, can do it!

He calls the _Things of the Historic Present_ and the _Developments of
the Boundless Future_. Whatever changes may come with the pageant of the
ages, there is one dear relationship that nothing can ever affect!

He calls the _Things in the Heights_ and the _Things in the Depths_; but
neither among angels nor devils can he discover any force that makes his
faith to falter!

He surveys _this Creation_ and he contemplates _the Possibility of
Others_; but it is with a smile of confidence and triumph.

'_For I am persuaded_,' he says, '_that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord._'

VI

The covenanters knew the value of Uncle Tom's text. Among the heroic
records of Scotland's terrible ordeal, nothing is more impressive or
affecting than the desperate way in which persecuted men and women clung
with both hands to the golden hope enshrined in that majestic word. It
was in a Scottish kirk that Macaulay discovered its splendor; but even
Macaulay failed to see in it all that _they_ saw.

It was a beautiful May morning when Major Windram rode into Wigton and
demanded the surrender, to him and his soldiers, of two women who had
been convicted of attending a conventicle. One of them was Margaret
Wilson, a fair young girl of eighteen. She was condemned to be lashed to
a stake at low tid