her favourite silver banana-carver;--"it can go
through soft fruit well enough, but it isn't strong enough or sharp
enough to deal with anything harder!--"

Faith did herself injustice. It takes sometimes little less than
Ithuriel's spear to make the low, insidious, unobtrusive forms of evil
stand up and shew themselves what they are--the very Devil!

"Reuben," said Faith one time when they were alone together,--"did you
ever hear any of the mischievous talk against the Bible, of people who
don't love it?"

"Yes, Miss Faith,--I never heard a great deal at a time--only little
bits now and then. And I've felt some times from a word or two what
other words the people had in their hearts."

"Don't ever let people talk it to you, Reuben, unless God makes it your
duty to hear it," she said wearily. Reuben looked at her.

"Do you think he _ever_ makes it our duty, Miss Faith?"

"I don't know!" said Faith, a little as if the question startled her.
"But you might be where you could not help it, Reuben."

He was silent, looking rather thoughtfully into the fire.

"Miss Faith," he said, "you remember when Christian was going through
the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the fiends came and whispered to him
all sorts of dreadful things which he would not have thought of for the
world. 'But,' as Mr. Bunyan says, 'he had not the discretion either to
stop his ears, or to know from whence those blasphemies came.'" Reuben
blushed a little at his own advice-giving, but made no other apology.

There was much love and respect and delight in Faith's swift look at
him. Her words glanced. "Reuben, I am glad you are going to be a
minister!"--She added with the sorrowful look stealing over her face,
"I wish the world was full of ministers!--if they were good ones."

His face was very bright and grateful, and humble too. "Miss Faith," he
said, taking up her words, "don't you love to think of that other
definition of minister?--you know--'ye ministers of his, that do his
pleasure.'"

"In that way the world is full now," said Faith; "in all things except
men. But by and by 'the great trumpet will be blown' and 'they that
were ready to perish' shall come, from everywhere. It's good to know
that."

"It's such a beautiful thing to know, just by believing!" Reuben
said,--"don't you think so, Miss Faith? And then whatever people say or
do, and if we can't find a word to answer them, we _know_ down in our
hearts, that the Bible is true. And s