any knowledge is possible. My husband,
who denies me nothing, has allowed me to send for some of your books
whose names I remembered. I thought at first to write to you about them,
but I distrust now my own understanding too much to venture. I would
like you to know that they have helped me somewhat, for I do not now say
to myself in hard, tearless fashion that I know there is no God, to
which thought I was driven by the reflection that most of those who seek
him most diligently sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

"But the more immediate occasion of this letter is to tell you that a
month since Mr. Finney held a meeting not far from us. I went, thinking
to gain some help from him, and to hear news of you, but I was greatly
disappointed, and made very angry. He preached as my husband and many of
our elders preach, and there were among the crowd the same signs of
excitement and peculiar manifestations that we have constantly among us.
But toward the end of his sermon Mr. Finney spoke of my husband's
Church, and he lent the weight of his influence to very evil slanders
that are constantly repeated about us by those who have not sought to
know the truth. He did us great injury by stirring up the roughest of
the people to violence. Mr. Finney will, I suppose, visit you and repeat
those lies, which no doubt he believes, but is most culpable in
believing, because he has not investigated the scandal against us as he
would have investigated scandal against any who are orthodox. I write
now to tell you that that which he says is not true. For although there
are a few criminals amongst us, as in every community, evil is not
taught or condoned."

As Finney read this letter by his lonely candle he was so far stirred by
what he deemed the merely human side of the incident as to say to
himself, "Poor Ephraim! She has never even known that he loved her." But
next day, in speaking to Ephraim, he pointed out that in the worst
communities there were always pure-minded women who knew little or
nothing of the evil around them, and said he believed that his message
would still be the means of bringing home the truth to Susannah's heart.

CHAPTER VI.

In the meantime an interval of comparative peace had come to Kirtland.
The Gentiles, because they discovered that the town was a good market
for the produce of more fields than the Saints could till, allowed their
religious zeal to slumber.

A female relative of Halsey, having lo