nd many of the Spanish and French
ports. I have pulled oranges from the trees, and great purple grapes
from the vines, and even while I was eating them longed for the
oat-cakes and fresh fish of Shetland."

"Rome and Naples and Athens! Then, David, thee hast seen the fairest
cities on the earth."

"And yet, Friend John, what hells I saw in them! I was taken through
great buildings where men and women die of dreadful pain. I saw other
buildings where men and women could eat and sleep, and could not
think or love or know. I saw drinking-hells and gambling-hells. I saw
men in dark and awful prisons, men living in poverty and filth
and blasphemy, without hope for this world or the next. I saw men
die on the scaffold. And, John, I have often wondered if this world
were hell. Are we put here in low, or lower, or lowest hell to work
out our salvation, and so at last, through great tribulation, win
our weary way back to heaven?"

John Priestly was silent a few moments ere he answered: "If that were
even so, there is still comfort, David. For if we make our bed in
any of such hells,--mind, _we_ make it,--even there we are not beyond
the love and the pity of the Infinite One. For when the sorrows of
hell compassed David of old, he cried unto God, and he delivered
him from his strong enemy, and brought him forth into a large place.
So, then, David, though good men may get into hell, they do not need
to stay there."

"I know that by experience, John. Have I not been in the lowest pit,
in darkness, in the deeps, in that lowest hell of the soul where
I had no God to pray to? For how could I pray to a God so cruel that
I did not dare to become a father, lest he should elect my children
to damnation? a God so unjust that he loved without foresight of
faith or good works, and hated because it was his pleasure to hate,
and to ordain the hated to dishonor and wrath?"[4]

"And yet, David?"

"In my distress my soul cried out, '_God pity me! God pity me!_' And
even while I so wronged him he sent from above--he sent you, John;
he took me, he drew me out of many waters,--for great was his mercy
toward me,--and he delivered my soul from the lowest hell."

-----
[Footnote 4: Confession of Faith, chap. 3, secs. v-vii; chap. 16,
sec. vii.]

XII

"AT LAST IT IS PEACE"

A week after this conversation David was near Lerwick. It was very
early in the morning, and the sky was gray and the sea was gray,
and through the vapory vei