omitted the last verse, when the boy reached out his hand and, placing
it on the shoulder of the minister, pressed him again to his knees and
repeated the last verse of the Psalm--the verse the preacher had
omitted, as it is written in the Scotch hymn book:

Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me;
And in God's house for evermore
My dwelling place shall be.

--_William Whittingham_

This was a lesson the preacher never forgot. Can you, my reader, you,
with all your senses, your keenness of brain and intellect--can you say
what this idiotic boy could say: "I will dwell in the house of the
+LORD+ for ever"?

I am reminded in this connection of one of Bunyan's characters in the
"Pilgrim's Progress." He is referred to as "Mr. Feeble Mind." This
character in speaking of his immortal hope--that hope which lies beyond
the valley of the shadow and the grave--expresses it in this way: "But
this I am resolved on: to run when I can, to go when I cannot run, and
to creep when I cannot go. As to the main, I thank Him that loved me. I
am fixed. My way is before me. My mind is beyond the river that hath no
bridge, though I am, as you see, but of a feeble mind." Mark that
wonderful expression, will you?--

"My mind is beyond the river that hath no bridge."

Is yours? You--man, woman, with all your senses, of strong and sound
mind, can you give expression to an exclamation of faith like that?

There are some of my readers on whose head time has laid its hand and
whitened their hair to the whiteness of that winter in which all their
glory must fade. Their sun of life is going down beyond the hill of
life. The young may die; the old must die. Oh, the pity of it, to see
the old and gray with no eternal life insurance for the winter of life!
The gray head is indeed a crown of glory if it be found in the way of
life; otherwise it is a fool's cap. Reader, may your eventide be light,
and may your path be as the path of the just that shineth brighter and
brighter unto the perfect day!

Thus we see that the grave is not the end. We pass through the grave
only in order that we may place our last climbing footstep upon the
threshold of our Father's house, to go out no more. Then we shall dwell
for ever there. Beyond the grave lie the Plains of Peace, the
Homeland--with all the loved who have gone before--those whom we "have
loved long since and lost awhile."

Is the way so dark, O w