"Who was the preacher?" asked Isabel.
"Dr. Fraser of Stirling," said Robert.
"Well, brother, I do not believe Dr. Robertson would have approved the sermon. It is not like his preaching."
"It was an excellent sermon," reiterated Mrs. Campbell. "I hope all the uncovenanted present felt its weighty solemnity." She muttered, twice over, its awful text: "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God."
"There is a better word for them than that," said Theodora, her face alight with spiritual promise. "'The Lord is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.' That is what Saint Peter says, and Timothy, 'God our Saviour will have all men to be saved,' a great all that, and the Testament is full of such glad hope."
"Those passages do not apply to the lost, Dora."
"But as your great Scotch preacher, Thomas Erskine, said, we are lost here as much as there, and Christ came to seek and to save the lost."
Mrs. Campbell looked with sorrowful anger at her son, and Robert said: "My dear Dora, you argue like a woman. Women should listen, and never argue."
"Women are told to search the Scriptures, Robert. I search and understand them, but I do not often understand the men who profess to explain them."
"Your father——"