“Indeed I do; you cannot take too much pains to speak clearly and correctly. Shall I explain what I did mean? Suppose you make a feast for your friends, and they pronounce it the best they ever ate. At the same time, you find a poor man starving close by your door. You may give him never so little, but you feed him tenderly, and save his life. Which will give you the most satisfaction,—the thought of that, or the praises of your friends?”
“That, of course,” said Varney Lowe. “It’s so splendid to save anybody’s life. Heroes always do.”
“Well, you are preparing for your friends a feast of good things from God’s storehouse of truth. You cannot serve it too royally or arrange it too attractively; but remember, there will be souls here, starving, absolutely dying,—although they may not believe it themselves,—for the bread of life. Would it not be the truest success to feed one such soul with the crumb you are each to bring?”
“Nobody ever notices what we say,” interrupted Bell, rather flippantly.
“There are two things I wish you would do this week,” continued Miss Marvin, without noticing the interruption; “one is, to invite your parents to come——”
“I most think father will, this time,” put in Dick, his face all aglow.
Mr. Vance had been to church for several Sabbaths.
“Of course we shall ask them, we always do,” said Nettie Rand.
“And will you also ask your Heavenly Father to be here and help you to speak the words so plainly and earnestly as to make them stepping-stones by which somebody shall get nearer to Himself,—somebody perhaps, who has not even started heavenward?”
Will Carter shrugged his shoulders, and turned away. There was only one faint “Yes’m.”