ANCIENT SHOES.
THIRD READING.
"Intreat me not to leave thee."—Ruth 1:16.
ONE fine summer day, a good man named Boaz went out into his corn-fields where his reapers were cutting down the wheat. "The Lord be with you," he said. "The Lord bless thee," they answered. Then he saw a young woman gleaning, whom he had never seen before.
He asked who she was. He heard that her name was Ruth, and she was a stranger and a widow. Then why had she come there? Because she could not bear to leave her husband's mother, Naomi, alone in her old age. She knew that if she kept with Naomi she must be poor and forlorn, and away from all her friends; but she loved her mother-in-law so much, that she said, "Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: * * * where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried."
RUTH AND NAOMI.—Ruth 1:16.