"No, indeed. Not a minister at all yet."
"He's experienced sanctification, though."
"You don't say so!"
"Yes, but he fell from grace, they say. Perhaps that's why he looks so melancholy."
"Do you think he looks melancholy? To me he just looks earnest. He's got splendid eyes, but they're awfully deep. I'd be proud of a man with eyes like that, wouldn't you?"
A smothered giggle, and a murmur to a friend in the next pew.
"Do you believe in sanctification? The preacher's experienced it."
Nellie Thomas heard the last remark, and from that moment her reverential gaze was fixed upon the thin, earnest face of the youthful preacher. Her heart bowed before the spiritual power abiding in him. She received the sermon as a divine message, humbly responsive to the persuasive words that sought to arouse a conviction of sin in all hearers.
"We are all of us in the mire of sin," uttered the clear young voice in solemn accents. "Every one of us should take shame to himself for his sins. You that wear elegant clothes and live in great houses are no better than the beggar—the tramp—that goes from one back door to another—in the matter of sin. The back door of the Father's house is the door we'll have to go to when we want to enter into heaven. If you are proud and lofty-minded, and think yourself good enough to be admitted at the front door it is all the more certain that you'll be turned away and made to go around to the back entrance, and made to wait there knocking a long time before you are let in. And good enough for you, too. Are any one of us fit to enter into the presence of the Lord? If any one of us thinks so he ought to take shame to himself for the notion. If I had such a false notion in my own head I'd take shame to myself for it."