"Well, tell me, Clara, a little; I cannot wait for that now."
She smiled and said:
"Dear child, how glad I am that you have so good a heart, and some day these impulses will drive your boat on the shore of peace that lies waiting for us on the bay of truth. But you are anxious and I will tell you. Dr. George De Benneville was the son of a Huguenot, who fled to England from persecution, and was employed at court by King William. His mother was a Granville, and died soon after his birth in 1703. He was placed on board a ship of war—being destined for the navy—at the early age of twelve years, and received on the coast of Barbary singular religious impressions, induced, it is said, by his beholding the kindness of the Moors to a wounded companion. He had great doubts regarding salvation, but after suffering for months with doubts, the light was made clear to him, and he held to his heart the faith in a universal restitution. His great sense of duty led him to preach, and he commenced in the Market-house of Calais in his seventeenth year. He was fined and imprisoned, but did not desist. He sought and found co-laborers, and persisted two years in preaching in the woods and mountains of France. At Dieppe he was seized, and with a friend, Mr. Durant, condemned. Durant was hanged, and while the preparations for beheading De Benneville were in progress, a reprieve from Louis IX arrived, and after a long imprisonment in Paris, he was liberated through the intercession of the Queen."
"Good," I said, "she had a heart."
"He then spent eighteen years in Germany preaching and devoting himself to scientific studies, and at the age of thirty-eight he emigrated to this country. He claimed no denominational name, but preached this glorious truth. I can come nearer to him than any other whose history I have known, for was he not called of God, and did he not fulfil his mission gloriously? He was ill on board the ship which brought him to America, and when it arrived in Philadelphia, a man by the name of Christopher Sower came on board, saying he was looking for a man who was ill, and whom he wished to take to his house. This man Sower was also divinely led, for he received a commandment in a dream to go seven miles from his home in Germantown to a certain wharf in Philadelphia, and inquire on board a ship just arrived for a man who was ill, to take him home and to specially care for him. He hitched his horse to his carriage, and followed the instructions of his dream."
"Were these facts the doors that led you out into light?" I asked.
"I never read these facts, Emily, until after my vision was made clear, and I saw the future that lives and waits for all."
"Girls," called Aunt Hildy, "ef you've got through with the meetin', I want to ask about these biscuit; I'm afraid they're going to be poor; come look at 'em, Emily."
"The biscuit are all right, Aunt Hildy. Did you hear what the preacher said."
"No, not really, heard all I could without neglectin' of my work."