"You do now declare and avouch the Lord Jehovah to be your God; and Jesus Christ to be your Saviour; and the Holy Spirit to be your sanctifier.
"You do solemnly give yourself away, in a covenant to be revoked, to be his willing servant forever."
She had noticed the words so often, half putting them to herself in imagination, that now they came back to her with clear distinctness. This was what the psalm meant; nothing less. "A willing servant?" Could she promise it? she, who hated control and loved so dearly her own pleasure? But it all came to that:
"I will say of the Lord, He is my God."
Back and forth, back and forth, went thoughts and will and purpose: sometimes almost persuaded, sometimes all up in arms. Something gentler than need was lacking, something stronger than fear must work. Slowly and sadly she turned over the leaves, far on and on, to the other marked point: seeing them then, those common words of print that she had read so often, seeing them then in letters of flashing light.
"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again."2 Cor. 5. 14, 15.
Hazel laid her face down upon the open page, and said from her heart,
"I will."