He hurried into the garden, calling “Madge! Julie!” There was no response.
He went back to the house. The turkeys had strayed into the kitchen, there being no one to drive them back. He made a hurried, fearsome tour of the house. Every room was empty!
He went back to where he had been, when Madge was taken, with a groan he dropped into his chair, staring into space with horror-stricken eyes.
Suddenly, as though a living voice uttered them, the words of scripture sounded in his ears.
“Lest, that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway!”
A mortal agony filled his eyes, as he groaned:—
“God help me! I know now that I have only been a minister, by training and by profession, I have never been a son of God by conversion, by the New Birth!”
His untaught soul had misinterpreted the real inwardness of that passage of Paul’s. But it was true, in the sense he meant it, he was “a castaway.”