Ray closed his work at Easton, much to the regret of his people, on September first. That month he and Daisy spent at Afton with Edward and his wife. Early in October they sailed on the steamship Illyria, Captain Tom Branford, master, for Liverpool, intending there to take direct passage for their field of labor. As the steamer moved slowly down the harbor, Ray and Daisy stood on its deck, looking off toward the fast receding land. Ray's countenance indicated deep thought, but not until the land had vanished from sight did Daisy disturb him. Then she gently asked:
"What is it, Ray?"
He looked down into her upturned face with a bright smile.
"I was thinking of that passage in Isaiah," he answered, "that reads, 'And an highway shall be there and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness.' I was reviewing my life since I became God's child, and that passage came to mind. It seemed to me I had, during these years that have gone, been slowly traveling up that highway. Sometimes I have thought the byways offered a safer footing, and I have ventured into them, only to find that the Lord's appointed way was the only one that offered peace and safety. I have had my valley of humiliation and self-surrender. I believe I am now willing to say, 'Thy will be done.'"
"The moment you reached that point, I was snatched from death's door, and the way was opened for me to walk with you directly on to what we believed to be our life work," said Daisy, thoughtfully. "What is the lesson we are to learn?"
"That we must hold all we have, even those we love best, subject to the will of God," Ray responded, promptly. "He will have nothing put before himself."
"It cost us a year of delay in our chosen work, nevertheless, to know that experience," added Daisy, with a sigh.
"And yet not a lost year," remarked Ray, with something like satisfaction in his tones. "Our labor on the field to which we go would not have been worth half what it will now be had we gone without this experience through which we have in twelve months passed. We have, I firmly believe, advanced much nearer to the Master; we have placed ourselves in sweeter and more tender relations with him; we can each hear him say, in loving accents, 'Thou art mine.' We have found more than redemption, more than intimacy—even complete identification with him. Those old words that my mother found so precious when dying, and which had such a fascination for me in the prayer room so many years ago, have now become words of absolute experience in our religious lives. We go with glad hearts to our appointed field, though the way is untried and the future unknown, because we can each hear the Saviour saying, with all the force of a divine promise, 'Fear not, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.'"
THE END.