"tracing things back makes a lot of difference. I've been going over
what Phil Khamis said at the Morning Watch--you remember? How everything
he has to-day has come to him by the goodness of Christian people. At
first I thought that was no more than a description of his particular
case, because I knew how true it was. But when you begin to trace things
back, as you say, what's true about Phil is true about all of
us--anyway, about me."

"How is that, son?" Mrs. Farwell asked gently.

"Well, I mean," J.W. smilingly answered her, though flushing a little
too, "the Institute, that seemed to me something new and different, is
really tied up to what you folks and the whole church have been doing
for me as far back as I can remember."

And so they talked, parents and pastor and J.W., quite naturally and
freely, of the long chain of interest which had linked his life to the
church's life, back through all the years to his babyhood.

J.W. had been in the League only a year or two, but it seemed to him
that he had been in the church always. And the memories of his boyhood
which had the church for center, were intimately interwoven with all his
other experiences.

As his father said, "I guess, pastor, if you tried to take out of J.W.'s
young life all that the church has meant to him, it would puzzle a
professor to explain whatever might be left."

J.W. had been born in the country, on a farm whose every tree and fence
corner he still loved. His first recollections of the church as part of