must find a higher meaning still in the text. Are we not, each one
of us, starving for heavenly food?--spiritually exhausted with
thirst?--naked, sick, in prison? Are we eating, daily, of the bread
of life?--drinking at the wells of God's truth?--putting on the
garments of righteousness?--finding balm for our sick souls in
Gilead?--breaking the bonds of evil?--turning from strange lands, and
coming back to our father's house. If not, I warn you, men and
brethren, that you are not in the right way;--that, taking the
significance of God's word, which is truth itself, there is no
reasonable ground of hope for your salvation."

It was not with Mr. Braxton as with his friend. He could not let
considerations like these enter one ear and go out at the other.
From earliest childhood he had received careful instruction.
Parents, teachers and preachers, had all shared in the work of
storing his mind with the precepts of religion, and now, in manhood,
his conscience rested on these and upon the states wrought therefrom
in the impressible substance of his mind. Try as he would, he found
the effort to push aside early convictions and early impressions a
simple impossibility; and, notwithstanding these had been laid on
the foundation of a far more literal interpretation of Scripture
than the one to which he had just been listening, his maturer reason
accepted the preacher's clear application of the law; and
conscience, like an angel, went down into his heart, and troubled
the waters which had been at peace.

Mr. Braxton was a man of thrift. He had started in life with a
purpose, and that purpose he was steadily attaining. To the god of
this world he offered daily sacrifice; and in his heart really
desired no higher good than seemed attainable through outward