It is written in the Book that holds the wisdom of our race that one who is reborn into the Kingdom of God, enters as a little child. It is there in black and white, yet few people get the idea into their consciousnesses. They expect regeneration to produce an upright man. God knows better than that. And we should know better too when it is written down for us. And so you good people who expect to see John Barclay turn rightabout face on the habits of a lifetime are to be disappointed. For a little child stumbles and falls and goes the wrong way many times before it learns the way of life. There came days after that summer night of 1904, when John Barclay fell--days when he would sneak into the stenographers' room in his office in the City and tear up some letter he had dictated, when he would send a telegram annulling an order, when he would find himself cheating and gouging his competitors or his business associates,--even days when he had not the moral courage to retrace his steps although he knew he was wrong. Shame put her brand on his heart, and his face showed to those who watched it closely--and there were scores of fellow-gamblers at the game with him, whose profits came from watching his face--his face showed forth uncertainty and daze. So men said, "The old man's off his feed," or others said, "Barclay's losing his nerve"; and still others said, "Can it be possible that the old hypocrite is getting a sort of belated conscience?" But slowly, inch by inch, the child within him grew; he gripped his soul with the iron hand of will that had made a man of him, and when the child fell and ached with shame, Barclay's will sustained the weakling. We are so hidden by our masks that this struggle in the man's soul, though guessed at by some of those about him, was unknown to the hundreds who saw him every day. But for him the universe had changed. And as a child, amazed, he looked upon the new wonder of God's order about him and went tripping and stumbling and toppling over awkwardly through it all as one learning some new equilibrium. There were times when his heart grew sick, and he would have given it all up. There were hours when he did surrender; when he did a mean thing and gloried in it, or a cowardly thing and apologized for it. But his will rose and turned him back to his resolve. He found the big things easy, and the little things hard to do. So he kept at the big things until they had pushed him so far toward his goal that the little things were details which he repaired slowly and with anguish of humiliation in secret, and unknown even to those who were nearest to him. And all this struggle was behind the hard face, under the broad, high forehead, back of the mean jaw, beneath the cover of the sharp brazen eyes. Even in Sycamore Ridge they did not suspect the truth until Barclay had grown so strong in his new faith that he could look at his yesterdays without shuddering.