"Yes, Maxie, I pity you that you can't share them with Gracie and me every Sunday," said Lulu. "Papa, won't you give us--Max and Gracie and me--a private Bible lesson all to ourselves after the service for the grown folks, sailors and all, has been held, just as you used to do when we were all at home at Woodburn?" "Quite willingly, if my children wish it; indeed, it is what I had contemplated doing," replied the captain; "for we cannot better employ the hours of the holy Sabbath than in the study of God's Word, which he has given us to be a 'lamp to our feet and a light to our path' that we may journey safely to that happy land where sin and sorrow are unknown. "Never forget, my children, that we are but strangers and pilgrims upon this earth, only passing through it on our way to an eternal home of either everlasting blessedness or never ending woe--a home where all is holiness, joy, peace, and love, or to that other world of unending remorse and anguish, 'the blackness of darkness forever.'" "It is very difficult to keep that always in mind, papa," said Max. "I hope you will often ask God to help us--me especially--to remember it constantly, and live, not for time, but for eternity." "I do, my dear boy; there is never a day when I do not ask my heavenly Father to guard and guide each one of my dear children and give them a home with him at last. But we must all strive to enter in at the strait gate, remembering the warning of Jesus, 'Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.'" Violet joined them at that moment, then the rest of the party, one after another. Then came the call to breakfast; and soon after leaving the table, and the holding of the regular morning service on the vessel, nearly everyone went ashore and to church. At the close of the exercises there, they returned to the _Dolphin_, dined, a little later assembled under the awning on the deck, and being presently joined by the greater part of the crew, another short service, consisting of the reading of the Scriptures, with explanatory remarks, prayer, and the singing of hymns, followed. After that, the captain took his three older children aside and gave them, as in the dear old times at Woodburn, a Bible lesson, in which they were free to ask of him as many questions as they would. "Papa," said Grace, "I was reading in Isaiah this morning this verse, 'Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation.' Does it mean the dear Lord Jesus, papa?"