"How many souls hunger till they are past their appetite! Go on--down through the years--needy and waiting, and never find or grasp that which a sure instinct tells them they were made for? "This, this is the poverty of life! These are the poor, to whom God's Gospel was preached in Christ! And to these denied and waiting ones the first words of Christ's preaching--as I read them--were spoken in blessing. "Because, elsewhere, he blesses the meek; elsewhere and presently, he tells us how the lowly in spirit shall inherit the earth; so, when I open to this, his earliest uttered benediction upon our race, I read it with an interpretation that includes all humanity: "'Blessed, in spirit, are the poor. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.' . . . . . "What is this Kingdom of Heaven? 'It is within you.' It is that which you hold, and live in spiritually; the _real_, of which all earthly, outward being and having are but the show. It is the region wherein little children 'do always behold the Face of my Father which is in Heaven.' It is where we are when we shut our eyes and pray in the words that Christ taught us. . . . . . "What matters, then, where your feet stand, or wherewith your hands are busy? So that it is the spot where God has put you, and the work He has given you to do? Your real life is within--hid in God with Christ--ripening, and strengthening, and waiting, as through the long, geologic ages of night and incompleteness waited the germs of all that was to unfold into this actual, green, and bounteous earth! . . . . . "The narrower your daily round, the wider, maybe, the outreach. Isolated upon a barren mountain peak, you may take in river and lake--forest, field, and valley. A hundred gardens and harvests lift their bloom and fullness to your single eye. "There is a sunlight that contracts the vision; there is a starlight that enlarges it to take in infinite space. "'God sets some souls in shade, alone. They have no daylight of their own. Only in lives of happier ones They see the shine of distant suns. "'God knows. Content thee with thy night. Thy greater heaven hath grander light, To-day is close. The hours are small. Thou sit'st afar, and hast them all. "'Lose the less joy that doth but blind; Reach forth a larger bliss to find. To-day is brief: the inclusive spheres Rain raptures of a thousand years.'" Faith could not tell what hymn was sung, or what were the words of the prayer that followed the sermon. There was a music and an uplifting in her own soul that made them needless, but for the pause they gave her. She hardly knew that a notice was read as the people rose before the benediction, when the minister gave out, as requested, that "the Village Dorcas Society would meet on Wednesday of the coming week, at Mrs. Parley Gimp's."