What a strange power God has bestowed upon us! There is some one that we long to influence and change for the better. That one may know our wish and purpose, recognize our efforts, but quietly baffle us by an independent will that we can no more coerce and control than by our breath soften into spring warmth a wintry morning. We can look pleadingly into some dear one's eyes, clasp his hands and appeal with even tearful earnestness, and yet he may remain unmoved, or be but transiently affected. Though by touch or caress, by convincing arguments and loving entreaty, we may be unable to shake the obdurate will, we can gently master it through the intervention of another. The throne of God seems a long way round to reach the friend at our side,--for the mother to reach her child in her arms,--but it usually proves the quickest and most effectual way. Where before were only resistance and indifference, there come, in answer to prayer, strange telentings, mysterious longings, receptivity, and sometimes, in a way that is astonishing, full acceptance of the truth. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," were the words of the all-powerful One, of the beautiful emblem of His own mysterious and transforming presence. Again He said, "How much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." Here is a power, a force, an agency, that the materialist cannot calculate, weigh, or measure, or laugh scornfully out of existence. As upon a sultry night a breeze comes rustling through the leaves from unknown realms of space, and cools our throbbing temples, so the soul is often stirred and moved by impulses heavenward that are to their subjects as mysterious as unexpected. To a certain extent, God gives to the prayerful control of Himself, as it were, and becomes their willing agent; and when all mysteries shall be solved, and the record of all lives be truthfully revealed, it will probably be seen that not those who astonished the world with their own powers, but those who quietly, through prayer, used God's power, were the ones who made the world move forward. While Hemstead would never be a Mystic or a Quietest in his faith, he still recognized most clearly that human effort would go but little way in awakening spiritual life, unless seconded by the Divine power. Therefore in his strong and growing wish that he might bring the beautiful girl, who seemed like a revelation to him, into sympathy with the truth that he believed and loved, he had based no hope on what he alone could do or say. But her manner on the previous morning had chilled him, and he had half purposed to be a little distant and indifferent also. It did not occur to him that he was growing sensitive in regard to her treatment of himself, as well as of the truth. He readily assented to Lottie's request that he should accept Mrs. Byram's invitation, and found a strange pleasure in her graciousness and vivacity at the supper-table.