It was not to be supposed that with such a disposition I would let the New Testament lie very long on my table without looking into it. I chanced to begin at the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles—that wonderful book, which always seems to me to have the rushing, mighty wind of the Pentecost blowing through it from beginning to end. It was a Sunday afternoon, I remember, and the streets were full of people waiting to see the King pass by going to see some great lord. I was not well, yet not so ill but I was sitting up by my window to watch the show. To while away the time, I took up the book, and I soon became so lost in it that the whole pageant passed by without my seeing it at all. I was still deep in its pages when Mistress Davis came to see how I fared, and so fully was I absorbed in the story that when she asked me where I had been, I answered her— "At Jerusalem, madam!" Whereat she laughed, and answered that "it was a good place to be of a Sunday," adding more seriously: "But I see how it is, and right glad am I to see you so well employed. Only remember this, chick: the Scripture is not made to be read for diversion, like a Canterbury tale, or even like any other good book. 'Tis the Lord's own word sent down for the comfort of us poor sinners, and to guide us to that Home which He hath prepared for them that love Him; and as such, we must study it with reverence and ask for the enlightenment of the Spirit to be shed on its pages." This was a new idea to me, and I closed the volume for that time with a strange bewilderment of ideas. I could not sleep for thinking of it, and the more I thought, the more bewildered I became. Here was a history of the first age of the church under the apostles themselves, and yet not a word said about the worship of the Holy Mother, the adoration of saints, the sacrifice of the mass, and many other things which I had been led to consider essential to salvation. "But perhaps they are in the Epistles and Gospels," I thought, "only it is very strange that no more should be said about the Holy Mother after the first chapter, and that then she should only be spoken of in the same way as the other women." But when I came to read the Gospels it was surprise piled upon surprise. At first it was sheer enjoyment. How lovely were those narratives into which I threw myself with an earnestness which made me forget every thing else for the time being. How real to me were the gatherings to hear the word, the feeding of the multitudes, the sower who went forth to sow, the laborers waiting to be hired and grumbling over their pay, not because they had not enough, but because some one else had as much.