“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” They rang in her heart with triumph as she lifted her head for the closing song, whose words she could not see because of the tears in her eyes, and when it was over, and the benediction was spoken, she turned, humiliated and sad, to go out of the house of God. Just behind her came a clear, languid voice, drawling: “Yes, wasn’t it a sweet sermon? Perfectly lovely. I just love to hear Doctor Darling preach; he is so refined, and he makes one feel so good--” And out in the sunshine the young girl walked back to her little house stricken, almost sick, with the experience of the morning. This was her first experience of Modernism in a Christian church. Summer visitors in Meadow Brook had complained that the minister there was old-fashioned, and they really ought to have a young man who would be broad in his views and educate the young people in up-to-date religion. But the people of Meadow Brook loved Doctor Ballantine and his wife, and did not want to see them leave. He had been there a long time and the elders in the church all thought as he did, so until some of the younger generation who had not been taught by him in the Scriptures grew up he was not likely to be ousted. Joyce had read a little about the state of things in the religious world, but she had thought of Modernism as one thinks of leprosy, or the starving Russians, as something far, far away and awful, to prevent which one ought to give money and send missionaries, but which one was never likely to meet with in daily life. Now, suddenly brought face to face with it, she was shaken to her soul. Not that the sermon of the morning had given her any doubts. It could not have done that even if it had been strong in arguments and logic, and not weak, garbled statements of half-facts she had known all her life, for Joyce was a Christian, rooted and grounded in the Word, and had lived too many years in a sweet communion with her Saviour to have been shaken even a little in her sweet faith. No, it had made her angry, tremblingly, impotently angry. She felt as if she could not stand it that words like those should have been preached in a Christian pulpit under the name of an orthodox faith, and no one put in a protest. She longed to be a man that she might do something about it, a prophet that she might cry out; a wise leader that she might come to the people and tell them how the curse of God would be upon them if they listened to words like those--how their souls would be lost--!