"You use the word 'heavenly' with more appropriateness than you think," she replied, gravely. "All such surprises are heavenly in their origin, and my course is but a faint reflection of Heaven's disposition toward you, and was prompted by the duty I owe to God as well as to you. Self-righteousness would have led me in Pharisaic pride to say, 'Stand aside, I am holier than thou.' But you have only to read the life of the perfect One to know that in so doing I should not have been like Him. He laid His rescuing hands on both the physical and the moral leper--" "As you have upon me," said Gregory, with a look of such intense gratitude that she was embarrassed. "I deserve no great credit, for it was only right that I should do the utmost in my power to help you. How else could I be a Christian in any real sense? But there is nothing strange about it. Christianity is not like false religions, that require unnatural and useless sacrifices. If I were a true physician, and found you suffering from a terrible and contagious disease, while I feared and loathed the disease, I might have the deepest sympathy for you and do my best to cure you. I do loathe the sin you confessed, inexpressibly. See how near it came to destroying you. While God hates the sin, He ever loves the sinful." "I hope you will always be divine in that respect," he could not forbear saying, with rising color. But her thoughts were so intent on what was uppermost in her heart that she did not notice his covert meaning, and said, innocently, "I will give you honest friendship so long as you honestly try to redeem the pledges of to-day." "Then I have your friendship for life, be it long or short," said he, decisively. With more lightness in her tone she continued, "And I too will ask a question that has a bearing on a little theory of my own. Supposing I had shrunk from you, and tried to give some good advice from a safe distance, what would you have done?" "Left for New York to-morrow, and gone straight to the devil as one of his own imps," he replied, without a moment's hesitation. She sighed deeply, and said, "I fear you would--that is, if left to yourself. And the worst of it is, it seems to me that this is the way the Church is trying to save the world. Suppose a doctor should address his patients through a speaking-trumpet and hand them his remedies on the end of a very long rod. Death would laugh at his efforts. People can be saved only as Christ saved them. We must go where they are, lay our hands upon them, and look sympathy and hope right into their eyes. If Christ's followers would only do this, how many more might be rescued who now seem hopelessly given over to evil!" "Those who won't do it," said Gregory, bitterly, "are in no sense His true followers, but are merely the 'hangers on' of His army, seeking to get out of it all they can for self. Every general knows that the 'camp-followers' are the bane of an army."