"You mean our Lord Jesus Christ," I said. "But, Uncle, you say He longed to help? I never knew that, I always thought--" "You thought He did not wish to help you at all, and that you would have very hard work to persuade Him?" "Well--something like it," I said, hesitatingly Flora had left the room a moment before, and now she put her head in at the door and called Angus. My Uncle Drummond and I were left alone. "My dear lassie," said he, as tenderly as if I had been his own child, "you would never have wished to be helped if He had not first wished to help you. But remember, Cary, help is not the right word. The true word is save. You are not a few yards out of the path, and able to turn back at any moment. You are lost. Dear Cary, will you let the Lord find you?" "Can I hinder Him?" I said. "Yes, my dear," was the solemn answer. "He allows Himself to be hindered, if you choose the way of death. He will not save you against your will. He demands your joining in that work. Take, again, the emblem of the tank: the man holds out his hands to you; you cannot help yourself out; but you can choose whether you will put your hands in his or not. It will not be his fault if you are drowned; it will be your own." "Uncle, how am I to put my hands in _His_?" "Hold them out to Him, Cary. Ask Him, with all your heart, to take you, and make you His own. And if He refuse, let me know." "I will try, Uncle," I answered. "But you said--does God _never_ save anybody against his will?" My Uncle Drummond was silent for a moment. "Well, Cary, perhaps at times He does. But it is not His usual way of working. And no man has any right to expect it in his own case, though we may be allowed to hope for it in that of another." I wonder very much now, as I write it all down, how I ever came to say all this to my Uncle Drummond. I never meant it at all when I began. I suppose I got led on from one thing to another. When I came to think of it, I was very grateful to Flora for going away and calling Angus after her. "But, Uncle," I said, recollecting myself suddenly, "how does anybody know when the Lord has heard him?" He smiled. "If you were lifted out of the tank and set on dry ground, Cary, do you think you would have much doubt about it?" "But I could see that, Uncle." "Take another emblem, then. You love some people very dearly, and there are others whom you do not like at all. You cannot see love and hate. But have you any doubt whom you love, or whom you dislike?" "No," said I,--"at least, not when I really love or dislike them very much. But there are people whom I cannot make up my mind about; I neither like nor dislike them exactly." "Those are generally people of whom you have not seen much, I think," said my Uncle Drummond; "or else they are those colourless men and women of whom you say that they have nothing in them. You could not feel so towards a person of decided character, and one whom you knew well."