The opening services seemed especially impressive and beautiful to Mr. Hardy. He wondered how he had ever dared sit and criticise Mr. Jones' preaching and his reading of the hymns. To be sure, he was not a perfect speaker; but his love for his people and for all men and his rarely good everyday life were so remarkable, that they ought to have counted for more than they ever did. It is astonishing how many good deeds and good men pass through this world unnoticed and unappreciated; while every evil deed is caught up and magnified and criticised by press and people, until it seems as if the world must be a very wicked place indeed, and the good people very scarce. Mr. Hardy joined in the service with a joy unknown to him for years. He had come to it from the reading of his Bible instead of the reading of the morning paper, and from prayer instead of from thoughts of his business or a yawning stroll through his library. His mind was receptive of the best things in the service. He entered into it with the solemn feeling that it was his last. When the minister gave out the text, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad," Mr. Hardy started, and leaned forward intently, feeling that the message of the preacher was peculiarly for him and strangely appropriate to his condition. The first statement of the sermon arrested his attention and held him irresistibly to the end of the argument: "The judgment seat of Christ will not be a dreadful place to a man whose sins have been forgiven in this world; but if he comes up to it seamed and scarred and stained with sins unrepented of and unforgiven because he has not asked God to forgive him, it will be a place of awful fear to his soul. There are men here in this audience who are as ready to die now as they ever will be; they have made their peace with God; they have no quarrel with their neighbours; their accounts are all square in business; they are living in loving relations with the home circle; they have no great burdens of remorse or regret weighing them down; if God should call them this minute to step up to the judgment seat, they would be ready. "But there are other men here who are not at all ready for such a tremendous event. They may think they are, but they are mistaken. How can they stand before the greatest Being in all the universe and have no fear, when they are unprepared to answer His questions: 'Why did you not confess Me before men? Why did you not do as I commanded and bear the burdens of the weak instead of pleasing yourself?' What will they say then?