"If we were not so far out of the world, I should have to give it up," she said; "I know it is proper they should come; but it seems to me just as strange as if they were to walk into the study in the evening when I am teaching Reuby. I can't make it seem right; and when I see them writing down what I say, it just paralyzes me." It might have seemed so to Draxy, but it did not to her hearers. No one would have supposed her conscious of any disturbing presence. And more than one visitor carried away with him written records of her eloquent words. One of her most remarkable sermons was called "The Gospel of Mystery." The text was Psalm xix. 2:-- "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge." First she dwelt on the sweet meaning of the word Gospel. "Dear friends," she said, "it is a much simpler word than we realize; it is only 'good news,' 'good tidings.' We get gospels every day. Our children send us good news of their lives. What gospels of joy are such letters! And nations to nations send good news: a race of slaves is set free; a war has ended; shiploads of grain have been sent to the starving; a good man has been made ruler; these are good tidings--gospels." After dwelling on this first, simplest idea of the word, until every one of her hearers had begun to think vividly of all the good tidings journeying in words back and forth between heart and heart, continent and continent, she spoke of the good news which nature tells without words. Here she was eloquent. Subtle as the ideas were, they were yet clothed in the plain speech which the plain people understood: the tidings of the spring, of the winter, of the river, of the mountain; of gold, of silver, of electric fire; of blossom and fruit; of seed-time and harvest; of suns and stars and waters,--these were the "speech" which "day uttered unto day." But "knowledge was greater" than speech: night in her silence "showed" what day could not tell. Here the faces of the people grew fixed and earnest. In any other hands than Draxy's the thought would have been too deep for them, and they would have turned from it wearily. But her simplicity controlled them always. "Stand on your door-steps on a dark night," she said,--"a night so dark that you can see nothing: looking out into this silent darkness, you will presently feel a far greater sense of how vast the world is, than you do in broad noon-day, when you can see up to the very sun himself."