It is thoroughly refreshing to come upon this exquisite bit of literature called "Ruth." It follows, as you know, immediately after the bloodstained stories we read in Judges. It shows that while there was war and confusion and hate there was also friendship and love and romance. It is a bit of exquisite beauty elbowed on either side by ugliness. This delightful story comes to us like a glad surprise. It is like finding a spring bubbling up in the desert. It is like plucking roses amidst ice bergs. It is like finding a violet in the very crater of a volcano. I hope you have read the Book of Ruth and are familiar with it. If you haven't you have slighted one of the sweetest and tenderest stories ever told. If you haven't you have neglected about the most delicate and winsome idyl to be found in ancient or modern literature. I have read some good literature, first and last. I have read poetry that lifted the heart and "set the soul to dreaming." I have read prose strong as granite and songful as a mountain brook. But I confess to you, if I wanted to find a finer piece of literature than the book of Ruth, I would be at a great loss to know where to search. The author sets you down at once amidst strange scenery. And the characters, while genuinely human, are also full of the witchery of romance and poetry. Here is the story. The rains have failed in the Bethlehem country and the harvests have been exceedingly meager. A certain little family composed of husband, wife and two children, is having a hard fight to keep the wolf from the door. Elimelech, the husband, can find no work and Naomi, the wife and mother, "kneads hunger in an empty bread tray," and goes through the daily torture of being asked for bread that she is not able to supply. Then one dark day the husband comes home utterly discouraged. He takes up the discussion where it was left off the day before. "Yes," he says, "there is nothing else to do. There is no bread in the land. There has been rain in Moab. We can go there. I do not know how they will receive us, but at any rate, they can only kill us and that is better than starvation." And Naomi's sad face becomes a shade sadder and she says, "The will of the Lord be done. But I had so hoped that we might be able to remain in the land of our fathers. You see, my dear, it is not of myself that I am thinking. We have two boys. We do not want to rear them in Moab. Moab, I know, is not far off physically, but it is a long way morally. If we go there we may lose our children. The time may even come when they will break the law of Moses and marry among the Moabites."