But, hard as it was for her to consent, at last she was driven into it by sheer starvation. And we see the pathetic little family scourged by hollow-eyed hunger from the land of their fathers into the land of the heathen Moabites. Just what their reception was there we are not told. However, I am quite sure that they were received more kindly than they had expected. Their want and their own kindness seemed to have opened the hearts of the strangers among whom they went to live. Certain it is that the husband and father was able to find sufficient work to keep from actual starvation. By and by times grew better. The pinch of poverty let up, and they began to feel somewhat at home in the land of their adoption. But the boys were playing with the children of the Moabites. Of course they were. All children are alike. They know no barriers of kindred, of class or of religion. A child is the true democrat. Sad to say, we soon train him out of this. But he is a thorough democrat by nature. He plays as gladly with the son of a scrub woman as with the son of a queen. He lavishes his love as freely upon a pickaninny as upon a prince. So these Jewish boys were playing with the heathen children. Then a few years went by and the pious father and mother came to realize with horror that their two boys were actually in love with two Moabitish girls. Not only did they love them, but they even wanted to marry them. This was a calamity indeed. I can hear the protests of the father and mother. They warn them of the danger of such marriages. They plead the law of Moses. But all in vain. And we are not surprised. You might as well get in front of Niagara Falls and say "Boo!" and expect it to flow back the other way, as to try to reason with the average young fellow who is in love. Both boys married Moabitish women. And then what did this wise and godly father and mother do? They did not do what is so usual in cases of an unwelcome marriage. Our boy or our girl makes what seems to us a foolish and ruinous marriage. Then what do we do? We declare that we will never speak to them again, that they shall never darken our doors. And we thereby help on a disaster that might never have come. Naomi and her husband had better sense. They took the wives of their two sons, heathens though they were, into their home and into their hearts. They felt sure that that was the one way that promised a remedy. Then one day disaster came to the little home of the strangers. The husband and father died, and Naomi was left with the whole responsibility of the family upon her lone shoulders. Her daughters-in-law had seen her in her joy. They marked her also in her sorrow. They were impressed, no doubt, by her calmness and her strength. She walked with the sure and quiet step of one who felt underneath her and round about her the Everlasting Arm.