It was well enough to have a special season for parties, and a special season for going to the sea-side, and a special season for doing one's dressmaking, and a special season for cleaning house, and a special season for everything under the sun but religious meetings; these should be conducted--at all times. Was that what they meant? Oh, dear, no! They should not be conducted at all. Was _that_ what they meant? Who should tell what they _did_ mean? One lady said: "The idea of the bell ringing every evening for prayer-meeting! It was too absurd! People must have a little time for recreation; these weeks just before the holidays were always by common consent the time for festivities of all sorts; it was downright folly to expect young people to give up their pleasures and go every evening to meeting." So she issued her cards for a party, and gathered as many of the young people about her as she could. And this woman was a member of the First Church! And this woman professed to believe in the verse that read, "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God!" There were others who went to these parties, hushing their consciences meantime by the explanation that the social duties were important ones, and that one whose heart was right could serve God as well having religious conversation at a party, as she could occupying a seat at a prayer-meeting. Perhaps they really believed it. What marvel? Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. The trouble about the sincerity was, that those same persons were not unaware of certain sneering remarks that were being made, to the effect that if church-members could go to parties when there were meetings at their own church, _they_ could surely be excused from the meetings; and they could not have been utterly ignorant of the verse that read plainly, "Let not your good be evil spoken of." There were still others who compromised matters, taking the meetings for the first hour of the evening and a party for the next three; and the lookers-on said, sneeringly, that there was a strife going on between the soul, the flesh and the devil, and they wondered which would conquer! So all these classes flourished and worked in their different ways in the First Church; just as they always _will_ work, until that day when the wheat shall be forever separated from the tares. The wonder is why so many blinded eyes _must_ insist that because there are tares, there is therefore no wheat. The Lord said, "Let both grow together until the harvest." "I don't understand it," Ruth said one day to Marion, as they talked the work over, and tried to lay plans for future helpfulness. "Why do you suppose it is that I seem able to do nothing at all? I try with all my might; my heart is surely in it, and I long with a desire that seems almost as if it would consume me, to see some fruit of my work, and yet I don't. What _can_ be the difficulty?"