The austerity of Kike's conscience had slumbered during his convalescence. It was wide awake now. He sat that evening in his room trying to see the right way. According to old Methodist custom he looked for some inward movement of the spirit--some "impression"--that should guide him. During the great religious excitement of the early part of this century, Western pietists referred everything to God in prayer, and the belief in immmediate divine direction was often carried to a ludicrous extent. It is related that one man retired to the hills and prayed a week that he might know how he should be baptized, and that at last he came rushing out of the woods, shouting "Hallelujah! Immersion!" Various devices were invented for obtaining divine direction--devices not unworthy the ancient augurs. Lorenzo Dow used to suffer his horse to take his own course at each divergence of the road. It seems to have been a favorite delusion of pietism, in all ages, that God could direct an inanimate object, guide a dumb brute, or impress a blind impulse upon the human mind, but could not enlighten or guide the judgment itself. The opening of a Bible at random for a directing text became so common during the Wesleyan movement in England, that Dr. Adam Clarke thought it necessary to utter a stout Irish philippic against what he called "Bible sortilege." These devout divinings, these vanes set to catch the direction of heavenly breezes, could not but impress so earnest a nature as Kike's. Now in his distress he prayed with eagerness and opened his Bible at random to find his eye lighting, not on any intelligible or remotely applicable passage, but upon a bead-roll of unpronounceable names in one of the early chapters of the Book of Chronicles. This disappointment he accepted as a trial of his faith. Faith like Kike's is not to be dashed by disappointment. He prayed again for direction, and opened at last at the text: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?" The marked trait in Kike's piety was an enthusiastic personal loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. This question seemed directed to him, as it had been to Peter, in reproach. He would hesitate no longer. Love, and life itself, should be sacrificed for the Christ who died for him. Then he prayed once more, and there came to his mind the memory of that saying about leaving houses and homes and lands and wives, for Christ's sake. It came to him, doubtless, by a perfectly natural law of mental association. But what did Kike know of the association of ideas, or of any other law of mental action? Wesley's sermons and Benson's Life of Fletcher constituted his library. To him it seemed certain that this text of scripture was "suggested." It was a call from Christ to give up all for him. And in the spirit of the sublimest self-sacrifice, he said: "Lord, I will keep back nothing!"