"Your understanding is quite correct, Mrs. Farsee, and if ever St. Andrew's Church closes its doors on any man or woman, in like circumstances to the one you refer to, I care not how sinworn and wretched, it closes them at the same time on Thomas Fearnon--we go out together." "If that is your decision," replied Mrs. Farsee haughtily, "please remove the names of Mr. and Mrs. M. T. Farsee and Miss Lucy Farsee from the membership roll, and I am also authorized by Mrs. Shunum to tell you that all the Shunums withdraw from the church for the same reason." Thomas Fearnon retired that night sad at heart--not that the loss of these two families from the membership roll gave him much concern, for to tell the truth he was more concerned to know how they ever came to be put on the roll, but he was concerned to find that kind of spirit among the membership of the congregation to which he had come with such high hopes, fresh from college. So far as losing members was concerned, he reminded himself that, in God's arithmetic, subtraction often produced an increase. Perhaps of his congregation the words of Scripture were true, "The people are yet too many." Nevertheless, the offended families needed His Saviour and the ministry of the church as much as, perhaps more, than the poor creature whose very presence they thought defiled their heretofore select congregation. The following Sabbath morning the text was Luke xix. 10, "For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." Those who had attended Mrs. Farsee's "afternoon bridge" on the preceding Thursday knew that the sermon was the outgrowth of the "interview." None of them used their favourite adjective "lovely" of Thomas Fearnon's sermon that morning; the mission of the Master and the consequent mission of His church was presented with a clearness and an earnestness that made not a few decidedly uncomfortable. "I charge you, my fellow workers," he pleaded, "never to degenerate into dilettante church parlour triflers, but strike out for God in hard work to recover the lost. There are those whose life's roses are turned to ashes, those who have almost forgotten how to smile, those from whose hearts all music has fled. What an incomparable joy to tell them of, and seek to lead them to, the One who with divine delicacy said, 'Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.' That welcoming Saviour would speak through us to those whom too often we, professedly His followers, would cast out. If every individual in this world treated the fallen as you do, my friend, would it be easy or hard for that one to get into the Kingdom of God? Where shall the wanderers be welcome if not in the Father's House? Where shall those whom He created and for whom He died find friendship and help, if not in that company of worshippers who cry 'Our Father'?"