thing to do to work as I prayed, went directly to the subject of my prayers, and, sitting down by her, I began to tell her the story of where I first met her mother, and learned of what she was suffering over her missing daughter, and that from that hour every remembrance of her had been a prayer. And ere the call came for penitents to come forward, the tears were streaming down her cheeks and such evidence given of true penitence that I said to her, as seekers were going to the altar,"Why not go right now and renew that broken covenant?" She needed but one invitation and rose immediately. I followed and was glad to kneel with her at the altar and there, in her hearing, to pour out the burden of my soul that had been going up to the Father of Mercies for her from the first moment I learned her sad history. But my quiet confidence in having done just the thing I ought to do was wonderfully disturbed as the meeting closed and the minister said to me, “Oh, Mrs. Benedict, you have made a fearful mistake," and the mothers of the church responded, "You have made a fearful mistake in bringing that girl to the altar; Mrs. Such-a-one has come to the altar and Mrs. Such-a-one and they will not come again if that girl comes. You must tell her that she must not come to the altar again."

I was not in my own church, but from past experience with my own in their lack of faith and love in their care for this class of sinners, I am sure I would not have fared any better, and felt therefore that I must accept the rebuke I had received and was under obligations to carry out the directions. But, oh, how was I surprised; for I really thought it safer to venture, as I had done, in a Methodist revival than even in my own church, for I had always considered that church held the most wide open arms to take back the backslider or take in a sinner on probation of any church in existence. And I still think that it is, and was then, but this was a sinner of the class over whom it was a foregone conclusion that "she is too polluted to have any recognition anywhere," not even in the Christ-hand being extended to lead her to the

cleansing fountain of the all availing blood of Jesus. But how could I do as I was bidden? How could I tell that poor young girl that the church would not receive her back? I had told her at the first that she had been out in the world among sinners and had been wounded, and now her place was among Christian people, and they knew the power of the cleansing blood of Jesus, and in His love they knew how to forgive her and give her an opportunity to start again.

But now I was bidden to a duty that would cut down between Christ and the church. I must tell her still that God for Christ's sake would forgive her, and that the precious blood of Jesus would cleanse her, but that the church said she must not come to the altar again. I cannot tell how heavy this duty was to me or with what reluctance I performed it, but in doing it I received still greater evidences of true penitence and willingness to bear any humiliation so that she might but regain the place she had lost. As I told her that the minister and mothers of the church said she must not came to the altar again, she replied that, "ere I went astray, my father being hard of hearing, we always occupied the seat just back of the mourners' bench. I will go there." "Well," I replied, "then I will go there too." And the next evening, true to her promise, when the invitation was given to come forward, she took her seat alone in the proposed place, but I was not long in taking mine beside her. So when we knelt in prayer for the penitent, she and I had our little altar by ourselves. But, as soon as the service was over, I was again waited on and informed that that was an outsider's seat and he would be offended if that girl sat there. At this objection I was rather delighted than otherwise for I knew that outsider. I knew the spirit of the man and the ordeal that had enlarged his heart, for it had been his to be prostrate and dependent for many years, and for more than a year of which time my husband and I had given place to his couch in our room and ministered to him as though he had been our born brother. So with confidence I carried my suit to him and

received just such a reply as I confidently expected, which was, "She shall sit there." I made my report, but the rightful guardians of the cause of Christ on earth were not to be foiled in this, for the next night when the call came to penitents to go forward, and the good, old hymn was being sung:

"Come ye sinners, poor and needy,

Weak and wounded, sick and sore,
Jesus ready stands to save you,

Full of pity, love and power."

There was a committee of the mothers of the church in the aisles to see to it that the girl did not get forward even to the seat to which she was so welcomed by the outsider. But one of the mothers, more vigilant than the rest, did not let the matter stop here. But the next morning at the usual Sabbath service, she stationed herself in the entry waiting the coming of the mother of the unfortunate girl (who, by the way, was a member in equally as good standing in the church as herself), whom she informed that she must not allow her daughter to come to meeting any more. Of this I was apprised on coming home from Sabbath school held at the close of the meeting by being inquired of by my children, "Why mother, what is the matter with Mother Shiner? She was here crying and in such great distress and wanting to see thee." I took a hasty dinner and repaired to the humble abode to find the old people and their erring child in almost utter despair. But calming them as best I could by quotations from the blessed Word, I knelt with them in prayer, and if ever I was allowed to come near the mercy seat it was there and then. As I rose the old lady had become composed and went on to tell me the story of her daughter's error. That she had been seduced by the son of one of the church members living right here in the city who was walking the streets in his broadcloth and recognized by everybody, and who, on learning of her daughter's prospective motherhood, persuaded her to hide herself in an institution not of Christian influence for the preservation of the young life and that of the mother, but a

place where measures were taken for the destruction of one at the risk of both. But ere the work of destruction was done they had received the intelligence of her whereabouts and were about to go to her rescue when her seducer, divining their intent, removed her to another State where, during the remaining months of her absence from home, she had given birth to, and was caring for, his child under promise (a promise which, however, was never redeemed) that if she would keep it a secret he would give her $500. And that the child was now sick, and the old people in whose home it was born and in whose home she had left it had written urging her return, but she was not in possession of means sufficient to pay her fare. On receiving this intelligence my plans were soon laid as just the thing to do, which was to go to the church members and say to them, "You do not want this girl to attend these meetings, and I think it will be well for her to be just as far away from the church as we can well send her that she may forget, if possible, the treatment she has received. And there is a place where, in my judgment, she ought to go and go at once, but she has not the means to go. Now I extend my hand to you for help in the direction of the wherewith to pay her fare." Having by this means secured the necessary amount, I sent her to the dear old people who had so kindly sheltered her in the hour of her extremity, and who were now so desirous of her presence to aid them in the care of her sick child.

Thus, the church being relieved of the burden of so great a sinner, seeking peace and pardon at its altar, went on with its meetings undisturbed, while I was taking close note of what its harvest should be, and was not at all surprised that it amounted to almost nothing, neither of the prominent ladies being gathered whose presence at the altar was urged as a reason why the poor unfortunate girl should not be allowed to come, who, by the way, had not been half so great a sinner as she was accused of being, for during her many months from home she had been simply taking care of her

own child instead of being an inmate of a brothel as the church and world had been so ready to believe. Thus foiled in her first attempt to regain her place in the church, I do not know whether she ever again attempted it, but I do know that she returned to her father's house a year and a half later, from which she was honorably married and has since lived a respectable life.

Dwelling under the power of the cleansing blood of Jesus, and sustained from day to day by the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit, my faith in the foundation stone of the Christian religion was not at all disturbed by this action of the church, but memory carries me back to a time, in the struggle in my own church in the early part of my defense for the unfortunate, when it was so far disturbed that I remember on one occasion of mentally exclaiming, "Is there a God that cares for human suffering?" But having passed on from victory to victory and being favored to see such blessed fruits of my labor, I was by this time too firmly established. But not so with my son, yet in his teens, whose sympathies were naturally with his mother, and who was thus led to criticise the action of the church, which developed in a parody on the "Little church 'round the corner," one stanza of which I vividly remember. After having expressed with what open arms the church would have received the seducer, had he bowed at the altar, he says:

"But the woman who fell, must go down to hell,

With no help from the little church on the corner."

Seed thus sown germinated and finally brought forth the ripened fruit of unbelief. Having witnessed this effect on my only son the reader surely will not wonder that I closely criticise any action of the church that touches the foundation principles of the gospel which is "The blood of Jesus will cleanse" or it wont. He either "has power to save to the uttermost" all that come to God by him or he has not.

The reader will hardly suppose that I passed through all this conflict without expressing to the sisters of the church