“Come down into the cabin with me,” said Mr. Kirkbright.  “I want to look up that old pattern.  It will tell me something.”

Down in the cabin they seated themselves together where they had had many a talk before, at a corner table near Mr. Kirkbright’s state-room door.  Out of the state-room he had brought his Bible.

He got hold of one word in that old ordination,—­“unawares.”

“’He that doeth it unawares,” he repeated, holding the Bible with his finger between the half-shut leaves, at that thirty-fifth chapter of Numbers.  “How that reminds of, and connects with, the Atoning Prayer,—­’Forgive them, for they know not what they do!’ ‘Sins, negligences, ignorances;’ how they shade and change into each other!  If all the mistakes could be forgiven and set right, how much evil, virulent and unmixed, would there be left in the world, do you suppose?”

“Not more than there was before the mistakes began,” replied Vireo.  “Like the Arabian genie, the monster would be drawn down from its horrible expansion to a point again,—­the point of a possibility; the serpent suggestion of evil choice.  When God has done his work of forgiving, there is where it will be, I think; and the Son of the woman shall set his heel upon its head.”

“I wish I could see what lies behind this,” said Mr. Kirkbright.  “‘He shall abide in it unto the death of the high-priest,’ and after that, ‘the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.’  That might almost seem to point to the old sacrificial idea; the atonement by death.  I cannot rest in that.  I wish I could see its whole meaning,—­for meaning it must have, and a meaning of life.”

“A temporary ministry; a limited exile; the one the measure of the other,” sail Hilary Vireo, slowly thinking it out, and taking the book from the hand of his friend, to look over the words themselves, as he did so.

“The glory is in the promise:  ’he shall return into the land of his possession.’  His life shall be given back to him,—­all that it was meant to be.  It shall be kept open for him, till the time of his banishment is over.  Meanwhile, over even this period is a holy providing, an anointed commission of grace.”

“But hear this,” he continued, turning to the Epistle to the Hebrews, “and put the suggestions alongside.  All but God’s final and eternal best is transitional.  ’They truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death.  But this man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.  Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost, that come to God by Him.’  Did it ever occur to you to think about that saving to the uttermost?  Not a scrap of blessed possibility forfeited, lost?  All gathered up, restored, put into our hands again, from the redeeming hands of Christ?  Backward and forward, through all that was irretrievable to us; sought, and traced, and found, and brought back with rejoicing; the whole house swept, until not one silver piece is missing.  That is the return into the land of our possession. That is God’s salvation, and his gospel!  That is what shall come to pass.  Not yet; not while we are only under the lesser ministry; but when that priesthood over the time of our waiting ends, and we have believed unto the full appearing of the Lord!”