“Well, dear friends, who was this man?  Was he only a good man—­a very good man, and no more—­like our dear Mr. Wesley, who has been taken from us?...He was the Son of God—­’in the image of the Father,’ the Bible says; that means, just like God, who is the beginning and end of all things—­the God we want to know about.  So then, all the love that Jesus showed to the poor is the same love that God has for us.  We can understand what Jesus felt, because he came in a body like ours and spoke words such as we speak to each other.  We were afraid to think what God was before—­the God who made the world and the sky and the thunder and lightning.  We could never see him; we could only see the things he had made; and some of these things was very terrible, so as we might well tremble when we thought of him.  But our blessed Saviour has showed us what God is in a way us poor ignorant people can understand; he has showed us what God’s heart is, what are his feelings towards us.

“But let us see a little more about what Jesus came on earth for.  Another time he said, ‘I came to seek and to save that which was lost’; and another time, ’I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’

“The lost!...Sinners!...Ah, dear friends, does that mean you and me?”

Hitherto the traveller had been chained to the spot against his will by the charm of Dinah’s mellow treble tones, which had a variety of modulation like that of a fine instrument touched with the unconscious skill of musical instinct.  The simple things she said seemed like novelties, as a melody strikes us with a new feeling when we hear it sung by the pure voice of a boyish chorister; the quiet depth of conviction with which she spoke seemed in itself an evidence for the truth of her message.  He saw that she had thoroughly arrested her hearers.  The villagers had pressed nearer to her, and there was no longer anything but grave attention on all faces.  She spoke slowly, though quite fluently, often pausing after a question, or before any transition of ideas.  There was no change of attitude, no gesture; the effect of her speech was produced entirely by the inflections of her voice, and when she came to the question, “Will God take care of us when we die?” she uttered it in such a tone of plaintive appeal that the tears came into some of the hardest eyes.  The stranger had ceased to doubt, as he had done at the first glance, that she could fix the attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist preacher, until she came to the words, “Lost!—­Sinners!” when there was a great change in her voice and manner.  She had made a long pause before the exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating thoughts that showed themselves in her features.  Her pale face became paler; the circles under her eyes deepened,