a5 The Little Minister

things; so long as she remained strange to relig-
ion, the blame lay on him.

All this Babbie read in the Gavin of the past
night, and to her it was the book of love. What
things she had known, said, and done in that holy
name! How shamefully have we all besmirched
it! She had only known it as the most selfish of
the passions, a brittle image that men consulted
because it could only answer in the words they
gave it to say. But here was a man to whom
love was something better than his own desires
leering on a pedestal. Such love as Babbie had
seen hitherto made strong men weak, but this was
a love that made a weak man strong. All her
life, strength had been her idol, and the weakness
that bent to her cajolery her scorn. But only
now was it revealed to her that strength, instead
of being the lusty child of passions, grows by
grappling with and throwing them.

So Babbie loved the little minister for the best
that she had ever seen in man. I shall be told
that she thought far more of him than he deserved,
forgetting the mean in the worthy ; but who that
has had a glimpse of heaven will care to let his
mind dwell henceforth on earth? Love, it is
said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an
extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy
of regard. To see the best is to see most
clearly, and it is the lover’s privilege.

Down in the Auld Licht kirk that forenoon,
Gavin preached a sermon in praise of Woman,
and up in the mud house in Windyghoul Babbie
sat alone. But it was the Sabbath day to her:
the first Sabbath in her life. Her discovery had