Free Bright Arrows by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

again with Caspar. Eagerly she began to read and was amazed at the simplicity of the wording and the startling truths that were set down as facts. For the first time in her life, although she had gone to Sunday school since she was a little child and to church every Sunday--sometimes twice or three times a day--she began to take it in that God considered everyone a sinner. Of course, she had heard about sinners, but she had never realized that people like her father classed in such a category. For the first time she took in the great thought that ever since Adam's sin, everybody was born with a dead spiritual nature. That all of Adam's children had inherited a tendency to sin and that Satan was using that sinful tendency of mankind to turn men, even Christians, against the Son, Jesus Christ. And where he failed to turn them actually against Christ, he was engaged in trying to make it appear that he was doing Christ's work, or more subtle still, trying to make the world believe there was no devil and no sin.
    Eden read on, fascinated, because the book was written most simply and originally, yet it touched on themes she had never before heard discussed, or if she had, she had never taken any notice of them. There was "original sin" that seemed to belong to everybody. She had never thought of herself as a sinner. She had always tried to do right, to please her father and mother, and do the things that were expected of her, yet here was this strange book saying " All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Emphasizing it, as if this not only was meant for gangsters and low-down people, but as if it might have some kind of meaning for good, right-living people. And another phrase, "Ye must be born again." But surely that did not mean church members! Strange! What was this doctrine, anyway? Why did her father send for this book? Or was it just sent to him to advertise it? Yet she couldn't lay it down, and kept on reading till, little by little, she began to wonder if all this could be true.
    What was being "born again," anyway? There had been a Sunday school lesson long ago in her childhood about a man who came to Jesus and wanted to know how to be saved, and He had told him that he must be born again. But she had always supposed that the man had been a very wicked person, so wicked that Jesus saw he had just to begin all over again. And wasn't he wealthy, too? It seemed she remembered that about him. She had never thought of this advice as applying to good, right-minded people. She couldn't help feeling a little outraged that anyone should think she herself--well, at least her father, anyway--needed to be born again. Perhaps this was some sort of heretical book that she ought not to bother with. Yet because it had been sent to her father, she felt she must know more about it. Besides, the book itself was intriguing. It seemed to speak to her very soul, to make her suspect things in her heart that she did not know were there, that she had never dreamed were objectionable to God.
    So she went on reading until suddenly Janet knocked at the door.
    "Are ye asleep, Miss Eden? I'm sorry to disturb ye, but a mon downstairs seems tae think he ought tae see ye richt away. It's that lawyer mon from the bank, and he says there's something important ye ought to know at oncet. Could ye coom doon juist a meenit? He says he wouldna keep ye lang."
    "Why, of course, Janet. No, I wasn't asleep. I was just reading one of Daddy's books."
    Eden jumped up, her finger in the page where she had been reading, and hurried down the stairs.
    The young man was standing in the hall, glancing at his watch.
    "I hope I haven't disturbed you, Miss Thurston. Mr. Worden has telephoned again, and he wanted me to get in touch with you and tell you what has been discovered so far."
    "Oh, you haven't disturbed me," said Eden pleasantly. "I was only reading. Come into the living room and sit down. Of course, I'm anxious to know if there are any new