CHAPTER V.

HE stirring-up which he expressed the need of came to him not long afterwards, and came, in the wonderful grace of God, through joy and not through sorrow. Frank's uncle and aunt, Horace J. and Margaret L. Smith, lived at Hestonville, about five miles from Haverford College, and with generous kindness they gave Frank the treat of a party at their house every three weeks on Saturday afternoons. Frank was to invite some of his fellow-students to accompany him, and I was to take out with me from the city a few of his young cousins and friends to join them.

Our first party was on October 8th, 1870, and was the beginning of a succession of the pleasantest, happiest reunions of young people it was ever my lot to attend. "Uncle Horace" and "Aunt Maggie" made us feel thoroughly welcome and at home, and the merry out-door games in the afternoon, and the evening's innocent amusements in-doors, will never be forgotten by any who shared in them. The little party, who met thus from time to time, called themselves in merriment "Heston-villains," and were drawn together in a

close bond of youthful friendship that was to us elders delightful to witness and join in.

It was through these parties, and what grew out oi them, that Frank's awakening was to come. Nearly all of the young circle were Christians, and one or two of them were truly consecrated in heart and life to the service of their Lord. And the joyous merriment of their games and their talk seemed never to turn their hearts away from a far deeper interest in the blessed subject of the glorious salvation they had found in the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel had come to them all, as a piece of good news to make them happy, and not as a code of severe laws to frighten them and make them sad. And the ending to their happy evenings, which they all loved the best, was to gather in Uncle Horry's parlours, around the glowing fire, and read the Bible and sing hymns together, followed by a little season of waiting before the Lord, during which some of the young voices would be heard breaking the silence in prayer or simple confession. It was the influence of these little meetings which at last effectually awakened our boy.

The first of these occasions, however, was held in our own parlour in Filbert Street, where we gathered one evening on our return from Hestonville, while waiting for the late train that was to carry our students back to their college. Frank's father proposed our each one telling the present state of our religious experience, and began asking one after another some simple question to draw it out. He turned to Frank first, and our dear boy was thus obliged to come out openly, and

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declare among his young friends whose side he was, which he ever after felt to have been a great blessing to him. It was a deeply solemn and touching occasion. As one after another uttered their simple confession of blessing or of need, scarcely a dry eye remained in the room, and two of the Haverford students broke down entirely, saying they were not converted, but that there was nothing which they longed for so much.

In reference to this evening one of the young ladies has written to us since Frank's death:

"My religious friendship with Frank began that evening, after one of our first Hestonville parties, when we walked in to Philadelphia, and met in your parlour for confession and prayer. I think he was the first young man with whom I had ever had a religious conversation, and it was a great strength to both of us. We spoke of the great need of Haverford, and the great work to be done there; and when we parted on our steps agreed that we would each pray for the college until the Lord should bless it. And his faith was very strengthening to my own: he said he saw no reason why we should not receive an answer to our prayer."

The result of this little season was that the two dear boys spoken of were converted within a few days (one of them is now, we believe, with Frank in Paradise), and that they were all so much interested as to beg Frank's father to come out to Haverford sometimes to talk to them and help them on their Christian pathway. He gladly consented, and from that time occa

sionally met a few of Frank's cousins and fellow-students in a room belonging to one of the professors at the college. In these little social meetings the attention of those present was first called to the certainty of the forgiveness of sin to those who put their full trust in the atoning work of the Lord Jesus. And a number of intelligent and earnest young men there for the first time found peace in believing. At the same time there was pressed upon those who, like Frank, had realized this joy of forgiveness, that it was their privilege to know in their own experience an entire inward consecration of will, and a full trust in Christ's power to keep them from sin. They were led to place themselves in the searching light of the Holy Spirit, asking that every thought and desire, the very central powers of their existence, might be brought into conformity to the will of God. Many an unsanctified ambition and unholy feeling, scarcely defined in the comparative twilight of their previous experience, was here brought into the light of consciousness, and yielded to God. And several of them during the course of these meetings, and while under the sweet influences of the Hestonville parties, in large measure entered upon this higher experience of Christian privilege, and realized in their souls a uniformity of love, joy, and peace, with a corresponding outward consistency of life such as they had not before known. Our own precious boy was among this number, as will be seen from his letters; and from that time his Christian character shone brighter and brighter until the coming to him of the perfect day.

Perhaps one of the most important features of these meetings to the young Christians, was the vocal confession they there made of Christ as their Saviour. Some who had long been trusting Him, but who had never defined to themselves nor confessed to others the blessed fact that they were therefore the children of God, found in these simple confessions the undying assurance of a Saviour's love, and realized the blessedness promised in Rom. x. 10 to those who not only believe in their hearts, but also confess with their mouths, the Lord Jesus. Our dear Frank here learned the importance of this Christian duty of confession, and was enabled afterwards, when among strangers at Princeton College, to bear a faithful testimony to his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

A few extracts from his letters and diary of this winter will reveal the sweet development of his Christian experience, and will show how through it all he was the real boy, turning easily, after a boy's fashion, from grave to gay; mingling his college games and his religious feelings in the most natural sort of way, and finding out the blessed truth that the more he learned of the salvation of Jesus, the more perfectly he found it was suited to him as a boy, with a boy's needs and a boy's difficulties. Never, to the very last, did he cease to be a boy. And it was one of the crowning charms of his Christian experience, that it never made him unnatural, nor deprived him of the hearty, healthy enjoyment of his young life, with all its innocent pleasures and pursuits.

We tried to impress upon his mind that he was to