Mr.Cole had very little time for the individual, being engaged in saving souls in the mass, and his cheery, good-tempered Christianity had a strange, startling fashion of proving unavailing before some single human case.
He did not understand children except when they were placed in masses before him.

His own children, having been named, on their arrival, "Gifts from God," had kept much of that incorporeal atmosphere throughout their growing years.
But to-night he was a different man.

As he looked at his small son across the schoolroom floor there was terror in his eyes.

Nothing could have been easier or more simple than his lifelong assumption that, because God was in His heaven all was right with the world.

He had given thanks every evening for the blessings that he had received and every morning for the blessings that he was going to receive, and he had had no reason to complain.