constructions to parables and vague
generalities in Scripture, about the actual meaning of which divines in
all ages have differed; and, pointing his finger to me or to you,
say--'The case is yours, sir!' I cannot sit patiently under many more
such sermons."

Mr. Braxton evidently spoke from a disturbed state of mind. Something
in the discourse had struck at the foundations of self-love and
self-complacency.

"Into one ear, and out at the other. So it is with me, in cases like
this," answered Mr. Braxton's companion, in a changed and lighter tone.
"If a preacher chooses to be savage; to write from dyspeptic or
neuralgic states; to send his congregation, unshrived, to the nether
regions--why, I shrug my shoulders and let it pass. Most likely, on the
next Sunday, he will be full of consideration for tender consciences,
and grandly shut the gate he threw open so widely on the last occasion.
It would never answer, you know, to take these things to heart--never
in the world. We'd always be getting into hot water. Clergymen have
their moods, like other people. It doesn't answer to forget this. Good
morning, Mr. Braxton. Our ways part here."

"Good morning," was replied, and the men separated.

But, try as Mr. Braxton would to set his minister's closely applied
doctrine from Scripture to the account of dyspepsia or neuralgia, he
was unable to push from his mind certain convictions wrought therein by
the peculiar manner in which some positions had been argued and
sustained. The subject taken by the minister, was that striking picture
of the judgment given in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, from the
thirty-first verse to the close of the chapter, beginning: "When the
Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him,
then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be
gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a
shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." The passage concludes:
"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous
into life eternal."

Now, although Mr. Braxton had complained of the literal application of
this text, that term was hardly admissible, for the preacher waived the
idea of a last general judgment, as involved in the letter of
Scripture, and declared his belief in a spiritual signification as
lying beneath the letter, and applicable to the inner life of every
single individual at the period of departure from