s
Christianity in abundant good works among his people. It was noticed by
some few of his flock, not without comment, that the great majority of
his texts came from the Gospels, and this more and more as he became
interested in various benevolent enterprises which brought him into
relations with-ministers and kindhearted laymen of other denominations.
He was in fact a man of a very warm, open, and exceedingly human
disposition, and, although bred by a clerical father, whose motto was
"Sit anima mea cum Puritanis," he exercised his human faculties in the
harness of his ancient faith with such freedom that the straps of it got
so loose they did not interfere greatly with the circulation of the
warm blood through his system. Once in a while he seemed to think it
necessary to come out with a grand doctrinal sermon, and them he would
lapse away for a while into preaching on men's duties to each other and
to society, and hit hard, perhaps, at some of the actual vices of the
time and place, and insist with such tenderness and eloquence on the
great depth and breadth of true Christian love and charity, that his
oldest deacon shook his head, and wished he had shown as much interest
when he was preaching, three Sabbaths back, on Predestination, or in
his discourse against the Sabellians. But he was sound in the faith;
no doubt of that. Did he not preside at the council held in the town
of Tamarack, on the other side of the mountain, which expelled its
clergyman for maintaining heretical doctrines? As presiding officer, he
did not vote, of course, but there was no doubt that he was all right;
he had some of the Edwards blood in him, and that couldn't very well let
him go wrong.

The meeting-house on the other and opposite summit was of a more modern
style, considered by many a great improvement on the old New England
model, so that it is not uncommon for a country parish to pull down its
old meeting-house, which has been preached in for a hundred years or so,
and put up one of these more elegant edifices. The new building was in
what may be called the florid shingle-Gothic manner. Its pinnacles and
crockets and other ornaments were, like the body of the building, all of
pine wood,--an admirable material, as it is very soft and easily worked,
and can be painted of any color desired. Inside, the walls were stuccoed
in imitation of stone,--first a dark brown square, then two light brown
squares, then another dark brown square, and so