nguish them with doctrinal sophistry. We
love the good man, we praise him, we admire him--we cannot help it; and
surely it is mere cowardice to shrink from recognising it
openly--thankfully, divinely recognising it. If true at all, there is no
truth in heaven or earth of deeper practical importance to us; and
Protestantism must have lapsed from its once generous spirit, if it
persists in imposing a dogma of its own upon our hearts, the touch of
which is fatal as the touch of a torpedo to any high or noble endeavours
after excellence.

'Drive out nature with a fork, she ever comes running back;' and while
we leave out of consideration the reality, we are filling the chasm with
inventions of our own. The only novels which are popular among us are
those which picture the successful battles of modern men and women with
modern life, which are imperfect shadows of those real battles which
every reader has seen in some form or other, or has longed to see in his
own small sphere. It shows where the craving lies if we had but the
courage to meet it; why need we fall back on imagination to create what
God has created ready for us? In every department of human life, in the
more and the less, there is always one man who is the best, and one
type of man which is the best, living and working his silent way to
heaven in the very middle of us. Let us find this type then--let us see
what it is which makes such men the best, and raise up their
excellencies into an acknowledged and open standard, of which they
themselves shall be the living witnesses. Is there a landlord who is
spending his money, not on pineries and hothouses, but on schools, and
washhouses, and drains, who is less intent on the magnificence of his
own grand house, than in providing cottages for his people where decency
is possible; then let us not pass him by with a torpid wonder or a
vanishing emotion of pleasure--rather let us seize him and raise him up
upon a pinnacle, that other landlords may gaze upon him, if, perhaps,
their hearts may prick them; and the world shall learn from what one man
has done what they have a right to require that others shall do.

So it might be through the thousand channels of life. It should not be
so difficult; the machinery is ready, both to find your men and to use
them. In theory, at least, every parish has its pastor, and the state of
every soul is or ought to be known. We know not what turn things may
take, or what silent changes a