lly rose to a tide of insane hatred, and he lost himself
in a passion against his deacons as bitter as that which they had
shown towards Amanda Stott and himself.

Entering his lodgings, and lighting his lamp, he threw himself on
the couch, resenting in bitterness of spirit the limitations of
creeds, and the exactions imposed on men who, like himself, were
called to minister to brawling sects. Thrice he sat down at his
desk; thrice he wrote out his resignation, and thrice he committed
it to the flames. Then, recalling the words of an old college
professor who often used to tell his students that the second
Epistle of the Corinthians was the ministerial panacea in the hour
of depression, he took up his Testament and read:

_'Ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in
necessities, in distress ... by pureness, by knowledge, by
long-suffering, by kindness, by love unfeigned, by the Holy Ghost,
by the word of truth, by the power of God.'_

And there came on the young pastor a spirit of power, and of love,
and of a new mind, and he slept.

IV.

THE OLD PASTOR.

On the following morning Mr. Penrose set out to call on the old
pastor at the house of Dr. Hale, conjuring up as he went pictures
of the man whom he knew only by report, and, as he deemed,
exaggerated report too. To Rehoboth people Mr. Morell was a
prodigy--a veritable prophet of the Most High; and his successor's
sojourn was not a little embittered by the disparaging contrasts
so frequently drawn between the old order and the new. To be for
ever told the texts from which Mr. Morell used to preach, to hear
in almost every house some pet saying or scrap of philosophy wont
to fall from his lips, to be asked, if not bidden, by the deacons
to tread in the footprints of one who was believed to wear the
seven-league boots, became intolerable; and had not discretion
guarded the speech of Mr. Penrose, many a time his language of
retort would have been strange to covenanted lips. Often, too, he
asked himself what manner of man he must be who nursed and reared
this narrow sect of the hills--a sect setting judgment before
mercy, and law before love--a sect narrowing salvation to units,
and drawing the limit line of grace around a fragment of mankind.

On his arrival at Dr. Hale's, however, a surprise greeted him, and
as he responded to the old pastor's outstretched hand, he knew he
met with one in whom firm gentleness and affable dignity were the
chie