ith a nautical suggestion of "Ay, ay," about them,
and he began his sermon.

It was, as those who knew his methods might have expected, a suggestion
of the conversation they had already overheard. He likened the little
chapel, choked with umbrage and rotting in its dampness, to the gospel
seed sown in crowded places, famishing in the midst of plenty, and
sterile from the absorptions of the more active life around it. He
pointed out again the true work of the pioneer missionary; the
careful pruning and elimination of those forces that grew up with the
Christian's life, which many people foolishly believed were a part of
it. "The WORLD must live and the WORD must live," said they, and there
were easy-going brethren who thought they could live together. But he
warned them that the World was always closing upon--"shaddering"--and
strangling the Word, unless kept down, and that "fair seemin'
settlement," or city, which appeared to be "bustin' and bloomin'" with
life and progress, was really "hustlin' and jostlin'" the Word of God,
even in the midst of these "fancy spires and steeples" it had erected
to its glory. It was the work of the missionary pioneer to keep down or
root out this carnal, worldly growth as much in the settlement as in the
wilderness. Some were for getting over the difficulty by dragging the
mere wasted "letter of the Word," or the rotten and withered husks of
it, into the highways and byways, where the "blazin'" scorn of the World
would finish it. A low, penitential groan from Deacon Shadwell followed
this accusing illustration. But the preacher would tell them that the
only way was to boldly attack this rankly growing World around them;
to clear out fresh paths for the Truth, and let the sunlight of Heaven
stream among them.

There was little doubt that the congregation was moved. Whatever they
might have thought of the application, the fact itself was patent. The
rheumatic Beaseleys felt the truth of it in their aching bones; it came
home to the fever and ague stricken Filgees in their damp seats against
the sappy wall; it echoed plainly in the chronic cough of Sister Mary
Strutt and Widow Doddridge; and Cissy Appleby, with her round brown eyes
fixed upon the speaker, remembering how the starch had been taken out of
her Sunday frocks, how her long ringlets had become uncurled, her frills
limp, and even her ribbons lustreless, felt that indeed a prophet had
arisen in Israel!

One or two, however, were