ore momentous?"

Mr. Beecher said the cases were not parallel. Irreligious persons, he
remarked, were not in imminent danger of immediate death; they might
die to-morrow; but in all probability they would not, and an ill-timed
or injudicious admonition might forever repel them. We must accept the
doctrine of probabilities, and act in accordance with it in this
particular, as in all others.

Another brother had a puzzle to present for solution. He said that he
too had experienced the repugnance to which allusion had been made;
but what surprised him most was, that the more he loved a person, and
the nearer he was related to him, the more difficult he found it to
converse with him upon his spiritual state. Why is this? "I should
like to have this question answered," said he, "if there _is_ an
answer to it."

Mr. Beecher observed that this was the universal experience, and he
was conscious himself of a peculiar reluctance and embarrassment in
approaching one of his own household on the subject in question. He
thought it was due to the fact that we respect more the personal
rights of those near to us than we do those of others, and it was more
difficult to break in upon the routine of our ordinary familiarity
with them. We are accustomed to a certain tone, which it is highly
embarrassing to jar upon.

Captain Duncan related two amusing anecdotes to illustrate the right
way and the wrong way of introducing religious conversation. In his
office there was sitting one day a sort of lay preacher, who was noted
for lugging in his favorite topic in the most forbidding and abrupt
manner. A sea-captain came in who was introduced to this individual.

"Captain Porter," said he, with awful solemnity, "are you a captain in
Israel?"

The honest sailor was so abashed and confounded at this novel
salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply; and he
was evidently much disposed to give the tactless zealot a piece of his
mind expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. When the solemn
man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, "If ever I should be
coming to your office again, and that man should be here, I wish you
would send me word, and I'll stay away."

A few days after, another clergyman chanced to be in the office, no
other than Mr. Beecher himself, and another captain came in, a
roistering, swearing, good-hearted fellow. The conversation fell upon
sea-sickness, a malady to which Mr. Beecher is peculiar