lowen talk
about him in the way he did. He endeavoured in every possible way to
get him to drink, while at the very same time he despised and abused him
for drinking, and would launch out at the clergy and their self-
indulgent habits."

"Yes," said her brother-in-law; "no one knew better what a clergyman
ought to be than the squire. We may be very thankful that his charges
against our order were gross exaggerations. We may congratulate
ourselves that the old-fashioned drunken parson is now pretty nearly a
creature of the past. Don't you think so, Mr Oliphant?"

"I confess to you," replied the rector, "that I was rather thinking, in
connection with poor Mildman's sad history, of those words, `Let him
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.'"

"Why, surely you don't think there is much danger in these days of many
persons of our profession becoming the victims of intemperance?"

"I cannot feel so sure about that," was the reply. "You know I hold
strong views on the subject. I wish I could see more clergymen total
abstainers."

"I must say that I quite disagree with you there," said the other; "what
we want, in my view, is, not to make people total abstainers, but to
give them those principles which will enable them to enjoy all lawful
indulgences lawfully."

"I should heartily concur in this view," said Mr Oliphant, "if the
indulgence in strong drink to what people consider a moderate extent
were exactly on the same footing as indulgence in other things. But
there is something so perilous in the very nature of alcoholic
stimulants, that multitudes are lured by them to excess who would have
been the last to think, on commencing to drink, that themselves could
possibly become transgressors."

"Then it is the duty of us clergymen," said the other, "to warn people
to be more on their guard against excess in this direction but not, by
becoming total abstainers ourselves, to lead our flocks to suppose that
there is sin in the mere taking of any amount of intoxicating liquors,
however small."

"I think," said Mr Oliphant, very gravely, "that our duty is something
beyond, and, may I say, above this. We live in a peculiarly self-
indulgent age, when men are exceedingly impatient of anything like a
restraint upon their appetites and inclinations. We have, besides this,
the acknowledged fact that, where other sins slay their thousands,
drunkenness slays its hundreds of thousands of all ages. Is it not,