tiousness are most
admirable. They do us all good. But if, whilst preserving and
developing their personalities, we could strip them of their
angularities, and get them to walk in step at one steady and regular
pace--tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp!--we should surely stand a better
chance of making David king over all Israel!

VI

It is all a matter of discipline. The ploughman comes up from the
country with a long ungainly stride. The city man, accustomed to
crowded pavements, comes with a short and mincing step. They are
drilled for a fortnight side by side, and away they go. Right! Left!
Right! Left! Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! The harmony is perfect.
Jock must submit himself to the same rigid process of training. He may
be firmly convinced that the stride of the regiment is too short or too
long. But if, on that ground, he adopts a different one, nobody but
his gentle and admiring little sister will believe that he is right and
they are wrong. Jock's isolated attitude invariably reflects upon
himself. 'The whole regiment is out of step!' he declares, drawing
attention to his different stride. That is too often the trouble with
Jock. 'The members of our Church do not read the Bible!' he says. It
may be sadly true; but it sounds, put in that way, like a claim that he
is the one conscientious and regular Bible-reader among them. 'The
members of our Church do not pray!' he exclaims sadly. It may be that
a call to prayer is urgently needed; but poor Jock puts the thing in
such a light that it appears to be a claim on his part that he alone
knows the way to the Throne of Grace. 'Among the faithless faithful
only he!' 'The members of our Church are not spiritually-minded!' he
bemoans; but somehow, said as he says it, it sounds suspiciously like
an echo of little Jack Horner's 'What a good boy am I!'

In the correspondence of Elizabeth Fry there occurs a very striking and
suggestive passage. When Mrs. Fry began to meet with great success in
her work among the English prisons, some of the Quakers feared that her
triumphs would engender pride in her own soul and destroy her
spirituality. At last the thing became nauseous and intolerable, and
she wrote, 'The prudent fears that the good have for me try me more
than most things, and I find that it calls for Christian forbearance
not to be a little put out by them. I am confident that we often see
the Martha spirit of criticism enter in, even about spiritu