uoting the passage, "They
shall take up serpents." But the beast stung him, and he was ill for
days after.

"Take my advice," said the doctor. "Put all these thoughts out of your
head. Get some work to do in a new part of the country, fall in love
with some nice girl, and marry as soon as you can make a home for her.
That's the only life for you, depend upon it."

"God has given me other thoughts," said Joshua, "and I must obey them."

The doctor said afterwards that he was quite touched at the lad's
sweetness and wrong-headedness combined.

The failure of these trials of faith perplexed us all, and profoundly
afflicted Joshua. "Friends," he said at last, "it seems to me--indeed, I
think we must all see it now--that His Word is not to be accepted
literally. The laws of nature are supreme, and even faith cannot change
them. Can it be," he then said solemnly, "that much of the Word is a
parable--that Christ was truly, as He says of Himself, the corner-stone,
but not the whole building--and that we have to carry on the work in His
spirit, but in our own way, and not merely to try and repeat His acts?"

It was after this that we noticed a certain restlessness in Joshua. But
in time he had an offer to go up to London to follow his trade at a
large house in the City, and got me a job as well, that I might be
alongside of him. For we were like brothers. A few days before he went,
Joshua happened to be coming out of his father's workshop just as Mr.
Grand was passing, driving the neat pair-horse phaeton he had lately
bought.

"Well, Joshua, and how are you doing? And why have you not been to
church lately?" said the parson, pulling up.

"Well, sir," said Joshua, "I don't go to church, you know."

"A new light on your own account, hey?" and he laughed as if he mocked
him.

"No, sir; only a seeker."

"The old path's not good enough for you?"

"I must answer for my conscience to God, sir," said Joshua.

"And your clergyman, appointed by God and the state to be your guide,
what of him? Has he no authority in his own parish?"

"Look here, sir," said Joshua, quite respectfully; "I deny your
appointment as a God-given leader of souls. The Church is but the old
priesthood as it existed in the days of our Lord. I see no sacrifice of
the world, no brotherhood with the poor----"

"The poor!" interrupted Mr. Grand disdainfully. "What would you have,
you young fool? The poor have the laws of their country to protect them,