in the church which had
not been cordial to him from the first; partly from his fault, partly
from theirs, he had always made them feel they were of the lower grade;
and from an increase of shops in the neighborhood, this party was now
gathering head. Their leaders went so far at length as to hint at a
necessity for explanation in regard to the accounts of certain charities
administered by the pastor. In these, unhappily, _lacunae_ were patent.
In his troubles the pastor had grown careless. But it was altogether to
his own loss, for not merely had the money been spent with a rigidity of
uprightness, such as few indeed of his accusers exercised in their
business affairs, but he had in his disbursements exceeded the
contribution committed to his charge. Confident, however, in his
position, and much occupied with other thoughts, he had taken no care to
set down the particulars of his expenditure, and his enemies did not
fail to hint a connection between this fact and the loss of his wife's
annuity. Worst of all, doubts of his orthodoxy began to be expressed by
the more ignorant, and harbored without examination by the less
ignorant.

All at once he became aware of the general disloyalty of his flock, and
immediately resigned. Scarcely had he done so when he was invited to
Glaston, and received with open arms. There he would heal his wounds,
and spend the rest of his days in peace. "He caught a slip or two" in
descending, but soon began to find the valley of humiliation that
wholesome place which all true pilgrims have ever declared it.
Comparative retirement, some sense of lost labor, some suspicion of the
worth of the ends for which he had spent his strength, a waking desire
after the God in whom he had vaguely believed all the time he was
letting the dust of paltry accident inflame his eyes, blistering and
deadening his touch with the efflorescent crusts and agaric tumors upon
the dry bones of theology, gilding the vane of his chapel instead of
cleansing its porch and its floor--these all favored the birth in his
mind of the question, whether he had ever entered in at the straight
gate himself, or had not merely been standing by its side calling to
others to enter in. Was it even as well as this with him? Had he not
been more intent on gathering a wretched flock within the rough,
wool-stealing, wind-sifting, beggarly hurdles of his church, than on
housing true men and women safe in the fold of the true Shepherd?
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