eating butcher remark in the open
street that it was quite enough, and more than ever his Master had. But
all these things were as nothing in his eyes beside his inability to pay
Mr. Jones's bill. He had outgrown his former self, but this kind of
misery it would be but deeper degradation to outgrow. All before this
had been but humiliation; this was shame. Now first he knew what poverty
was! Had God forgotten him? That could not be! that which could forget
could not be God. Did he not care then that such things should befall
his creatures? Were they but trifles in his eyes? He ceased thinking,
gave way to the feeling that God dealt hardly with him, and sat stupidly
indulging a sense of grievance--with self-pity, than which there is
scarce one more childish or enfeebling in the whole circle of the
emotions. Was this what God had brought him nearer to Himself for? was
this the end of a ministry in which he had, in some measure at least,
denied himself and served God and his fellow? He could bear any thing
but shame! That too could he have borne had he not been a teacher of
religion--one whose failure must brand him a hypocrite. How mean it
would sound--what a reproach to _the cause_, that the congregational
minister had run up a bill with a church-butcher which he was unable to
pay! It was the shame--the shame he could not bear! Ought he to have
been subjected to it?

A humbler and better mood slowly dawned with unconscious change, and he
began to ponder with himself wherein he had been misusing the money
given him: either he had been misusing it, or God had not given him
enough, seeing it would not reach the end of his needs; but he could
think only of the poor he had fed, and the child he had adopted, and
surely God would overlook those points of extravagance. Still, if he had
not the means, he had not the right to do such things. It might not in
itself be wrong, but in respect of him it was as dishonest as if he had
spent the money on himself--not to mention that it was a thwarting of
the counsel of God, who, if He had meant them to be so aided, would have
sent him the money to spend upon them honestly. His one excuse was that
he could not have foreseen how soon his income was going to shrink to a
third. In future he would withhold his hand. But surely he might keep
the child? Nay, having once taken her in charge, he must keep the child.
It was a comfort, there could be no doubt about that. God had money
enough, and ce