thing from what is called _church-history?_--is the only history that
will ever be able to show itself a history--that can ever come to be
thoroughly written, or to be read with a clear understanding; for it
alone will prove able to explain itself, while in doing so it will
explain all other attempted histories as well. Many of those who will
then be found first in the eternal record, may have been of little
regard in the eyes of even their religious contemporaries, may have been
absolutely unknown to generations that came after, and were yet the men
of life and potency, working as light, as salt, as leaven, in the
world. When the real worth of things is, over all, the measure of their
estimation, then is the kingdom of our God and His Christ.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE POTTERY.

It had been a very dry autumn, and the periodical rains had been long
delayed, so that the minister had been able to do much for the houses he
had bought, called the Pottery. There had been but just rain enough to
reveal the advantage of the wall he had built to compel the water to
keep the wider street. Thoroughly dry and healthy it was impossible to
make them, at least in the time; but it is one thing to have the water
all about the place you stand on, and another to be up to the knees in
it. Not at that point only, however, but at every spot where the water
could enter freely, he had done what he could provisionally for the
defense of his poor colony--for alas! how much among the well-to-do, in
town or city, are the poor like colonists only!--and he had great hopes
of the result. Stone and brick and cement he had used freely, and one or
two of the people about began to have a glimmering idea of the use of
money after a gospel fashion--that is, for thorough work where and
_because_ it was needed. The curate was full of admiration and sympathy.
But the whole thing gave great dissatisfaction to others not a few. For,
as the currents of inundation would be somewhat altered in direction and
increased in force by his obstructions, it became necessary for several
others also to add to the defenses of their property, and this of course
was felt to be a grievance. Their personal inconveniences were like the
shilling that hides the moon, and, in the resentment they occasioned,
blinded their hearts to the seriousness of the evils from which their
merely temporary annoyance was the deliverance of their neighbors. A
fancy of prescriptive right in thei