which, in beings at the very bar of
eternal judgment, hanging on the advocacy of an angel, could scarcely
have been exceeded; and when he ceased, and sat down, a sigh, as from
every heart at once, went through the place, which marked the fall of
their rapt imaginations from the high region whither his words and
expressive features had raised them, to the dimness and reality of
earth. I could scarcely persuade myself that this was my late friend of
the woods and fields, and of the evening discourse, so calm and
dispassionate, over our little tea-table.

I escaped cautiously with the crowd, and eagerly interrogated a man who
passed out near me who was the preacher? He looked at me with an air of
surprise; but seeing me a stranger, he said he thought I could not have
been in those parts long, or I should have known Mr. M----. I then
learned that my venerable acquaintance was one whose name was known far
and wide--known for the strange and fascinating powers of his pulpit
eloquence, and for the peculiarity of his religious views. The
singularity of those notions alone had prevented his becoming one of the
most popular religious orators of his time. They had been the source of
perpetual troubles and persecutions to him, they had estranged from him
the most zealous of his friends from time to time; yet they were such
only as he could lay down at the threshold of Divine judgment; and
still, wherever he went, although they were a root of bitterness to him
in private, he found in public a crowd of eager and enthusiastic
hearers, who hung on his words as if they came at once warm from the
inner courts of heaven.

The sense of this discovery, and of the whole strange scene of the last
evening, hung powerfully upon me through the following day. I sat on the
bench of my cottage window, with a book in my hand, the greater part of
it, but my thoughts continually reverted to the image of the preacher in
the midst of his audience; when, at evening, in walked the old man with
his usual quiet smile, and shaking me affectionately by the hand, sat
down in a wooden chair opposite me. I looked again and again, but in
vain, to recognize the floating figure and the exalted countenance of
the evening.

The old man took up my book, and began to read. A sudden impulse seized
me which I have never ceased to regret. I did not wish abruptly to tell
the old man that I had seen him in the pulpit, but I longed to discuss
with him the ground of his pe