rgus's father was a man of
considerable property, Fergus himself almost a man of influence, and
already in possession of a comfortable income: it was possible to
imagine that the impoverished Thomas Galbraith, late of Glashruach,
Esq., might contrive to swallow what annoyance there could not but
in any case be in wedding his daughter to the son of John Duff, late
his own tenant of the Mains. Altogether Donal's thoughts were not
of the kind to put him in fit mood--I do not say to gather benefit
from the prophesying of Fergus, but to give fair play to the peddler
who now rose to display his loaded calico and beggarly shoddy over
the book-board of the pulpit. But the congregation listened rapt.
I dare not say there was no divine reality concerned in his
utterance, for Gibbie saw many a glimmer through the rents in his
logic, and the thin-worn patches of his philosophy; but it was not
such glimmers that fettered the regards of the audience, but the
noisy flow and false eloquence of the preacher. In proportion to
the falsehood in us are we exposed to the falsehood in others. The
false plays upon the false without discord; comes to the false, and
is welcomed as the true; there is no jar, for the false to the false
look the true; darkness takes darkness for light, and great is the
darkness. I will not attempt an account of the sermon; even
admirably rendered, it would be worthless as the best of copies of a
bad wall-paper. There was in it, to be sure, such a glowing
description of the city of God as might have served to attract
thither all the diamond-merchants of Amsterdam; but why a Christian
should care to go to such a place, let him tell who knows; while, on
the other hand, the audience appeared equally interested in his
equiponderating description of the place of misery. Not once {did
he even} attempt to give, or indeed could have given, the feeblest
idea, to a single soul present, of the one terror of the
universe--the peril of being cast from the arms of essential Love
and Life into the bosom of living Death. For this teacher of men
knew nothing whatever but by hearsay, had not in himself experienced
one of the joys or one of the horrors he endeavoured to embody.

Gibbie was not at home listening to such a sermon; he was
distressed, and said afterwards to Donal he would far rather be
subjected to Mr. Sclater's isms than Fergus's ations. It caused him
pain too to see Donal look so scornful, so contemptuous eve