flashing eyes and curled lip.

"That is all true and very fine, Judge, but it sounds just a little
peculiar as coming from you."

"I am the very man to say it, for I am the man who bitterly sees its
truth. Do not make the misstep that I did. A man might well be willing
to live on bread and water, and walk the world afoot, for the privilege
of giving all his thoughts to the grandest themes, and all his service
to the highest objects. As a lawyer, my life has been spent in a
prolonged quarrel about money, land, houses; cattle, thieving,
slandering, murdering, and other villainy. The little episodes of
politics that have given variety to my career have only shown me the
baseness of human nature, and the pettiness of human ambition. There are
men who will fill these places and do this work, and who want and will
choose nothing better. Let them have all the good they can get out of
such things. But the minister of the gospel who comes down from the
height of his high calling to engage in this scramble, does that which
makes devils laugh and angels weep."

This was the substance of what he said on this point. I have never
forgotten it. I am glad he came to my room that night. What else he
said I cannot write, but the remembrance of it is like to that of a
melody that lingers in my soul when the music has ceased.

"I thank you for your sermon today--you never told a single lie."

This was his remark at the close of a service in Minna street one
Sunday.

"What is the meaning of that remark?"

That the exaggerations of the pulpit repel thousands from the truth.
Moderation of statement is a rare excellence. A deep spiritual insight
enables a religious teacher to shade his meanings where it is required.
Deep piety is genius for the pulpit. Mediocrity in native endowments,
conjoined with spiritual stolidity in the pulpit, does more harm than
all the open apostles of infidelity combined. They take the divinity out
of religion and kill the faith of those who hear them. None but inspired
men should stand in the pulpit. Religion is not in the intellect merely.
The world by wisdom cannot know God. The attempt to find out God by the
intellect has always been, and always must be, the completest of
failures. Religion is the sphere of the supernatural, and stands not in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. It has often happened that
men of the first order of talent and the highest culture have been
converted by the preaching