bad success
which Butler had hitherto met with in all his undertakings, to consider
him as one of those step-sons of Fortune, whom she treats with unceasing
rigour, and ends with disinheriting altogether.

There is, perhaps, no time at which we are disposed to think so highly of
a friend, as when we find him standing higher than we expected in the
esteem of others. When assured of the reality of Butler's change of
prospects, David expressed his great satisfaction at his success in life,
which, he observed, was entirely owing to himself (David). "I advised his
puir grand-mother, who was but a silly woman, to breed him up to the
ministry; and I prophesied that, with a blessing on his endeavours, he
would become a polished shaft in the temple. He may be something ower
proud o' his carnal learning, but a gude lad, and has the root of the
matter--as ministers gang now, where yell find ane better, ye'll find ten
waur, than Reuben Butler."

He took leave of the man of business, and walked homeward, forgetting his
weariness in the various speculations to which this wonderful piece of
intelligence gave rise. Honest David had now, like other great men, to go
to work to reconcile his speculative principles with existing
circumstances; and, like other great men, when they set seriously about
that task, he was tolerably successful.

Ought Reuben Butler in conscience to accept of this preferment in the
Kirk of Scotland, subject as David at present thought that establishment
was to the Erastian encroachments of the civil power? This was the
leading question, and he considered it carefully. "The Kirk of Scotland
was shorn of its beams, and deprived of its full artillery and banners of
authority; but still it contained zealous and fructifying pastors,
attentive congregations, and, with all her spots and blemishes, the like
of this Kirk was nowhere else to be seen upon earth."

David's doubts had been too many and too critical to permit him ever
unequivocally to unite himself with any of the dissenters, who upon
various accounts absolutely seceded from the national church. He had
often joined in communion with such of the established clergy as
approached nearest to the old Presbyterian model and principles of 1640.
And although there were many things to be amended in that system, yet he
remembered that he, David Deans, had himself ever been an humble pleader
for the good old cause in a legal way, but without rushing into
right-hand e