ever shrunk from a fair stand-up contest when he believed
that his Master's honour and the truth required it.

One evening, a few days after the mysterious appearance of the little
Bible in his own house, Foster, as he was coming home from his work,
encountered Bradly at the open door of the blacksmith's forge with a
bundle of tracts in his hand.

"Still trying to do us poor sinners good, I see," sneered Foster.

"Yes, if you'll let me," said the other, offering a tract.

"None of your nonsensical rubbish for me," was the angry reply, as the
speaker turned away.

"I never carries either nonsense or rubbish," rejoined Thomas. "My
tracts are all of 'em good solid sense; they are taken out of God's holy
Word, or are agreeable to the same."

"What! The Bible? What sensible man now believes in that Bible of
yours? It's a failure; it has been demonstrated to be a failure. All
enlightened men, even many among your own Christians, are giving it up
as a failure now,"--saying which in a tone of triumph, as he looked
round on a little knot of working-men who were gathering about the
smithy door, he seated himself on an upturned cart which was waiting to
be repaired, and looked at his opponent for a reply.

Thomas Bradly, nothing daunted, sat him down very deliberately on a
large smooth stone on the opposite side of the doorway, and remarked
quietly, "As to the Bible's being a failure, I suppose that depends very
much on experience. I've got an eight-day clock in our house. I bought
it for a very good one, and gave a very good price for it, just before I
set up housekeeping. A young fellow calls the other day, when I
happened to be in, and he wants me to buy a new-fashioned sort of clock
of him. `Well, if I do,' says I, `what'll you allow me for my old
clock, then, as part payment?' So he goes over and looks at it, and
turns up his nose at it, and says, `'Tain't worth the trouble of taking
away: you shall have one of the right sort cheap; that clumsy, old-
fashioned thing'll never do you no good.'--`Well,' says I, `that's just
as people find. That old clock has served me well, and kept the best of
time these five and twenty years, and it don't show any signs of being
worse for wear yet. So I'll stick to the old clock still, if you
please, and take my time by it as I've been used to do.' And the old-
fashioned Bible's just like my old clock. You tell me as it's proved to
be a failure. I tell _you_ it isn't a fa