Certainly Mr. Wingfold, Mr. Drew, and some others of the best men in the place, did think him, of those they knew, the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.  Glaston was altogether of a different opinion.  Which was the right opinion, must be left to the measuring rod that shall finally be applied to the statures of men.

The history of the kingdom of Heaven—­need I say I mean a very different thing from what is called church-history?—­is the only history that will ever be able to show itself a history—­that can ever come to be thoroughly written, or to be read with a clear understanding; for it alone will prove able to explain itself, while in doing so it will explain all other attempted histories as well.  Many of those who will then be found first in the eternal record, may have been of little regard in the eyes of even their religious contemporaries, may have been absolutely unknown to generations that came after, and were yet the men of life and potency, working as light, as salt, as leaven, in the world.  When the real worth of things is, over all, the measure of their estimation, then is the kingdom of our God and His Christ.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE POTTERY.

It had been a very dry autumn, and the periodical rains had been long delayed, so that the minister had been able to do much for the houses he had bought, called the Pottery.  There had been but just rain enough to reveal the advantage of the wall he had built to compel the water to keep the wider street.  Thoroughly dry and healthy it was impossible to make them, at least in the time; but it is one thing to have the water all about the place you stand on, and another to be up to the knees in it.  Not at that point only, however, but at every spot where the water could enter freely, he had done what he could provisionally for the defense of his poor colony—­for alas! how much among the well-to-do, in town or city, are the poor like colonists only!—­and he had great hopes of the result.  Stone and brick and cement he had used freely, and one or two of the people about began to have a glimmering idea of the use of money after a gospel fashion—­that is, for thorough work where and because it was needed.  The curate was full of admiration and sympathy.  But the whole thing gave great dissatisfaction to others not a few.  For, as the currents of inundation would be somewhat altered in direction and increased in force by his obstructions, it became necessary for several others also to add to the defenses of their property, and this of course was felt to be a grievance.  Their personal inconveniences were like the shilling that hides the moon, and, in the resentment they occasioned, blinded their hearts to the seriousness of the evils from which their merely temporary annoyance was the deliverance of their neighbors.  A fancy of prescriptive right in their own comforts outweighed all the long and heavy sufferings of the