“That was entered before, sir, under the head of instructions.”

“Very right—­apparently very right, Sam, and reasonable for you to think so—­but this was on a different occasion, although the same case.”

“Oh, I beg pardon, sir, I did not know that.”

“Sam, do not beg pardon—­not of me—­nor of any but One—­go there, Sam, you require it; we all require it, at least I do abundantly.  Darby, my friend, it is a principle with me never to lose an opportunity of throwing in a word in season—­but as the affairs of this life must be attended to—­only in a secondary degree, I admit—­I will, therefore, place you at the only true fountain where you can be properly refreshed.  Take this Bible, Darby, and it matters not where you open it, read and be filled.”

Now, as Darby, in consequence of his early attendance upon M’Clutchy, had been obliged to leave home that morning without his breakfast, it must be admitted that he was not just then in the best possible disposition to draw much edification from it.  After poring over it with a very sombre face for some time, he at length looked shrewdly at M’Slime closing one eye a little, as was his custom; “I beg pardon, sir,” said he, “but if I’m not mistaken this book I believe is intended more for the sowl than the body.”

“For the body! truly, Darby, that last is a carnal thought, and I am sorry to hear, it from your lips:—­the Bible is a spiritual book, my friend, and spiritually must it be received.”

“But, to a man like me, who hasn’t had his breakfast to-day yet, how will it be sarviceable? will reading it keep off hunger or fill my stomach?”

“Ah!  Darby, my friend, that is gross talk—­such views of divine truth are really a perversion of the gifts of heaven.  That book although it will not fill your stomach, as you grossly call it, actually will do it figuratively, which in point of fact is the same thing, or a greater—­it will enable you to bear hunger as a dispensation, Darby, to which it is your duty as a Christian to submit.  Nay, it will do more, my friend; it will exalt your faith to such a divine pitch, that if you read it with the proper spirit, you will pray that the dispensation thus laid on you may continue, in order that the inner man may be purged.”

“Faith, and Mr. M’Slime, with great respect, if that is your doctrine it isn’t your practice.  The sorra word of prayer—­God bless the prayers!—­came out o’ your lips today,’an til you laid in a good warm breakfast, and afther that, for fraid of disappointments, the very first thing you prayed for was your daily bread—­didn’t I hear you?  But I’ll tell you what, sir, ordher me my breakfast, and then I’ll be spakin’ to you.  A hungry man—­or a hungry woman, or her hungry childre’ can’t eat Bibles; although it is well known, God knows, that when hunger, and famine, and starvation are widin them and upon them, that the same Bible, but nothing else, is; handed to them by pious people in the shape of consolation and relief.  Now I’m thinkin’, Mr. M’Slime, that that is not the best way to make the Bible respected.  Are you goin’ to give me my breakfast, sir? upon my sowl, beggin’ your pardon, if you do I’ll bring the Bible home wid me, if that will satisfy you, for we haven’t got e’er a one in our own little cabin.”