season, he had chosen the latter half of the alternative.  And truly it was a great relief not to have to grind out of his poor, weary, groaning mill the two inevitable weekly sermons—­labor sufficient to darken the face of nature to the conscientious man.  For his people thought themselves intellectual, and certainly were critical.  Mere edification in holiness was not enough for them.  A large infusion of some polemic element was necessary to make the meat savory and such as their souls loved.  Their ambition was not to grow in grace, but in social influence and regard—­to glorify their dissent, not the communion of saints.  Upon the chief corner-stone they would build their stubble of paltry religionism; they would set up their ragged tent in the midst of the eternal temple, careless how it blocked up window and stair.

Now last week Mr. Drake had requested his new butcher to send his bill—­with some little anxiety, because of the sudden limitation of his income; but when he saw it he was filled with horror.  Amounting only to a very few pounds, causes had come together to make it a large one in comparison with the figures he was accustomed to see.  Always feeding some of his flock, he had at this time two sickly, nursing mothers who drew their mortal life from his kitchen; and, besides, the doctor had, some time ago, ordered a larger amount of animal food for the little Amanda.  In fine, the sum at the bottom of that long slip of paper, with the wood-cut of a prize ox at the top of it, small as he would have thought it at one period of his history, was greater than he could imagine how to pay; and if he went to church, it would be to feel the eye of the butcher and not that of the curate upon him all the time.  It was a dismay, a horror to him to have an account rendered which he could not settle, and especially from his new butcher, after he had so severely rebuked the old one.  Where was the mighty difference in honesty between himself and the offender? the one claimed for meat he had not sold, the other ordered that for which he could not pay!  Would not Mr. Jones imagine he had left his fellow-butcher and come to him because he had run up a large bill for which he was unable to write a check?  This was that over which the spirit of the man now brooded by far the most painfully; this it was that made him leave his New Testament in the study, let his pipe out, and look almost lovingly upon the fast-flowing river, because it was a symbol of death.

He had chosen preaching as a profession, just as so many take orders—­with this difference from a large proportion of such, that he had striven powerfully to convince himself that he trusted in the merits of the Redeemer.  Had he not in this met with tolerable success, he would not have yielded to the wish of his friends and left his father’s shop in his native country-town for a dissenting college in the neighborhood of London.  There he worked well, and became a good scholar, learning to read in the true sense of the word, that is, to try the spirits as he read.  His character, so called, was sound, and his conscience, if not sensitive, was firm and regnant.  But he was injured both spiritually and morally by some of the instructions there given.  For one of the objects held up as duties before him, was to become capable of rendering himself acceptable to a congregation.