‘One of the Evangelical clergy, a disciple of Venn,’ says the critic from his bird’s-eye station.  ’Not a remarkable specimen; the anatomy and habits of his species have been determined long ago.’

Yet surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him—­which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.  Our subtlest analysis of schools and sects must miss the essential truth, unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all forms of human thought and work, the life and death struggles of separate human beings.

Chapter 11

Mr. Tryan’s most unfriendly observers were obliged to admit that he gave himself no rest.  Three sermons on Sunday, a night-school for young men on Tuesday, a cottage-lecture on Thursday, addresses to school-teachers, and catechizing of school-children, with pastoral visits, multiplying as his influence extended beyond his own district of Paddiford Common, would have been enough to tax severely the powers of a much stronger man.  Mr. Pratt remonstrated with him on his imprudence, but could not prevail on him so far to economize time and strength as to keep a horse.  On some ground or other, which his friends found difficult to explain to themselves, Mr. Tryan seemed bent on wearing himself out.  His enemies were at no loss to account for such a course.  The Evangelical curate’s selfishness was clearly of too bad a kind to exhibit itself after the ordinary manner of a sound, respectable selfishness.  ’He wants to get the reputation of a saint,’ said one; ‘He’s eaten up with spiritual pride,’ said another; ’He’s got his eye on some fine living, and wants to creep up the Bishop’s sleeve,’ said a third.

Mr. Stickney, of Salem, who considered all voluntary discomfort as a remnant of the legal spirit, pronounced a severe condemnation on this self-neglect, and expressed his fear that Mr. Tryan was still far from having attained true Christian liberty.  Good Mr. Jerome eagerly seized this doctrinal view of the subject as a means of enforcing the suggestions of his own benevolence; and one cloudy afternoon, in the end of November, he mounted his roan mare with the determination of riding to Paddiford and ‘arguying’ the point with Mr. Tryan.

The old gentleman’s face looked very mournful as he rode along the dismal Paddiford lanes, between rows of grimy houses, darkened with hand-looms, while the black dust was whirled about him by the cold November wind.  He was thinking of the object which had brought him on this afternoon ride, and his thoughts, according to his habit when alone, found vent every now and then in audible speech.  It seemed to him, as his eyes rested on this scene of Mr. Tryan’s labours, that he could understand the clergyman’s self-privation without resorting to Mr. Stickney’s theory of defective spiritual enlightenment.