material ones.  And then it may be that the dark will be discovered to be the bright, and the fortunate prove to be the deplorable, for at present we ’see through a glass darkly, but then, face to face.’  The friends whom we have buried to-day are not dead,- -for death is not Death, but Life.  And for those who are left behind it is merely a time of waiting, for as the Master said, ’There shall not a hair of your head perish.  In your patience possess ye your souls.’”

He paused a moment,—­the moon rays illumined his delicate features, and a half sorrowful smile rested on his lips.

“I am no clergyman, my friends!  I have not been ‘ordained’.  I am not preaching to you.  I will not ask you to be good men, for there is something effeminate in the sound of such a request made to brawny, strong fellows such as you are, with an oath ready to leap from your lips, and a blow prepared to fly from your fists on provocation.  I will merely say to you that it is a great thing to be a Man!—­a Man as God meant him to be, brave, truthful, and self-reliant, with a firm faith in the Divine Ordainment of Life as Life should be lived.  There is no disgrace in work;—­no commonness,—­no meanness.  Disgrace, commonness, and meanness are with those who pretend to work and never do anything useful for the world they live in.  The king who amuses himself at the expense and ruin of his subjects is the contemptible person,—­not the labourer who digs the soil for the planting of corn which shall help to feed his fellows.  And the most despicable creature of our time and century, is not the man who doubts Christ, or questions God—­for Christ was patient with the doubter, and God answers, through the medium of science, every honest question—­it is the man who pretends to believe and lives on the pretence, while his conduct gives the lie to his profession!  That is why you—­and why thousands of others like you, are beginning to look upon many of the clergy with contempt, and to treat their admonitions with indifference.  That is why thousands of the rising generation of men and women will not go to church.  ’The parson does not do anything for me,’ is a common every-day statement.  And that the parson should do something is a necessary part of his business.  His ‘doing’ should not consist in talking platitudes from the pulpit, or in sending round a collection plate.  And if he has no money, and will not ‘sell half that he has and give to the poor’ as commanded, he can at any rate give sympathy.  But this is precisely what he chiefly lacks.  The parson’s general attitude is one of either superiority or servility,—­a ‘looking down’ upon his poor parishoners—­a ‘looking up’ to his rich ones.  A disinterested, loving observation of the troubles and difficulties of others never occurs to him as necessary.  But this was precisely the example Christ gave us—­an unselfish example of devotion to others—­a supreme descent of the Divine into man to rescue and