for where did ever one read words less like moralising and more like simple earnestness of truth than all those of Jesus?  And I prayed my God that He would make me able to speak good common heavenly sense to my people, and forgive me for feeling so cross and proud towards the unhappy old lady—­for I was sure she was not happy—­and make me into a rock which swallowed up the waves of wrong in its great caverns, and never threw them back to swell the commotion of the angry sea whence they came.  Ah, what it would be actually to annihilate wrong in this way!—­to be able to say, it shall not be wrong against me, so utterly do I forgive it!  How much sooner, then, would the wrong-doer repent, and get rid of the wrong from his side also!  But the painful fact will show itself, not less curious than painful, that it is more difficult to forgive small wrongs than great ones.  Perhaps, however, the forgiveness of the great wrongs is not so true as it seems.  For do we not think it is a fine thing to forgive such wrongs, and so do it rather for our own sakes than for the sake of the wrongdoer?  It is dreadful not to be good, and to have bad ways inside one.

Such thoughts passed through my mind.  And once more the great light went up on me with regard to my office, namely, that just because I was parson to the parish, I must not be the person to myself.  And I prayed God to keep me from feeling stung and proud, however any one might behave to me; for all my value lay in being a sacrifice to Him and the people.

So when Mrs Pearson knocked at the door, and told me that a lady and gentleman had called, I shut my book which I had just opened, and kept down as well as I could the rising grumble of the inhospitable Englishman, who is apt to be forgetful to entertain strangers, at least in the parlour of his heart.  And I cannot count it perfect hospitality to be friendly and plentiful towards those whom you have invited to your house—­what thank has a man in that?—­while you are cold and forbidding to those who have not that claim on your attention.  That is not to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.  By all means tell people, when you are busy about something that must be done, that you cannot spare the time for them except they want you upon something of yet more pressing necessity; but tell them, and do not get rid of them by the use of the instrument commonly called the cold shoulder.  It is a wicked instrument that, and ought to have fallen out of use by this time.

I went and received Mr and Miss Boulderstone, and was at least thus far rewarded—­that the eerie feeling, as the Scotch would call it, which I had about my parish, as containing none but characters, and therefore not being CANNIE, was entirely removed.  At least there was a wholesome leaven in it of honest stupidity.  Please, kind reader, do not fancy I am sneering.  I declare to you I think a sneer the worst thing God has not made.  A curse is nothing in wickedness to it, it seems to me.  I do mean that honest stupidity I respect heartily, and do assert my conviction that I do not know how England at least would get on without it.  But I do not mean the stupidity that sets up for teaching itself to its neighbour, thinking itself wisdom all the time.  That I do not respect.