you like a child
just what to do and what to take? That 's exactly what you want in
religion. I don't blame you for it. You never liked to take the
responsibility of your own body; I don't see why you should want to have
the charge of your own soul. But I'm glad you're going to the Old Mother
of all. You wouldn't have been contented short of that."

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather breathed with more freedom. The Doctor saw
into his soul through those awful spectacles of his,--into it and beyond
it, as one sees through a thin fog. But it was with a real human
kindness, after all. He felt like a child before a strong man; but the
strong man looked on him with a father's indulgence. Many and many a
time, when he had come desponding and bemoaning himself on account of
some contemptible bodily infirmity, the old Doctor had looked at him
through his spectacles, listened patiently while he told his ailments,
and then, in his large parental way, given him a few words of wholesome
advice, and cheered him up so that he went off with a light heart,
thinking that the heaven he was so much afraid of was not so very near,
after all. It was the same thing now. He felt, as feeble natures always
do in the presence of strong ones, overmastered, circumscribed, shut in,
humbled; but yet it seemed as if the old Doctor did not despise him any
more for what he considered weakness of mind than he used to despise him
when he complained of his nerves or his digestion.

Men who see into their neighbors are very apt to be contemptuous; but men
who see through them find something lying behind every human soul which
it is not for them to sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer out of
the order of God's manifold universe.

Little as the Doctor had said out of which comfort could be extracted,
his genial manner had something grateful in it. A film of gratitude came
over the poor man's cloudy, uncertain eye, and a look of tremulous relief
and satisfaction played about his weak mouth. He was gravitating to the
majority, where he hoped to find "rest"; but he was dreadfully sensitive
to the opinions of the minority he was on the point of leaving.

The old Doctor saw plainly enough what was going on in his mind.

"I sha'n't quarrel with you," he said,--"you know that very well; but you
mustn't quarrel with me, if I talk honestly with you; it isn't everybody
that will take the trouble. You flatter yourself that you will make a
good many en