ose of his
discourse. He was a friend to knowledge--but to knowledge accompanied by
religion; and, sometimes, his references to sources not within the
ordinary reading of his congregation, would spirit up some farmer's son,
with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the Parson for farther
explanation, and so be lured on to a little solid or graceful
instruction under a safe guide.

Now, on the present occasion, the Parson, who had always his eye and
heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of
his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent
was already at work among the peasants, and that magisterial and
inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the
Squire; seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the
precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor,
meditated nothing less than a great Political Sermon--a sermon that
should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue for the
wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his parish of
Hazeldean:

And thus ran--_The Political Sermon of Parson Dale_.

CHAPTER XII.

"For every man shall bear his own burden."
_Galatians_ vi. 5.

"Brethren, every man has his burden. If God designed our lives to end at
the grave, may we not believe that he would have freed an existence so
brief, from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of the
world, mankind have been subjected? Suppose that I am a kind father, and
have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a Divine revelation that
he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his
infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life. If I am a rich
man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern
discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not take him with me
to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the winter's cold:
why inflict hardships on his childhood, for the purpose of fitting him
for manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow into man? But if,
on the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for a more durable
existence, then should I not, out of the very love I bear to him,
prepare his childhood for the struggle of life, according to that
station in which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain to the
infant, in order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as a man? So
is it with our Father