gifts" was pretty generally acknowledged, and people
generally were not hard on him because of silence.

To-night there was no call on him. The school-room was well filled, as
there was a prospect of the winter roads breaking up early, so that
people from a distance could not come for a while. Besides, it was not
the usual prayer-meeting, but the preparatory lecture before the
communion, and Mr Maxwell had the meeting altogether in his own hands;
and perhaps there were others there as well as Jacob, who took the good
of the thought that there was no special responsibility resting upon
them for the night.

If it had been the regular meeting, it is possible that Jacob might have
sat in his corner as usual, supposing himself to be attending to the
words of Deacon Scott and old Mr Wainwright, and all the rest of them,
and through habit and the associations of time and place, he might have
fallen into old trains of thought which did not always exclude a glance
over the business of the day, or a glance toward the business of
to-morrow; and so the unwonted stir of fears and feeling which had moved
him in the afternoon might have been set at rest, and the cloud of care
and pain dissolved for the time. But Mr Maxwell had the word, and
still moved and troubled, Jacob could not but listen with the rest.

It was not the minister's usual way to give one of his elaborate written
discourses on such an occasion as the present. There might be a
difference of opinion among the people now and then, as to whether he
gave them something better, or something not so good. But to-night the
greater part of them did not remember to make any comparisons of that
kind, but found themselves wondering whether anything had happened to
the minister, so earnest and solemn was he both in word and manner
to-night.

The words he spoke from were these, "If ye then be risen with Christ,
seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right
hand of God." I could not give the discourse, even if it would be wise
to do so. It was such an one as his hearers could not but listen to.

As he went on to tell them some of the wondrous things implied in being
"risen with Christ," the Head, crowned and glorious of the Church, "His
body," of which they were "the members," and to insist on the seeking
the "things above" as the result and sole evidence of this life from the
dead, none listened more intently than did Jacob. And perhaps because
of