nion of them and of their author had
come to Gershom before him. There could be no doubt as to the sermons
after that testimony, so it was no uncertain sound that went forth about
his first pulpit efforts.

They were clear, they were logical, they were profound. Above all, they
were pronounced by the orthodox North Gore people to be "sound." It is
true he read them, but even that did not spoil them; and it was a
decided proof that these people were sincere in their admiration, and in
earnest in their desire for union and "the healing of breaches" that
this was the case. In old times, that is, in the time of old Mr Grant,
and old Mr Sangster, to be a "proper minister" was in their opinion to
be a "dumb dog that could not bark," and such a one had ever been an
object of compassion, not to say of contempt among them. But Mr
Maxwell's sermons were worth reading, they said, and they waited. And
so the first months were got safely over.

Safely, but, alas! not happily, for the young minister; scarcely
recovered from severe illness, weak in body and desponding in mind, he
had no power to accommodate himself to the circumstances toward which
all the preparation and discipline of his life had been tending. Over a
time of sickness and suffering he looked back to days of congenial
occupation and companionship, with a regret so painful that the future
seemed to grow aimless and hopeless in its presence. As men struggle in
dreams with unseen enemies, so he struggled with the sense of unfitness
for the work he had so joyfully chosen, and for which he had so
earnestly prepared, with the fear that he had mistaken his calling, and
that he might dishonour, by the imperfect fulfillment of his duty, the
Master that he loved.

He despised himself for the weakness which made it a positive pain for
him to come in contact with strangers with whom he had no power to make
friends. He began to regard the hopes that had sustained him during the
time of preparation, the pleasure he had taken in such remnants of other
people's work in the way of preaching as had fallen to him as a student;
and the encouragement which had been given to him as to his gifts and
talents, as so many temptations of Satan. It was this sense of
unfitness for his work that made him fall back at first on the sermons
of his student days, and which made the pulpit services, praised by his
hearers, seem to him like a mockery. It was a miserable time to him.
He dist