feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind,
as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a'most, so you look
back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you
can't bottle up in a 'do this' and 'do that'; and I'll go so far with
the strongest Methodist ever you'll find. That shows me there's deep
speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about
it, but you feel it. Mr. Irwine didn't go into those things--he preached
short moral sermons, and that was all. But then he acted pretty much
up to what he said; he didn't set up for being so different from other
folks one day, and then be as like 'em as two peas the next. And he
made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor stirring
up their gall wi' being overbusy. Mrs. Poyser used to say--you know she
would have her word about everything--she said, Mr. Irwine was like a
good meal o' victual, you were the better for him without thinking on
it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o' physic, he gripped you and worreted
you, and after all he left you much the same."

"But didn't Mr. Ryde preach a great deal more about that spiritual part
of religion that you talk of, Adam? Couldn't you get more out of his
sermons than out of Mr. Irwine's?"

"Eh, I knowna. He preached a deal about doctrines. But I've seen pretty
clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides
doctrines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was like finding
names for your feelings, so as you can talk of 'em when you've never
known 'em, just as a man may talk o' tools when he knows their names,
though he's never so much as seen 'em, still less handled 'em. I've
heard a deal o' doctrine i' my time, for I used to go after the
Dissenting preachers along wi' Seth, when I was a lad o' seventeen, and
got puzzling myself a deal about th' Arminians and the Calvinists. The
Wesleyans, you know, are strong Arminians; and Seth, who could never
abide anything harsh and was always for hoping the best, held fast by
the Wesleyans from the very first; but I thought I could pick a hole or
two in their notions, and I got disputing wi' one o' the class leaders
down at Treddles'on, and harassed him so, first o' this side and then
o' that, till at last he said, 'Young man, it's the devil making use o'
your pride and conceit as a weapon to war against the simplicity o'
the truth.' I couldn't help laughing then, but as I was going home, I
though