b creatures belong to them, and tending to make a man beloved by his
weak and erring fellow-mortals.

In the olden time he would have lived and died king of his parish,
monarch, by Divine right, as the noblest, grandest, wisest of all that
made up the little nation within hearing of his meeting-house bell. But
Young Calvinism has less reverence and more love of novelty than its
forefathers. It wants change, and it loves young blood. Polyandry is
getting to be the normal condition of the Church; and about the time a
man is becoming a little overripe for the livelier human sentiments, he
may be pretty sure the women are looking round to find him a colleague.
In this way it was that the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker became the
colleague of the Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton.

If one could have dived deep below all the Christian graces--the
charity, the sweetness of disposition, the humility--of Father
Pemberton, he would have found a small remnant of the "Old Man," as the
good clergyman would have called it, which was never in harmony with the
Rev. Mr. Stoker. The younger divine felt his importance, and made his
venerable colleague feel that he felt it. Father Pemberton had a fair
chance at rainy Sundays and hot summer-afternoon services; but the
junior pushed him aside without ceremony whenever he thought there was
like to be a good show in the pews. As for those courtesies which
the old need, to soften the sense of declining faculties and failing
attractions, the younger pastor bestowed them in public, but was
negligent of them, to say the least, when not on exhibition.

Good old Father Pemberton could not love this man, but he would not hate
him, and he never complained to him or of him. It would have been of no
use if he had: the women of the parish had taken up the Rev. Mr. Stoker;
and when the women run after a minister or a doctor, what do the men
signify?

Why the women ran after him, some thought it was not hard to guess. He
was not ill-looking, according to the village standard, parted his hair
smoothly, tied his white cravat carefully, was fluent, plausible, had a
gift in prayer, was considered eloquent, was fond of listening to their
spiritual experiences, and had a sickly wife. This is what Byles Gridley
said; but he was apt to be caustic at times.

Father Pemberton visited his people but rarely. Like Jonathan Edwards,
like David Osgood, he felt his call to be to study-work, and was
impatient of the egotisms and s