d a lamp to guide
you to heaven. We've heard a good deal just now of the special dangers
of our own times, how people are getting wise above what's written. Ah!
But `the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.' Dr Prosser's
a man of science, and you've heard his experience. You see he finds he
can't get on without the old-fashioned gospel. A religion without a
regular creed's no use at all. He's found out as religion without a
real human and divine Saviour's only moonshine; nay, it's no shine at
all; it's just darkness, and nothing else. There's a striking verse in
the prophet Jeremiah as just suits these days. It's this, and I'm
reading it out of Jane's Bible. You'll find it in Jeremiah, the eighth
chapter and the ninth verse: `The wise men are ashamed, they are
dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and
what wisdom is in them?' Well, but do you cling to the old Bible--
there's nothing like it. There's many a showy life just now as looks
well enough outside; but if you want a life as'll wear well you must
fashion it by God's Word.

"Now, afore I sits down, I'm just a-going to tell you about Dick
Trundle's house-warming.--Dick were one of them chaps as are always for
making a bit of a show, and making it cost as little as possible. He
were a hard-working man, and didn't spend much in drink, so he managed
to get a little money together, and he puts up half-a-dozen houses. The
end one were bigger than the rest, and had a bow-window to it.--Well,
Dick were a bachelor, and had an old housekeeper to do for him. When
his new houses were built, and he were just ready to go into his own, he
resolves to have a house-warming, and he invites me and three other
chaps to tea and supper with him. We'd some of us noticed as he'd been
sending a lot of things to the house for days past.--When the right day
was come, we goes to the front door, 'cos it looked more civil, and we
knocks. Dick himself comes to the door, and says through the keyhole,
`I must ask you to go round, for the door sticks, and I can't open it.'
So we goes round.--There were a very handsome clock in the passage, in a
grand mahogany case. `Seven o'clock!' says I, looking at it; `surely we
can't be so late.' `Oh no,' says he, `the clock stands. I got it dirt
cheap, but there's something amiss with the works. But it's a capital
clock, they tell me, entirely on a new principle.'--We was to have tea
in the best parlour.