leadings before the throne, or--still
strictly scriptural in expression--he warned and exhorted the
impenitent. The contribution-box always received his sixpence as long as
specie payment lasted, and the smallest fractional currency note
thereafter; and to each of the regular annual offerings to the
missionary cause, the Bible cause, and kindred Christian enterprises,
the Deacon regularly contributed his dollar and his prayers.

The Deacon could quote scripture in a manner which put Biblical
professors to the blush, and every principle of his creed so bristled
with texts, confirmatory, sustentive and aggressive, that doubters were
rebuked and free-thinkers were speedily reduced to speechless humility
or rage. But the unregenerate, and even some who professed
righteousness, declared that more fondly than to any other scriptural
passage did the good Deacon cling to the injunction, "Make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness." Meekly insisting that he was
only a steward of the Lord, he put out his Lord's money that he might
receive it again with usury, and so successful had he been that almost
all mortgages held on property near Pawkin Centre were in the hands of
the good Deacon, and few were the foreclosure sales in which he was not
the seller.

The new pastor at Pawkin Centre, like good pastors everywhere, had
tortured himself into many a headache over the perplexing question, "How
are we to reach the impenitent in our midst!" The said impenitent were,
with but few exceptions, industrious, honest, respectable, law-abiding
people, and the worthy pastor, as fully impregnated with Yankee-thrift
as with piety, shuddered to think of the waste of souls that was
constantly threatening. At length, like many another pastor, he called a
meeting of the brethren, to prayerfully consider this momentous
question. The Deacon came, of course, and so did all the other pillars,
and many of them presented their views. Brother Grave thought the final
doom of the impenitent should be more forcibly presented; Deacon Struggs
had an abiding conviction that it was the Man of Sin holding dominion in
their hearts that kept these people away from the means of grace; Deacon
Ponder mildly suggested that the object might perhaps be attained if
those within the fold maintained a more godly walk and conversation,
but he was promptly though covertly rebuked by the good Deacon Barker,
who reminded the brethren that "it is the _Spirit_ th