ped behind his back, and his great grey
eyes cast up at the heavy pines and the tender sky beyond, began to
comfort the minister.

"You are troubled, my friend," he said, "and I do not wonder at it, by
the turbulence of these times. On all sides are fightings and fears. Of
course I cannot, as you know, regard these matters you have spoken
of--episcopacy, ceremonies at the Communion and the like--in the grave
light in which you see them; but I take it, if I understand you rightly,
that it is the confusion and lack of any authority or respect for
antiquity that is troubling you more. You feel yourself in a sad plight
between these raging waves; tossed to and fro, battered upon by both
sides, forsaken and despised and disregarded. Now, indeed, although I do
not stand quite where you do, yet I see how great the stress must be;
but, if I may say so to a minister, it is just what you regard as your
shame that I regard as your glory. It is the mark of the cross that is on
your life. When our Saviour went to his passion, he went in the same
plight as that in which you go; both Jew and Gentile were against him on
this side and that; his claims were disallowed, his royalty denied; he
was despised and rejected of men. He did not go to his passion as to a
splendid triumph, bearing his pain like some solemn and mysterious
dignity at which the world wondered and was silent; but he went battered
and spat upon, with the sweat and the blood and the spittle running down
his face, contemned by the contemptible, hated by the hateful, rejected
by the outcast, barked upon by the curs; and it was that that made his
passion so bitter. To go to death, however painful, with honour and
applause, or at least with the silence of respect, were easy; it is not
hard to die upon a throne; but to live on a dunghill with Job, that is
bitterness. Now again I must protest that I have no right to speak like
this to a minister, but since you have come to me I must needs say what I
think; and it is this that some wise man once said, 'Fear honour, for
shame is not far off. Covet shame, for honour is surely to follow.' If
that be true of the philosopher, how much more true is it of the
Christian minister whose profession it is to follow the Saviour and to be
made like unto him."

He said much more of the same kind; and his soft balmy faith soothed the
minister's wounds, and braced his will. The Rector could not help half
envying his friend, living, as it seeme