nd duty to retain.

There is an asceticism among Methodists of his class which does not
differ greatly from that enforced by other religious orders. Thus
Ringfield, handsome, healthy, with pulsing vitality, active senses and
strong magnetic personality, was consecrated to preaching and to what
was called "leading souls to Christ" as much as any severe,
wedded-to-silence, befrocked and tonsured priest. And over and beyond
this self-consecration there was the pleasure involved in fulfilling
his mission, and herein perhaps he differed from the conventional and
perfunctory Roman. The sound of his own voice, the knowledge that he
was bound to interest, to convince, even to convert, the very attitude
in which he stood, with chest inflated, head thrown back, hand
uplifted, all these things delighted him, communicated to his lively
sentient side many delightful and varying sensations. As the _prima
donna_ among women so is the popular preacher among men.

"Now, when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very
many trees on the one side and on the other. Then said he unto me, ...
everything that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall
come, shall live; and there shall be a very great multitude of fish,
... And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it
... they shall be a place to spread forth nets: their fish shall be
according to their kinds, exceeding many.... And by the river, upon
the bank ... shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaves shall not
fade, ... because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary; and
the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for a
medicine."

This concluded the customary reading of a portion of Scripture, but
when the second hymn had been sung and the preacher began his sermon he
asked the congregation to let their minds revert for a moment to that
Vision of the Holy Waters which he was about to take as a text. Yet,
although throughout the sometimes flowery, sometimes didactic, but
always eloquent address which followed, more than one present looked
for a reference to the landscape outside, so markedly similar to that
pictured by the prophet, nothing of the kind occurred. The four
thousand years of religious growth, the spread of Gospel knowledge and
counsel, the healing qualities of the Stream of Salvation flowing down
the ages through a dark world of sin and affliction, the medicine for
the soul of man and the spiritual