worthy object in this world, but are really too little occupied with
their exclusive personality to think so much as many do about what is to
become of them in another.

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather did not, most certainly, belong to this
latter class. There are several kinds of believers, whose history we
find among the early converts to Christianity.

There was the magistrate, whose social position was such that he
preferred private interview in the evening with the Teacher to following
him with the street-crowd. He had seen extraordinary facts which had
satisfied him that the young Galilean had a divine commission. But still
he cross-questioned the Teacher himself. He was not ready to accept
statements without explanation. That was the right kind of man. See how
he stood up for the legal rights of his Master, when the people were for
laying hands on him!

And again, there was the government official, intrusted with public
money, which, in those days, implied that he was supposed to be honest.
A single look of that heavenly countenance, and two words of gentle
command, were enough for him. Neither of these men, the early disciple
nor the evangelist, seems to have been thinking primarily about his own
personal safety.

But now look at the poor, miserable turnkey, whose occupation shows
what he was like to be, and who had just been thrusting two respectable
strangers, taken from the hands of a mob, covered with stripes and
stripped of clothing, into the inner prison, and making their feet fast
in the stocks. His thought, in the moment of terror, is for himself:
first, suicide; then, what he shall do,--not to save his household,--not