those through which he had just passed. He was limp. Morally as
well as physically his nerve was gone. He thought of the Apostle
who fought with beasts at Ephesus, and envied him his combatants.
His fretful impatience with those who differed from him
theologically rose to a tide of insane hatred, and he lost himself
in a passion against his deacons as bitter as that which they had
shown towards Amanda Stott and himself.

Entering his lodgings, and lighting his lamp, he threw himself on
the couch, resenting in bitterness of spirit the limitations of
creeds, and the exactions imposed on men who, like himself, were
called to minister to brawling sects. Thrice he sat down at his
desk; thrice he wrote out his resignation, and thrice he committed
it to the flames. Then, recalling the words of an old college
professor who often used to tell his students that the second
Epistle of the Corinthians was the ministerial panacea in the hour
of depression, he took up his Testament and read:

_'Ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in
necessities, in distress ... by pureness, by knowledge, by
long-suffering, by kindness, by love unfeigned, by the Holy Ghost,
by the word of truth, by the power of God.'_

And there came on the young pastor a spirit of power, and of love,
and of a new mind, and he slept.



IV.