will it be sarviceable? will reading it keep off hunger or fill my
stomach?"

"Ah! Darby, my friend, that is gross talk--such views of divine truth
are really a perversion of the gifts of heaven. That book although it
will not fill your stomach, as you grossly call it, actually will do it
figuratively, which in point of fact is the same thing, or a greater--it
will enable you to bear hunger as a dispensation, Darby, to which it is
your duty as a Christian to submit. Nay, it will do more, my friend; it
will exalt your faith to such a divine pitch, that if you read it with
the proper spirit, you will pray that the dispensation thus laid on you
may continue, in order that the inner man may be purged."

"Faith, and Mr. M'Slime, with great respect, if that is your doctrine
it isn't your practice. The sorra word of prayer--God bless the
prayers!--came out o' your lips today,'an til you laid in a good warm
breakfast, and afther that, for fraid of disappointments, the very first
thing you prayed for was your daily bread--didn't I hear you? But I'll
tell you what, sir, ordher me my breakfast, and then I'll be spakin' to
you. A hungry man--or a hungry woman, or her hungry childre' can't eat
Bibles; although it is well known, God knows, that when hunger, and
famine, and starvation are widin them and upon them, that the same
Bible, but nothing else, is; handed to them by pious people in the shape
of consolation and relief. Now I'm thinkin', Mr. M'Slime, that that is
not the best way to make the Bible respected. Are you goin' to give me
my breakfast, sir? upon my sowl, beggin' your pardon, if you do I'll
bring the Bible home wid me, if that will satisfy you, for we haven't
got e'er a one in our own little cabin."

"Sharpe, my good boy, I'll trouble you to take that Bible out of his