zeal which his father, though far from attempting to copy, could
not but admire. His Sunday services over, he relapsed into the
comfortable, easy-going life of a country gentleman for the rest of
the week; but his son was indefatigable, and, though little more
than a boy himself, gathered round him the roughest lads of the
village, and by his eloquence, and a certain peculiar personal
fascination which he retained all his life, absolutely forced them
to listen to him. The father augured great things for him, and
invariably prophesied that he would "live to see him a bishop yet."

It was a settled thing that he should take Holy Orders, and for
some time Raeburn was only too happy to carry out his father's
plans. In his very first term at Cambridge, however, he began to
feel doubts, and, becoming convinced that he could never again
accept the doctrines in which he had been educated, he told his
father that he must give up all thought of taking Orders.

Now, unfortunately, Mr. Raeburn was the very last man to understand
or sympathize with any phase of life through which he had not
himself passed. He had never been troubled with religious doubts;
skepticism seemed to him monstrous and unnatural. He met the
confession, which his son had made in pain and diffidence, with a
most deplorable want of tact. In answer to the perplexing
questions which were put to him, he merely replied testily that
Luke had been overworking himself, and that he had no business to
trouble his head with matters which were beyond him, and would fain
have dismissed the whole affair at once.

"But," urged the son, "how is it possible for me to turn my back on
these matters when I am preparing to teach them?"