and they have the opportunity of earning a brilliant reputation
by conducting in his absence a case in which they are thoroughly
prepared. They go into the Church, and earn a fair character as
preachers; but Ihe living they would like never becomes vacant, and
when they are appointed to preach upon some important occasion, it
happens that the ground is a foot deep with snow.

Several years since, on a Sunday in July, I went to afternoon service
at a certain church by the sea-shore. The incumbent of that church
was a young clergyman of no ordinary talent; he is a distinguished
professor now. It was a day of drenching rain and howling hurricane;
the sky was black, as in mid-winter; the waves were breaking angry
and loud upon the rocks hard by. The weather the previous week had
been beautiful; the weather became beautiful again the next morning.
There came just the one gloomy and stormy summer day. The young
parson could not forsee the weather. What more fitting subject for
a July Sunday than the teachings of the beautiful season which was
passing over? So the text was, Thou hast made summer: it was a sermon
on summer, and its moral and spiritual lessons. How inconsistent
the sermon seemed with everything around! The outward circumstances
reduced it to an absurdity. The congregation was diminished to a
sixth of its usual number; the atmosphere was charged with a muggy
vapour from sloppy garments and dripping umbrellas: and as the
preacher spoke, describing vividly (though with the chastened taste
of the scholar) blue skies, green leaves, and gentle breezes, ever
and anon the storm outside drove the rain in heavy plashes upon
the windows, and, looking through them, you could see the black sky
and the fast-drifting clouds. I thought to myself, as the preacher
went on under the cross influence of these surroundings, Now, I
am sure you are in small things an unlucky man. No doubt the like