triumphantly settling every question which an over-seething and
ill-instructed brain might by any chance suggest,--what could it
boot?--how was a poor finite mortal, with much the ordinary faculty
and capacity, and but a very small stock already stored, to set
about reading, studying, understanding, mastering, appropriating the
contents of those thousands of volumes necessary to the arming of
him who, without pretending himself the mighty champion to seek the
dragon in his den, might yet hope not to let the loathly worm
swallow him, armour and all, at one gulp in the highway? Add to this
that--thought of all most dismayful!--he had himself to convince
first, the worst dragon of all to kill, for bare honesty's sake, in
his own field; while, all the time he was arming and fighting--like
the waves of the flowing tide in a sou'-wester, Sunday came in upon
Sunday, roaring on his flat, defenceless shore, Sunday behind Sunday
rose towering, in awful perspective, away to the verge of an
infinite horizon--Sunday after Sunday of dishonesty and sham--yes,
hypocrisy, far worse than any idolatry. To begin now, and in such
circumstances, to study the evidences of Christianity, were about as
reasonable as to send a man, whose children were crying for their
dinner, off to China to make his fortune!

He laughed the idea to scorn, discovered that a gravestone in a
November midnight was a cold chair for study, rose, stretched
himself disconsolately, almost despairingly, looked long at the
persistent solidity of the dark church and the waving line of its
age-slackened ridge, which, like a mountain-range, shot up suddenly
in the tower and ceased--then turning away left the houses of the
dead crowded all about the house of the resurrection. At the farther
gate he turned yet again, and gazed another moment on the tower.
Towards the sky it towered, and led his gaze upward. There still