with university training who can do this? The man at Bethel also
possessed a natural talent of personally impressing and gaining the
good-will of every person with whom he came in contact; it was
astonishing with what tenacity people clung to him, so that there must
have been something exceptional in his character. His origin was of the
humblest; he was drawn from the same class as the apostles, as the great
Fisherman, and the great Tentmaker, a man of manual labour lifted
entirely by his wit to be a very great power indeed in the community
where he was stationed.

Too much credit must not be put upon cottagers' tales: one day they are
all so bitter, hanging would not be sufficient, and you would suppose
they were going to show a lifelong enmity; in a week or two it is all
forgotten, and next month they are taking tea together. Those who know
them best say you should never believe anything a cottager tells you.
There is sure to be exaggeration, or they tell you half the story, and
they catch up the wildest rumour and repeat it as unquestioned truth. No
doubt after a while all this sound and fury signifying nothing will blow
off, and there will be a reconciliation; the pastor and the elder will be
bosom friends, all the congregation will be calling, and eating and
drinking; there will be pipes and three-star bottles, and the elect will
be made perfect. If the fourth wife disappears in time there will be a
fifth, and Christian Mormonism will flourish exceedingly. Very likely the
furious fall-out is over before now; there is no stability in this
peculiar cast, the chapel mind.

Another curious reflection suggests itself to any one who has seen the
fervour of Bethel. Within an easy walk of each other there are eight
chapels and three churches and the Salvation Army barracks; a thinly
populated country district, too; no squires, the farmers all depressed