therefore, so little business to be written at all. So long as an
unlettered soul can attain to saving grace there would seem to be no
deadly error in holding theological libraries to be accumulations of,
for the most part, stupendous impertinence.

Many of the books had accrued in the latter years of the last
clergyman's lifetime. These threatened to be of even less interest
than the elder works a century hence to any curious inquirer who
should then rummage then as I was doing now. Volumes of the Liberal
Preacher and Christian Examiner, occasional sermons, controversial
pamphlets, tracts, and other productions of a like fugitive nature,
took the place of the thick and heavy volumes of past time. In a
physical point of view, there was much the same difference as between
a feather and a lump of lead; but, intellectually regarded, the
specific gravity of old and new was about upon a par. Both also were
alike frigid. The elder books nevertheless seemed to have been
earnestly written, and might be conceived to have possessed warmth at
some former period; although, with the lapse of time, the heated
masses had cooled down even to the freezing-point. The frigidity of
the modern productions, on the other hand, was characteristic and
inherent, and evidently had little to do with the writer's qualities
of mind and heart. In fine, of this whole dusty heap of literature I
tossed aside all the sacred part, and felt myself none the less a
Christian for eschewing it. There appeared no hope of either mounting
to the better world on a Gothic staircase of ancient folios or of
flying thither on the wings of a modern tract.

Nothing, strange to say, retained any sap except what had been written
for the passing day and year, without the remotest pretension or idea
of permanence. There were a few old newspapers, and still older