her minister; the other was a sort of involuntary excursion he made away from Go

gia Conference at the same time. William had that devotion for him one often sees in a good man for just a smart one. He placed an extra

rdained scarcely long enough to become a deacon before he was well enough known to be preaching commencement sermons at young ladies' seminaries and delivering lectures everyw

sed himself to any other part of the spiritual anatomy. I always had the feeling when I heard him that he inflated each word, so that some of the weightiest and most ancient verbs in the Scriptures floated from his lips as lightly as if they had been the cast-off theological tail-feathers of a grow

l serving mountain circuits. And it was not long before none of the churches in our Conference were good enough for him, so he had to be transferred to get one commensurate with his ability. Even then he had enou

rreproachable character, as we use those words, and I could have admired him as anything else but a preacher. It was his shockingly developed talent for worldly success that revolted me. To this day, the

on. He believed that the Lord was lavish in favors to him because of his superior worth, and this accounted f

t Church in a flourishing city in another state) to visit him. They had always kept up a sort of desultory corr

on his happy journey. When he returned a week later William was a changed man. He talked with a breadth and intelligence upon many old and new subjects, that I had never observed in him before. Yet it seemed to me that something great in him had faded. He was stuffed to the neck with ethics as loose fitting morally as the sack coat of worldly-mindedness, and he di

y after his return, "I must read and study more. This visit

alk so "fresh" before, "you must read and study more, for a pre

do you

a preacher is called to deliver a mes

at he thinks, "I think one reason why Pendleton has gotten on in the Church and been of so much more service there than I have is because he has kept up with his times. He is a very l

much better than you do how to make it worldly-minded and how to intone the gospel to the same tune, but you, William, are you going to begin to interpret the Script

the good in what he says. Yet he showed a great interest in me, and

did he

and Man and the world such as no intelligent, healthy disc

l what his vie

a very powerful sermon from one of the best texts in the New Testament the Sunday I

ch more satisfactorily powerful sermon in a fashionab

rteen days, I remember, the word "salvation" did not pass his lips and I could have prayed as good a prayer as he prayed any night as we knelt together. The time came, indeed,

ly began, approached, and I knew if things did not change it wou

ained to me late one afternoon as we sat on the parso

stened to the voice of Horace Pendleton till you cannot hear the voice o

forward for prayers, so to speak, and for the next few days we had a terrible time at the parsonage.

saying Pendleton did not have, you understand; I am an agnostic on that subject.) But to have a soul and to be without an immediate Almighty is to experience a frightful tragedy. If a man never recognizes this diviner part of himself, he may live and die in the comfort or discomfort of any other mere creature. But once you realize your own immortality (I make a distinction here between the self-consciousness of immortality and the loud preaching of it that a man may do just from biblical hearsay), you are a lonesome waif in a bad storm. This was William's fix. He was exposed, all

e out of his study and looked at me va

ow for certain is that there is a God, your kind, or you could never have lived the way you have lived, nor accomplished the things you have accomplished. You couldn't have; you haven't sense enough

k preacher is about the most depressing thing a woman can have in the house. And when I looked at William, pale, hollow-eyed, with his mouth puck

however, I knew that his clouds were bre

ndation, ye sai

r faith in His

in His Stu

l psalm to read and I heard the happy rus

r the initial service of the protra

rist Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, a

f another simple, faithful, brave life behind them besides that of St. Paul. And the people who listened knew it. If William had made a great name and fame for himself out of preaching, if he had earned fa

had not an elegantly-painted portrait of St. Paul, but we saw him really, the man who actually had counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus-so out of his bonds in the spirit. It takes a rare preacher to portray one "found in Christ." He cannot do it with the best theological vocabulary, nor the finest scientific terms. But William, I cannot tell how he did it-all I know is that every time he pu

t with a thousand terms taken from the "new theology," he could not hav

en to evil. On the other hand, I had occasion to learn after William's death that Pendleton regarded him with good-natured derision. He thought him a stupid man bound down to the earth by a meager theology. H