“Well, Joshua, and how are you doing?  And why have you not been to church lately?” said the parson, pulling up.

“Well, sir,” said Joshua, “I don’t go to church, you know.”

“A new light on your own account, hey?” and he laughed as if he mocked him.

“No, sir; only a seeker.”

“The old path’s not good enough for you?”

“I must answer for my conscience to God, sir,” said Joshua.

“And your clergyman, appointed by God and the state to be your guide, what of him?  Has he no authority in his own parish?”

“Look here, sir,” said Joshua, quite respectfully; “I deny your appointment as a God-given leader of souls.  The Church is but the old priesthood as it existed in the days of our Lord.  I see no sacrifice of the world, no brotherhood with the poor——­”

“The poor!” interrupted Mr. Grand disdainfully.  “What would you have, you young fool?  The poor have the laws of their country to protect them, and the Gospel preached to them for their salvation.”

“Why, sir, the poor of our day are the lepers of Christ’s, and who among you Christian priests consorts with them?  Who ranks the man above his station, or the soul above the man?”

“Now we have come to it!” cried Mr. Grand.  “I thought I should touch the secret spring at last!  And you would like us to associate with you as equals—­is that it, Joshua?  Gentlemen and common men hob-and-nob together, and no distinctions made?  You to ride in our carriages, and perhaps marry our daughters?”

“That’s just it, sir.  You are gentlemen, as you say, but not the followers of Christ.  If you were, you would have no carriages to ride in, and your daughters would be what Martha and Mary and Lydia and Dorcas were, and their title to ladyhood founded on their degrees of goodness.”

“Shall I tell you what would be the very thing for you,” said Mr. Grand, quite quietly.

“Yes, sir; what?” asked Joshua eagerly.

“This whip across your shoulders!  And, by George, if I were not a clergyman, I would lay it there with a will!” cried the parson.

No one had ever seen Joshua angry since he had grown up.  His temper was proverbially sweet, and his self-control was a marvel.  But this time he lost both.

“God shall smite thee, thou white wall!” he cried with vehemence.  “You are the gentleman, sir, and I am only a poor carpenter’s son; but I spurn you with a deeper and more solemn scorn than you have spurned me!”

He lifted his hand as he said this, with a strange and passionate gesture, then turned himself about and went in, and Mr. Grand drove off more his ill-wisher than before.  He also made old Davidson, Joshua’s father, suffer for his son, for he took away his custom from him, and did him what harm in the neighbourhood a gentleman’s ill word can do a working man.

III.—­Is Christ’s Way Livable?