more that others admired them, and her the less that others pitied her:  he did try to love her, for there was a large element of justice in his nature.  This, but for his being so much occupied with making himself acceptable to his congregation, would have given him a leadership in the rising rebellion against a theology which crushed the hearts of men by attributing injustice to their God.  As it was, he lay at anchor, and let the tide rush past him.

Further change followed—­gradual, but rapid.  His congregation began to discover that he was not the man he had been.  They complained of lack of variety in his preaching; said he took it too easy; did not study his sermons sufficiently; often spoke extempore, which was a poor compliment to them; did not visit with impartiality, and indeed had all along favored the carriage people.  There was a party in the church which had not been cordial to him from the first; partly from his fault, partly from theirs, he had always made them feel they were of the lower grade; and from an increase of shops in the neighborhood, this party was now gathering head.  Their leaders went so far at length as to hint at a necessity for explanation in regard to the accounts of certain charities administered by the pastor.  In these, unhappily, lacunae were patent.  In his troubles the pastor had grown careless.  But it was altogether to his own loss, for not merely had the money been spent with a rigidity of uprightness, such as few indeed of his accusers exercised in their business affairs, but he had in his disbursements exceeded the contribution committed to his charge.  Confident, however, in his position, and much occupied with other thoughts, he had taken no care to set down the particulars of his expenditure, and his enemies did not fail to hint a connection between this fact and the loss of his wife’s annuity.  Worst of all, doubts of his orthodoxy began to be expressed by the more ignorant, and harbored without examination by the less ignorant.

All at once he became aware of the general disloyalty of his flock, and immediately resigned.  Scarcely had he done so when he was invited to Glaston, and received with open arms.  There he would heal his wounds, and spend the rest of his days in peace.  “He caught a slip or two” in descending, but soon began to find the valley of humiliation that wholesome place which all true pilgrims have ever declared it.  Comparative retirement, some sense of lost labor, some suspicion of the worth of the ends for which he had spent his strength, a waking desire after the God in whom he had vaguely believed all the time he was letting the dust of paltry accident inflame his eyes, blistering and deadening his touch with the efflorescent crusts and agaric tumors upon the dry bones of theology, gilding the vane of his chapel instead of cleansing its porch and its floor—­these all favored the birth in his mind of the question, whether he had ever entered in at the straight gate