Men grumble at taxes and tolls; alas! nobody is stopped at so many gates and questioned in so many ways as he.  If he take in hand the tender matter of consoling stricken hearts, the ecstasy of his visions will not save his topic from being regarded by some as painful, and by others as a mere shining of the moon.  He will receive special requests not to harrow up the feelings he only meant to bind up in balm.  He may be informed of an aversion, more or less extensive, to naming the grave or coffin and what it contains, though he only puts one foot by pall or bier to plant the other in paradise.  If he turn the everlasting verities he is intrusted with to events transpiring on the public stage, though he never sided with any party in his life, and has no more committed himself to men than did his Master, some will be grieved at his preaching politics.  His head has throbbed, his heart ached, his eyes were hot and wet once before he uttered himself; but he must suffer and weep worse afterwards, because he went too far for one man and not far enough for another.  He is told, one day, that he is too severe on seceders, and the next, ironically, that, with such merciful sentiments towards them, he ought always to wear a cravat completely white.  One man is amused at his sermon, and another thinks the same is sad.  He will be asked if he cannot give a little less of one thing or more of another, as though he were a dealer in wares or an exhibiter of curious documents for a price, and could take an article from this or that shelf, or a paper from any one of a hundred pigeon-holes, when, if he be a servant of the Lord and organ of the Holy Ghost, he has no choice and is shut up to his errand,—­necessity is laid upon him, woe is unto him if he deliver it not, but, like another Jonah, flee to Tarshish when the Lord tells him to go to Nineveh and cry against its wickedness; and he feels through every nerve that truth is not a thing to be carried round as merchandise or peddled out at all to suit particular tastes, to retain old friends or win new ones, hard as it may go, to the anguish of his soul, to lose the good-will of those he loves, and whose distrust is a chronic pang, though they come to love him again all the more for what he has suffered and said.  But if, passing by discussions of general interest, and exposing himself to the hint of being behind the times, he grapple with the sins immediately about him, board the false customs of society and trade, and strike with the sword of the Lord at private vices and family faults, he will be blamed as very personal, and be apprised of his insults to those of whom in his delivery he never thought, as he may never preach at anybody, or even to anybody, in his most direct thrusting, more than to himself, reaching others only through his own wounded heart.  Meantime, some of his ecclesiastical constituents will suspect him, in his local ethics, of leniency to wide-spread