—­These antipathies are at least weaknesses; they may be sins in the eye of the Recording Angel.  I often reproach myself with my wrong-doings.  I should like sometimes to thank Heaven for saving me from some kinds of transgression, and even for granting me some qualities that if I dared I should be disposed to call virtues.  I should do so, I suppose, if I did not remember the story of the Pharisee.  That ought not to hinder me.  The parable was told to illustrate a single virtue, humility, and the most unwarranted inferences have been drawn from it as to the whole character of the two parties.  It seems not at all unlikely, but rather probable, that the Pharisee was a fairer dealer, a better husband, and a more charitable person than the Publican, whose name has come down to us “linked with one virtue,” but who may have been guilty, for aught that appears to the contrary, of “a thousand crimes.”  Remember how we limit the application of other parables.  The lord, it will be recollected, commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely.  His shrewdness was held up as an example, but after all he was a miserable swindler, and deserved the state-prison as much as many of our financial operators.  The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is a perpetual warning against spiritual pride.  But it must not frighten any one of us out of being thankful that he is not, like this or that neighbor, under bondage to strong drink or opium, that he is not an Erie-Railroad Manager, and that his head rests in virtuous calm on his own pillow.  If he prays in the morning to be kept out of temptation as well as for his daily bread, shall he not return thanks at night that he has not fallen into sin as well as that his stomach has been filled?  I do not think the poor Pharisee has ever had fair play, and I am afraid a good many people sin with the comforting, half-latent intention of smiting their breasts afterwards and repeating the prayer of the Publican.

          (Sensation.)

This little movement which I have thus indicated seemed to give the Master new confidence in his audience.  He turned over several pages until he came to a part of the interleaved volume where we could all see he had written in a passage of new matter in red ink as of special interest.

—­I told you, he said, in Latin, and I repeat it in English, that I have freed my soul in these pages,—­I have spoken my mind.  I have read you a few extracts, most of them of rather slight texture, and some of them, you perhaps thought, whimsical.  But I meant, if I thought you were in the right mood for listening to it, to read you some paragraphs which give in small compass the pith, the marrow, of all that my experience has taught me.  Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.  I took it early, as we all do, and have treated it all along with the best palliatives I could get hold of, inasmuch as I could find no radical cure for its evils, and have so far managed to keep pretty comfortable under it.