A man who goes regularly to church, and reads his Bible, cannot fail to have questions and controversies about truths, duties, and the requirements of religion.  The barest literal interpretation of Scripture will, in most cases, oppose the action of self-love; and he will not fail to see in the law of spiritual life a requirement wholly in opposition to the law of natural life.  In the very breadth of this literal requirement, however, he finds a way of escape from literal observance.  To give to all who ask; to lend to all who would borrow; to yield the cloak when the coat is taken forcibly; to turn the left cheek when the right is smitten—­all this is to him so evidently but a figure of speech, that he does not find it very hard to satisfy conscience.  Setting these passages aside, as not to be taken in the sense of the letter, he does not find it very difficult to dispose of others that come nearer to the obvious duties of man to man—­such, for instance, as that in the illustration of which, by the preacher, Mr. Braxton’s self-complacency had been so much disturbed.  He had never done much in the way of feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, or visiting the sick and in prison—­never done anything of set purpose, in fact.  If people were hungry, it was mostly their own fault, and to feed them would be to encourage idleness and vice.  All the other items in the catalogue were as easily disposed of; and so the literal duties involved might have been set forth in the most impassioned eloquence, Sabbath after Sabbath, without much disturbing the fine equipose of Mr. Braxton.  Alas for his peace of mind!—­the preacher of truth had gone past the dead letter, and revealed its spirit and its life.  Suddenly he felt himself removed, as it were, to an almost impossible distance from the heaven into which, as he had complacently flattered himself, he should enter by the door of mere ritual observances, when the sad hour came for giving up the delightful things of this pleasant world.  No wonder that Mr. Braxton was disturbed—­no wonder that, in his first convictions touching those more interior truths, which made visible the sandy foundations whereon he was building his eternal hopes, he should regard the application of doctrine as personal and even literal.

It was not so easy a thing to set aside the duty of ministering to the hungry, sick, and naked human souls around him, thousands of whom, for lack of spiritual nourishment, medicine and clothing, were in danger of perishing eternally.  And the preacher in dwelling upon this great duty of all Christian men and women, had used emphatic language.

“I give you,” he said, “God’s judgment of the case—­not my own.  ’Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me.  And these shall go away;’ where?  ’To everlasting punishment!’ Who shall go thus, in the last day, from this congregation?”

As Mr. Braxton sat alone on the evening of that Sabbath, troubled by the new thoughts which came flowing into his mind, the full impression of this scene in church came back upon him.  There was an almost breathless pause.  Men leaned forward in their pews; the low, almost whispered, tones of the minister were heard with thrilling distinctness in even the remotest parts of the house.