“He’s a sharper!” said the merchant, turning towards me as Gray left the store.

“He’s a Christian, they say,” was my quiet remark.

“A Christian!”

“Yes; don’t you know that he has become religious, and joined the church?”

“You’re joking!”

“Not a word of it.  Didn’t you observe his subdued, meek aspect, when he came in?”

“Why, yes; now that you refer to it, I do remember a certain peculiarity about him.  Become pious!  Joined the church!  Well, I’m sorry!”

“For what?”

“Sorry for the injury he will do to a good cause.  The religion that makes a man a better husband, father, man of business, lawyer, doctor, or preacher, I reverence, for it is genuine, as the lives of those who accept it do testify.  But your hypocritical pretenders I scorn and execrate.”

“It is, perhaps, almost too strong language, this, as applied to Mr. Gray,” said I.

“What is a hypocrite?” asked the merchant.

“A man who puts on the semblance of Christian virtues which he does not possess.”

“And that is what Mr. Gray does when he assumes to be religious.  A true Christian is just.  Was he just to me when he crowded me down in the price of my goods, and robbed me of a living profit, in order that he might secure a double gain?  I think not.  There is not even the live and let live principle in that.  No—­no, sir.  If he has joined the church, my word for it, there is a black sheep in the fold; or, I might say, without abuse of language, a wolf therein disguised in sheep’s clothing.”

“Give the man time,” said I.  “Old habits of life are strong, you know.  In a little while, I trust that he will see clearer, and regulate his life from perceptions of higher truths.”

“I thought his heart was changed,” answered the merchant, with some irony in his tones.  “That he had been made a new creature.”

I did not care to discuss that point with him, and so merely answered,

“The beginnings of spiritual life are as the beginnings of natural life.  The babe is born in feebleness, and we must wait through the periods of infancy, childhood and youth, before we can have the strong man ready for the burden and heat of the day, or full-armed for the battle.  If Mr. Gray is in the first effort to lead a Christian life, that is something.  He will grow wiser and better in time, I hope.”

“There is vast room for improvement,” said the merchant.  “In my eyes he is, at this time, only a hypocritical pretender.  I hope, for the sake of the world and the church both, that his new associates will make something better out of him.”

I went away, pretty much of the merchant’s opinion.  My next meeting with Mr. Gray was in the shop of a mechanic to whom he had sold a bill of goods some months previously.  He had called to collect a portion of the amount which remained unpaid.  The mechanic was not ready for him.