the natur o’ things, he was as ignorant as a woman.  He was very knowing about doctrines, and used to call ’em the bulwarks of the Reformation; but I’ve always mistrusted that sort o’ learning as leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business.  Now Mester Irwine was as different as could be:  as quick!—­he understood what you meant in a minute, and he knew all about building, and could see when you’d made a good job.  And he behaved as much like a gentleman to the farmers, and th’ old women, and the labourers, as he did to the gentry.  You never saw him interfering and scolding, and trying to play th’ emperor.  Ah, he was a fine man as ever you set eyes on; and so kind to’s mother and sisters.  That poor sickly Miss Anne—­he seemed to think more of her than of anybody else in the world.  There wasn’t a soul in the parish had a word to say against him; and his servants stayed with him till they were so old and pottering, he had to hire other folks to do their work.”

“Well,” I said, “that was an excellent way of preaching in the weekdays; but I daresay, if your old friend Mr. Irwine were to come to life again, and get into the pulpit next Sunday, you would be rather ashamed that he didn’t preach better after all your praise of him.”

“Nay, nay,” said Adam, broadening his chest and throwing himself back in his chair, as if he were ready to meet all inferences, “nobody has ever heard me say Mr. Irwine was much of a preacher.  He didn’t go into deep speritial experience; and I know there s a deal in a man’s inward life as you can’t measure by the square, and say, ’Do this and that ’ll follow,’ and, ’Do that and this ‘ll follow.’  There’s things go on in the soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind, as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a’most, so you look back on yourself as if you was somebody else.  Those are things as you can’t bottle up in a ‘do this’ and ‘do that’; and I’ll go so far with the strongest Methodist ever you’ll find.  That shows me there’s deep speritial things in religion.  You can’t make much out wi’ talking about it, but you feel it.  Mr. Irwine didn’t go into those things—­he preached short moral sermons, and that was all.  But then he acted pretty much up to what he said; he didn’t set up for being so different from other folks one day, and then be as like ’em as two peas the next.  And he made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor stirring up their gall wi’ being overbusy.  Mrs. Poyser used to say—­you know she would have her word about everything—­she said, Mr. Irwine was like a good meal o’ victual, you were the better for him without thinking on it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o’ physic, he gripped you and worreted you, and after all he left you much the same.”

“But didn’t Mr. Ryde preach a great deal more about that spiritual part of religion that you talk of, Adam?  Couldn’t you get more out of his sermons than out of Mr. Irwine’s?”