“God forbid!” I answered.  “If a word of mine would make you leave my parish to-morrow, I dare not say it.  I do not want to incur the rebuke of our Lord—­for surely the words ‘Forbid him not’ involved some rebuke.  Would it not be a fearful thing that one soul, because of a deed of mine, should receive a less portion of elevation or comfort in his journey towards his home?  Are there not countless modes of saying the truth?  You have some of them.  I hope I have some.  People will hear you who will not hear me.  Preach to them in the name and love of God, Mr Templeton.  Speak that you do know and testify that you have seen.  You and I will help each other, in proportion as we serve the Master.  I only say that in separating from us you are in effect, and by your conduct, saying to us, “Do not preach, for you follow not with us.”  I will not be guilty of the same towards you.  Your fathers did the Church no end of good by leaving it.  But it is time to unite now.”

Once more followed a silence.

“If people could only meet, and look each other in the face,” said Mr Templeton at length, “they might find there was not such a gulf between them as they had fancied.”

And so we parted.

Now I do not write all this for the sake of the church-rate question.  I write it to commemorate the spirit in which Mr Templeton met me.  For it is of consequence that two men who love their Master should recognize each that the other does so, and thereupon, if not before, should cease to be estranged because of difference of opinion, which surely, inevitable as offence, does not involve the same denunciation of woe.

After this Mr Templeton and I found some opportunities of helping each other.  And many a time ere his death we consulted together about things that befell.  Once he came to me about a legal difficulty in connexion with the deed of trust of his chapel; and although I could not help him myself, I directed him to such help as was thorough and cost him nothing.

I need not say he never became a churchman, or that I never expected he would.  All his memories of a religious childhood, all the sources of the influences which had refined and elevated him, were surrounded with other associations than those of the Church and her forms.  The Church was his grandmother, not his mother, and he had not made any acquaintance with her till comparatively late in life.

But while I do not say that his intellectual objections to the Church were less strong than they had been, I am sure that his feelings were moderated, even changed towards her.  And though this may seem of no consequence to one who loves the Church more than the brotherhood, it does not seem of little consequence to me who love the Church because of the brotherhood of which it is the type and the restorer.

It was long before another church-rate was levied in Marshmallows.  And when the circumstance did take place, no one dreamed of calling on Mr Templeton for his share in it.  But, having heard of it, he called himself upon the churchwarden—­Mr Brownrigg still—­and offered the money cheerfully.  And Mr BROWRIGG refused to take it till he had consulted me!  I told him to call on Mr Templeton, and say he would be much obliged to him for his contribution, and give him a receipt for it.