What was it that drew me towards Thomas Weir’s shop?  I think it must have been incipient repentance—­a feeling that I had wronged the man.  But just as I turned the corner, and the smell of the wood reached me, the picture so often associated in my mind with such a scene of human labour, rose before me.  I saw the Lord of Life bending over His bench, fashioning some lowly utensil for some housewife of Nazareth.  And He would receive payment for it too; for He at least could see no disgrace in the order of things that His Father had appointed.  It is the vulgar mind that looks down on the earning and worships the inheriting of money.  How infinitely more poetic is the belief that our Lord did His work like any other honest man, than that straining after His glorification in the early centuries of the Church by the invention of fables even to the disgrace of his father!  They say that Joseph was a bad carpenter, and our Lord had to work miracles to set the things right which he had made wrong!  To such a class of mind as invented these fables do those belong who think they honour our Lord when they judge anything human too common or too unclean for Him to have done.

And the thought sprung up at once in my mind—­“If I ever see our Lord face to face, how shall I feel if He says to me; ’Didst thou do well to murmur that thy sister espoused a certain man for that in his youth he had earned his bread as I earned mine?  Where was then thy right to say unto me, Lord, Lord?’”

I hurried into the workshop.

“Has Tom told you about it?” I said.

“Yes, sir.  And I told him to mind what he was about; for he was not a gentleman, and you was, sir.”

“I hope I am.  And Tom is as much a gentleman as I have any claim to be.”

Thomas Weir held out his hand.

“Now, sir, I do believe you mean in my shop what you say in your pulpit; and there is one Christian in the world at least.—­But what will your good lady say?  She’s higher-born than you—­no offence, sir.”

“Ah, Thomas, you shame me.  I am not so good as you think me.  It was my wife that brought me to reason about it.”

“God bless her.”

“Amen.  I’m going to find Tom.”

At the same moment Tom entered the shop, with a very melancholy face.  He started when he saw me, and looked confused.

“Tom, my boy,” I said, “I behaved very badly to you.  I am sorry for it.  Come back with me, and have a walk with my sister.  I don’t think she’ll be sorry to see you.”

His face brightened up at once, and we left the shop together.  Evidently with a great effort Tom was the first to speak.

“I know, sir, how many difficulties my presumption must put you in.”

“Not another word about it, Tom.  You are blameless.  I wish I were.  If we only act as God would have us, other considerations may look after themselves—­or, rather, He will look after them.  The world will never be right till the mind of God is the measure of things, and the will of God the law of things.  In the kingdom of Heaven nothing else is acknowledged.  And till that kingdom come, the mind and will of God must, with those that look for that kingdom, over-ride every other way of thinking, feeling, and judging.  I see it more plainly than ever I did.  Take my sister, in God’s name, Tom, and be good to her.”