"
Mr. Braxton evidently spoke from a disturbed state of mind.
Something in the discourse had struck at the foundations of
self-love and self-complacency.
"Into one ear, and out at the other. So it is with me, in cases like
this," answered Mr. Braxton's companion, in a changed and lighter
tone. "If a preacher chooses to be savage; to write from dyspeptic
or neuralgic states; to send his congregation, unshrived, to the
nether regions--why, I shrug my shoulders and let it pass. Most
likely, on the next Sunday, he will be full of consideration for
tender consciences, and grandly shut the gate he threw open so
widely on the last occasion. It would never answer, you know, to
take these things to heart--never in the world. We'd always be
getting into hot water. Clergymen have their moods, like other
people. It doesn't answer to forget this. Good morning, Mr. Braxton.
Our ways part here."
"Good morning," was replied, and the men separated.
But, try as Mr. Braxton would to set his minister's closely applied
doctrine from Scripture to the account of dyspepsia or neuralgia, he
was unable to push from his mind certain convictions wrought therein
by the peculiar manner in which some positions had been argued and
sustained. The subject taken by the minister, was that striking
picture of the judgment given in the twenty-fifth chapter of
Matthew, from the thirty-first verse to the close of the chapter,
beginning: "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the
holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his
glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall
separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep
from the goats.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57