In any profession, the
man must be a poor common creature who follows it without some real
interest in it; but he who without a spark of enthusiasm for it turns to
the Church, is either a "blind mouth," as Milton calls him--scornfullest of
epithets, or an "old wife" ambitious of telling her fables well; and
James's ambition was of the same contemptible sort--that, namely, of
distinguishing himself in the pulpit. This, if he had the natural gift of
eloquence, he might well do by its misuse to his own glory; or if he had it
not, he might acquire a spurious facility resembling it, and so be every
way a mere windbag.
Mr. Petrie, whom it cost the soutar so much care and effort to love, and
who, although intellectually small, was yet a good man, and by no means a
coward where he judged people's souls in danger, thought to save the world
by preaching a God, eminently respectable to those who could believe in
such a God, but to those who could not, a God far from lovely because far
from righteous.
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