Could it
have proved otherwise with a heart that was quite content to have God no
nearer him than a merely adoptive father? He found at the same time that
his late interview with the soutar had rendered the machinery of his
thought-factory no fitter than before for weaving a tangled wisp of loose
ends, which was all he could command, into the homogeneous web of a sermon;
and at last was driven to his old stock of carefully preserved
preordination sermons; where he was unfortunate enough to make choice of
the one least of all fitted to awake comprehension or interest in his
audience.
His selection made, and the rest of the day thus cleared for inaction, he
sat down and wrote a letter. Ever since his fall he had been successfully
practising the art of throwing a morsel straight into one or other of the
throats of the triple-headed Cerberus, his conscience--which was more
clever in catching such sops, than they were in choking the said howler;
and one of them, the letter mentioned, was the sole wretched result of his
talk with the soutar.
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