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 missionary sermons, he boldly took occasion to speak to him point-blank on his spiritual state. Though he was a stranger, occupying another’s pulpit, he had felt this to be his duty, and took for his text the words from St. Luke, ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee!’ The young man much resented this directness of attack, and in the war of words which followed when they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr. Clare, without respect for his gray hairs.

Angel flushed with distress.

‘Dear father,’ he said sadly, ‘I wish you would not expose yourself to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!’

‘Pain?’ said his father, his rugged face shining in the ardour of self-abnegation. ‘The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor, foolish young man. Do you suppose his incensed words could give me any pain, or even his blows? “Being reviled we bless; being persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this day.” Those ancient and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly true at this present hour.’