"
"Ah! that accounts for it," said his friend's wife and the simplicity
of his confession, while it proved him a simpleton, mollified her.
Thus it came that he spent the days between Sunday and Thursday in
their house, and so made the acquaintance of young Marshal.
When his mother perceived their growing intimacy, she warned her
son that their visitor belonged to an unscriptural and worldly
community, and that notwithstanding his apparent guilelessness--
deficiency indeed--he might yet use cunning arguments to draw him
aside from the faith of his fathers. But the youth replied that,
although in the firmness of his own position as a Congregationalist,
he had tried to get the Scotchman into a conversation upon church
government, he had failed; the man smiled queerly and said nothing.
But when a question of New Testament criticism arose, he came awake
at once, and his little blue eyes gleamed like glowworms.
"Take care, Frederick," said his mother. "The Scriptures are not
to be treated like common books and subjected to human criticism."
"We must find out what they mean, I suppose, mother," said the
youth.
"You're to take just the plain meaning that he that runneth
may read," answered his mother.--"More than that no one has any
business with. You've got to save your own soul first, and then the
souls of your neighbours if they will let you; and for that reason
you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents
that attract people to the hearing of the Word.
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