After this poetical effusion,[4] it is difficult to believe that this same “Christian” minister, in order to gratify the private jealousy, spite and malice of a few common persons whom he fancied might be useful to him on account of their “local” influence, wrote and published a scurrilous lampoon on the very friend who had tried to benefit him and his wife and family, and to whom he had expressed himself in the above terms of unmeasured gratitude! But such, nevertheless, was the case. Report says that he was handsomely paid for his trouble, which may perhaps serve as his excuse,--for in many cases, as we know, money outweighs principle, even with a disciple of Christ. It did so in the case of Judas Iscariot, who, however, “went out and hanged himself” promptly. Perhaps the “very mediocre” cleric who owed to the woman he afterwards insulted, “a recognition after many long struggles,” will do the same morally and socially in due course. For it would be as great a wrong to the Church to call such a man a “Christian” as it would be to canonize Judas. Even the untutored savage will not injure one with whom he has broken bread. And to bite the hand that has supplied a need, is scarcely the act of a mongrel cur,--let us hope it is a sufficiently rare performance among mongrel clerics. Among other such “trifling” instances of the _un_-Christianity of Christian ministers may be quoted a recent instance of a letter addressed to a country newspaper by a clergyman who complained of the small fees allowed him for the burial of paupers! “The game,” so he expressed it, “was not worth the candle.” Christian charity was no part of the business. Unless one can make a margin of profit, by committing paupers to the hope of a joyful resurrection, why do it at all? Such appeared to be the sum and substance of the reverend gentleman’s argument. Another case in point is the following: A poor man of seventy-five years old, getting the impression that Death was too long in coming to fetch him, committed suicide by hanging himself in a coal-shed. His widow, nearly as aged as he was, went tottering feebly along to the clergyman of the parish, to relate the disaster and seek for help. The first thing the good minister told her was, that her husband, by committing suicide, had gone to hell. He then relaxed his sternness somewhat, and kindly said that, considering her age, infirmity and trouble, she “might call at the rectory every afternoon for the tea-leaves.” This gracious invitation meant that the bereaved old creature could have, for her consolation, the refuse of the afternoon tea-pot after it had been well drained by this “Christian” gentleman, his wife and family! Of other help she got none, and life having become too hard for her to manage alone, despite the assistance of the clergyman’s tea-leaves, she very soon, fortunately for herself, died of grief and starvation. “He that giveth to the poor” in this fashion, truly “lendeth to the Lord.”