"Of what avail is it?" John Whitelamb asked himself. "These men, father and son, decide first, and, having decided, find no lack of arguments. It is but pride of the mind in which they clothe their will. Moreover, if there be a God, what a vain conflict am I aiding! seeing that time with Him is not, and all has been decided from the beginning." Yet he took down the answer with his habitual care, glancing up in the pauses at the old face, gray and intense beneath the dark skull-cap. The letter ended: "If you are not indifferent whether the labours of an aged father for above forty years in God's vineyard be lost, and the fences of it trodden down and destroyed; if you have any care for our family, which must be dismally shattered as soon as I am dropped; if you reflect on the dear love and longing which this dear people has for you, whereby you will be enabled to do God the more service; and the plenteousness of the harvest, consisting of near two thousand souls, whereas you have not many more scholars in the University; you may perhaps alter your mind, and bend your will to His, who has promised, if in all our ways we acknowledge Him, He will direct our paths." CONCLUSION. CHAPTER I. "Unto him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness." All the world has heard how John Wesley rode, eight years later, into Epworth; and how, his father's pulpit having been denied to him, he stood outside upon his father's tomb and preached evening after evening in the warm June weather the gospel of Justification by Faith to the listening crowd. Visitors are shown the grit slab, now recut and resting on a handsome structure of stone, but then upon plainest brickwork; and are bidden to notice, in the blank space below the words "Their works do follow them," two rough pieces of ironstone which mark where the preacher's feet rested. Eight evenings he preached from it, and on the third evening chose for his text these words: "Unto him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness." Under a sycamore by the churchyard wall at a little distance from the crowd a man stood and listened--a clergyman in a worn black gown, a man not old in years but with a face prematurely old, and shoulders that already stooped under the burden of life--John Whitelamb. He watched between fear and hope to be recognised. When the preacher mounted the slab, stroked back his hair and, turning his face towards the sycamore, fixed his eyes (as it seemed) upon the figure beneath it, he felt sure he had been recognised: a moment later he doubted whether that gaze had passed over him in forgetfulness or contempt.