I have seen a deacon in the pride of his deep humility. He combed his hair straight, and looked studiously after the main chance; and while he looked, he employed himself in setting a good example. His dress was rigidly plain, and his wife was not indulged in the vanities of millinery and mantua-making. He never joked. He did not know what a joke was, any further than to know that it was a sin. He carried a Sunday face through the week. He did not mingle in the happy social parties of his neighborhood. He was a deacon. He starved his social nature because he was a deacon. He refrained from all participation in a free and generous life because he was a deacon. He made his children hate Sunday because he was a deacon. He so brought them up that they learned to consider themselves unfortunate in being the children of a deacon. They were pitied by other children because they were the children of a deacon. His wife was pitied by other women because she was the wife of a deacon. Nobody loved him. If he came into a circle where men were laughing or telling stories, they always stopped until he went out. Nobody ever grasped his hand cordially, or slapped him on the shoulder, or spoke of him as a good fellow. He seemed as dry and hard and tough as a piece of jerked beef. There was no softness of character--no juiciness--no loveliness in him. Now it is of no use for me to undertake to realize to myself that God admires such a character as this. I do not doubt that He loves the man, as He loves all men; but to admire his style of manhood and piety is impossible for any intelligent being. It lacks the roundness and fulness, and richness and sweetness, that belong to a truly admirable character. Such a man caricatures Christianity, and scares other men away from it. Such a man ostentatiously presents himself as one in whose life religion is dominant. It is religion that is supposed to rub down that long face, and inspire that stiff demeanor, and to make him at all points an unattractive and unlovable man. Of course it is not religion that does any thing of the kind, but it has the credit of it with the world, and the world does not like it. It looks around, and sees a great many men who do not pretend to religion at all, and yet who are very lovable men. If religion can transform a pleasant man into a most unpleasant one, and change a free, bright, and happy home into a dismal place of slavery, and blot out a man's aesthetic and social nature, the world naturally thinks that getting religion would be almost as much of a misfortune as getting some melancholy chronic disease, and I do not blame it. It is not to be wondered at that the world should mistake, very much, the true nature of Christianity, when Christians themselves entertain such grievous errors about it.