A GENTLEMAN IN AMERICA.――“A man of my acquaintance,” says Dr. Dwight, “who was of a vehement and rigid temper, had, many years since, a dispute with a friend of his, a professor of religion, and had been injured by him. With strong feelings of resentment, he made him a visit, for the avowed purpose of quarrelling with him. He accordingly stated the nature and extent of the injury; and was preparing, as he afterwards confessed, to load him with a train of severe reproaches, when his friend cut him short by acknowledging, with the utmost readiness and frankness, the injustice of which he had been guilty; expressing his own regret for the wrong he had done, requesting his forgiveness, and proffering him ample compensation. He was compelled to say that he was satisfied, and withdrew full of mortification that he had been precluded from venting his indignation and wounding his friend with keen and violent reproaches for his conduct. “As he was walking homeward, he said to himself to this effect: ‘There must be something more in religion than I have hitherto suspected. Were any man to address me in the tone of haughtiness and provocation with which I accosted my friend this morning, it would be impossible for me to preserve the equanimity of which I have been a witness; and especially with so much frankness, humility and meekness, to acknowledge the wrong which I had done; so readily ask forgiveness of the man whom I had injured; and so cheerfully promise a satisfactory recompense. I should have met his anger with at least equal resentment, paid him reproach for reproach, and inflicted wound for wound. There is something in this man’s disposition which is not mine. There is something in the religion which he professes, and which I am forced to believe he feels; something which makes him so superior, so much better, so much more amiable, than I can pretend to be. The subject strikes me in a manner to which I have hitherto been a stranger. It is high time to examine it more thoroughly, with more candor, and with greater solicitude, also, than I have done hitherto.’ “From this incident, a train of thoughts and emotions commenced in the mind of this man, which terminated in his profession of the Christian religion, his relinquishment of the business in which he was engaged, and his consecration of himself to the ministry of the gospel.” * * * * *