"And when he came, lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside watching: for his heart trembled for the ark of God. And when the man came into the city, and told it, all the city cried out. "And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, What meaneth the noise of this tumult? And the man came in hastily, and told Eli. "Now Eli was ninety and eight years old; and his eyes were dim, that he could not see. "And the man said unto Eli, I am he that came out of the army, and I fled to-day out of the army. And he said, What is there done, my son?" The Bishop preached but rarely now, and partly for the reverence they always owed the good man, and partly for the reason that they did not often hear him, the people composed themselves to a mood of sympathy as he ascended the pulpit that Christmas morning. It was a beautiful sermon that he gave them, and it was spoken without premeditation, and was loose enough in its structure. But it was full of thought that seemed to be too simple to be deep, and of emotion that was too deep to be anything but simple. It touched on the life of Christ, from his birth in Bethlehem to his coming as a boy to the Temple where the doctors sat, and so on to the agony in the garden. And then it glanced aside, as touchingly as irrelevantly, at the story of Eli and his sons, and the judgment of God on Israel's prophet. In that beautiful digression the Bishop warned all parents that it was their duty before God to bring up their children in God's fear, or theirs would be the sorrow, and their children's the suffering and the shame everlasting. And then in a voice that could barely support itself he made an allusion that none could mistake. "Strange it is, and very pitiful," he said, "that what we think in our weakness to be the holiest of our human affections may be a snare and a stumbling-block. Strange enough, surely, and very sad, that even as the hardest of soul among us all may be free from blame where his children stand for judgment, so the tenderest of heart may, like Eli of old, be swept from the face of the living God for the iniquity of his children, which he has not restrained. But the best of our earthly passions, or what seem to be the best, the love of the mother for the babe at her breast, the pride of the father in the son that is flesh of his flesh, must be indulged with sin if it is not accepted with grace. True, too true, that there are those of us who may cast no stone, who should offer no counsel. Like Eli, we know that the word of God has gone out against us, and we can but bend our foreheads and say, 'It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good.'" When the sermon ended there was much needless industry in searching for books under the book-rail, much furtive wiping of the eyes, much demonstrative blowing of the nose, and in the midst of the benediction a good deal of subdued whispering.