the preacher still cling to my memory, with a firmness of which nothing can deprive them but the coming grave!” CHAPTER XI. Even such a man (inheriting the zeal And from the sanctity of elder times Not deviating,—a priest, the like of whom, If multiplied, and in their stations set, Would o’er the bosom of a joyful land Spread true religion and its genuine fruits) Before me stood that day. THE EXCURSION. “‘MY brethren,’ said the priest, resting his hand on the Bible, and looking round upon the anxious audience with an expression which showed some degree of agitation of mind, mixed with his habitual calmness and self-possession,—‘My _dear_ brethren, I am about to do what is quite unusual, and, I fear, wrong in me;—I am about to address you in language which I have not first carefully considered, and, word for word, committed to paper. Though I have preached the blessed Gospel of our LORD to you and your fathers, from this place, for the long period of fifty years, I have never ventured to do this before. I have had too much fear both for myself and you—too much anxiety that not a word should drop from me which was not agreeable to the language and spirit of the Gospel, to trust myself to unarranged thoughts, and unconsidered words. But fifty years have given confidence to my mind, that nothing which is not of GOD can slip from me in this house, even in the warmth and heat of a moment like this; and thoughts arise _now_ in my mind which seem fitted for the occasion, and yet which had not occurred to me in the silent meditation of my closet. And surely I have _experienced_ too long the full enjoyment of that holy truth that “GOD is love,” to shrink from speaking of it, (and especially before you, my children,) without shame, and without fear! I call you my children; for many as are the grey heads that I now see before me, there is hardly one who has been born again into the blessed kingdom of our LORD without the ministration of these hands, unworthy as indeed they are to be made the instruments of so divine a thing! There is one, indeed, now present,’—here his eye naturally turned to the seat almost close beside him, in which sat the venerable partner of his joys and cares, (_sorrows_, I believe, in the worldly sense, he was too good a man to have any,) in her little black silk quaker-like bonnet, and neat white cap; retaining on her cheeks much of the bloom and some of the beauty which had made her, between sixty and seventy years ago, the admiration of the parish:—‘There is _one_, indeed,’ he repeated; his voice faltered, and it was clear that he would have some difficulty in proceeding with his discourse: and here it was beautiful to observe what happened. The old lady, seeing how matters stood, looked up to him from under her bonnet with a quiet smile, conveying at once an expression of kind encouragement and gentle rebuke,