But the man’s nature could not be thus thwarted, and gradually it poured itself out in full flood—denied exit elsewhere—at this one small point. He rejoiced to find that he had not stiffened into death, and he often went up to her bedside as she lay asleep, and the tears came, and he thanked God, not only for her but for his tears. He could not afford to bring her up like a lady, but he did his best to give her a good education. He was very anxious that she should learn French, and as she was wonderfully quick at languages, she managed in a very short time to speak it fluently. CHAPTER XX THE REVEREND THOMAS BROAD’S EXPOSITION OF ROMANS VIII. 7 SUCH was the Coleman household when Mr. Thomas Broad called one fine Monday afternoon about three months after he had been at college. He had preached his first sermon on the Sunday before, in a village about twelve miles from London in a north-easterly direction, somewhere in the flat regions of Essex. Mr. Thomas was in unusually good humour, for he had not broken down, and thought he had crowned himself with glory. The trial, to be sure, was not very severe. The so-called chapel was the downstairs living-room of a cottage holding at a squeeze about five-and-twenty people. Nevertheless, there was a desk at one corner, with two candles on either side, and Mr. Thomas was actually, for the first time, elevated above an audience. It consisted of the wheelwright and his wife, both very old, half a dozen labourers, with their wives, and two or three children. The old wheelwright, as he was in business, was called the “principal support of the cause.” The “cause,” however, was not particularly prosperous, nor its supporters enthusiastic. It was “supplied” always by a succession of first-year’s students, who made their experiments on the _corpus vile_ here. Spiritual teaching, spiritual guidance, these poor peasants had none, and when the Monday came they went to their work in the marshes and elsewhere, and lived their blind lives under grey skies, with nothing left in them of the Sunday, save the recollection of a certain routine performed which might one day save them from some disaster with which flames and brimstone had something to do. It was not, however, a reality to them. Neither the future nor the past was real to them; no spiritual existence was real; nothing, in fact, save the most stimulant sensation. Once upon a time, a man, looking towards the celestial city, saw “The reflection of the sun upon the city (for the city was of pure gold), so exceeding glorious that he could not as yet with open face behold it, save through an instrument made for that purpose;” but Mr. Thomas Broad and his hearers needed no smoked glass now to prevent injury to their eyes. Mr. Thomas had put on a white neckerchief, had mounted the desk, and had spoken for three-quarters of an hour from the text, “The carnal mind is at enmity with God.” He had received during the last three weeks his first