The preacher spoke a broad Lancashire dialect, and was very dramatic. He pictured God’s efforts to save a soul. Under the pulpit ledge was the imaginary bottomless pit of this world—not of the next. He leaned over and pretended to be drawing the soul up with a cord. “He comes, he comes!” he cried; “God be praised he is safe!” and he landed him on the Bible. The congregation gave a great groan of relief. “There he is on the Rock of Ages! No, no, he slips; the Devil has him!” The preacher tried to rescue him: “He is gone—gone!” and he bent over the pulpit in agony. The people almost shrieked. “Gone—gone!” he said again with most moving pathos, and was still for a moment. Then gathering himself up, he solemnly repeated the terrible verses: “_For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened_, _and have tasted of the heavenly gift_, _and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost_, _and have tasted the good word of God_, _and the powers of the world to come_, _if they shall fall away_, _to renew them again unto repentance_; _seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh_, _and put Him to an open shame_.” Zachariah knew that text well. Round it had raged the polemics of ages. Mr. Bradshaw had never referred to it but once, and all the elder members of his congregation were eager in the extreme to hear what he had to say about it. He boldly declared that it had nothing to do with the elect. He was compelled to do so. Following his master Calvin, he made it apply to outsiders. The elect, says Calvin, are beyond the risk of fatal fall. But “I deny,” he goes on to say, that “there is any reason why God may not bestow even on the reprobate a taste of His favour; may irradiate their minds with some scintillations of His light; may touch them with some sense of His goodness; may somehow engrave His word on their minds.” Horrible, most horrible, we scream, that the Almighty should thus play with those whom He means to destroy; but let us once more remember that these men did not idly believe in such cruelty. They were forced into their belief by the demands of their understanding, and their assent was more meritorious than the weak protests of so-called enlightenment. Zachariah, pondering absently on what he had heard, was passing out of the chapel when a hand was gently laid on his shoulder. “Ah, friend, what are you doing here?”