"I want to correct the gentleman right there," exclaimed Mr. Jodderel. "What earth are they to inherit? _This_ earth? Why, everybody laughs at that notion. A man's got to fight awfully hard to get anything in this world, and harder yet to keep whatever he gets. The path of meekness leads but to the poor-house. The earth alluded to evidently means the new earth, which, in the Revelation, John beheld, in connection with the new heaven. That new earth appeared after the destruction of the old one; and for what could it have appeared but to be populated by the redeemed spirits from this? _That_ was the kingdom of heaven, and the text before us evidently refers to it. 'The meek shall inherit the earth;' the apostles, to whom this passage was spoken, needed no more definite expression about the matter, of which the Master doubtless had spoken many times with them. The whole passage seems to me an exact repetition of the one before it, just to give emphasis to the first." "I wonder if that's exactly straight?" remarked Squire Woodhouse, more with the air of a man in a soliloquy than one asking a question. "If there _is_ a way of inheriting the earth, or even a little piece of it, I'd like to know all about it; but if its only the next world that the passage refers to----" "If it refers only to the next world, you're not in such a hurry to understand it," interrupted Captain Maile. "We--ell," drawled the Squire, "that isn't exactly the way I was going to finish off, but I guess it's pretty near the truth. It _don't_ sound well either, does it?" "Brother Prymm?" said Deacon Bates, and the champion of orthodoxy responded to the invitation by saying, "The meek are undoubtedly those who follow the non-resistant injunctions which are found everywhere in the New Testament; they are the men who when one cheek is struck turn the other also, who render not railing for railing." "And who, when the coat is taken, will offer the cloak also," added Captain Maile. "Certainly," said Mr. Prymm, with rather a wry face, "though I cannot, with any present light, see how the latter course would be practical and judicious. The other injunctions are but amplifications of the inspired saying, 'A soft answer turneth away wrath,' but how property rights can be maintained at all, if the injunction quoted by Captain Maile were followed, I am unable to see." "It wouldn't work in the steamboat business," declared Mr. Buffle. "It's hard enough to get the worth of your money, even when men promise to pay; but if a man were to understand that by stealing one of my tug-boats he would have a right to expect a first-class lake packet as a present, I'd have to go out of business within a fortnight." "I'm inclined to think the passage in question must be an interpolation by one of Christ's reporters," said President Lottson, who had been taking a cautious course of Matthew Arnold.