_Miss Susan._--"Indeed, Sir, I am not. I have not been well since you began to preach the new doctrines of the new birth and faith, and salvation by grace, which Mr. Ingleby taught you. I wish he had been on a visit to Jericho, instead of being appointed to preach that visitation sermon. Indeed, Sir, I don't like your preaching against cards; for, Sir, I never play for money; and _beside, all the money I ever win I give to the poor_. You have driven me and my sister from the church, Sir, and if we are lost, you will have to answer for it. And beside, Sir, _I never will believe that God will damn any body_. We were all living, Sir, as peaceably as a nestling of birds, till you began your present style of preaching, but now every body has something to say about religion. I am sorry to say that religion is getting quite into disrepute, now the common people are becoming religious." Miss Susan had not finished the last sentence, before Miss Dorothy entered. She was more polite, but there lurked under her politeness a malignancy of disposition which her sister did not discover, amidst all her flippant invectives. _Miss Dorothy._--"Well, Sir, I did not expect that you would have done us the honour of a call." "_Mr. Guion._--"I wish, Madam, to pay respect to all my parishioners." _Miss Dorothy._--"Out of the pulpit, I presume." _Mr. Guion._--"Yes, Madam, and in it." _Miss Dorothy._--"Surely, Reverend Sir, you are now indulging us with a joke, and I wonder that such a _religious clergyman_ as you are can use such a profane weapon." _Mr. Guion._--"I am not aware, Madam, that I ever behaved disrespectfully towards any of my parishioners, when discharging the public duties of my office. If I have, I sincerely regret it, and you would oblige me if you would let me know in what." [Illustration: MR. GUION'S FIRST INTERVIEW WITH THE MISSES BROWNJOHN. Vol. i. page 82.] _Miss Dorothy._--"Did you not tell us, Sir, on Trinity Sunday, that publicans and harlots were more likely to enter the kingdom of heaven than your more righteous hearers? And did you not tell us that we must implore mercy, in terms _equally humiliating_? What was this, Sir, but proclaiming the jubilee of vice and the armistice of virtue?" _Mr. Guion._--"I merely quoted the language of Jesus Christ, which he addressed to the chief priests and elders of Jerusalem, and as we are all sinners, I am at a loss to conceive how any can implore mercy but in the same phraseology of speech. The language of our church, you know, Madam, is very, very appropriate to us all, '_Lord have mercy on us, miserable sinners_.'" _Miss Dorothy._--"No, Sir. I am not a miserable sinner. That language is only intended for the depraved part of your audience."