"Just so, Thomas," said the vicar; "I feel sure that you speak the truth. We want the plain, distinct teaching of the doctrines of God's Word, if we are to be holy here and happy hereafter. We want to know unmistakably what to believe, and how to act out our belief. What a blessing it is that, when we take up our Bibles in a humble and teachable spirit, we can say, `Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.' But we are come upon strange times indeed, when professed teachers of the Christian religion can propound to us `a gospel without an atonement, a Bible without inspiration, and an ignorant Christ.'--Well, Thomas, shall we come into my study? Dr Prosser will excuse me for a few minutes." An evening or two after this conversation, as the whole vicarage party lingered round the table after supper, Dr Prosser turned to his host and said, "Judging from all I see and hear, Maltby, a parish like yours must be a famous place for testing the working value of many modern theories of morality and religion." "Yes," was the reply; "what you say, my dear friend, is true indeed. Learned and amiable men sit in their libraries and college rooms, and weave out of their own intellects or consciousness wonderful theories of the goodness of human nature, the charms of a more genial Christianity than is to be found by ordinary seekers in the Scriptures, and the need of a wider entrance to a broader road to heaven than the strait gate and narrow way of the Gospels. But let such men come to Crossbourne, and have to deal with these people of shrewd and sharpened intellects, strong wills, strong passions, and strong temptations, and they will find that the old-fashioned gospel is, after all, the only thing that will meet all man's moral and spiritual needs. I have never been more struck with this than in the case of a reformed-infidel amongst us: the change in that man has been indeed wonderful, as even his bitterest enemies are constrained to acknowledge,--he has indeed found the gospel to be to him the `pearl of great price.' The change in that man's character, home, and even expression of countenance, is truly as from darkness to light." "I wish," observed Miss Maltby, "there was less of the theoretical and fanciful, and more of the practical and scriptural, in many of the modern schemes proposed for the acceptance of my own sex in the matter of education. I wish wise men would let us alone, and allow us to keep our proper place, and follow out our proper calling, as these may be plainly gathered from the great storehouse of all wisdom." "Pray give us your thoughts a little more fully, Miss Maltby," said the doctor. "I think there may be one here at any rate who will benefit by them." "Two, John, at least," said his wife, laughing: "for if I am the one who am to benefit, you will be the other; for whatever improves me will be sure to improve your home, so we shall share the profits."