"Ah, my dear sir," spake the dissenting minister, unable, from the state of his feelings, to answer in the same strain, "I wish I had had you with me a quarter of an hour ago." "Why, sir?" asked the gentleman. "That you might have seen, for yourself, how a Christian can die," answered the minister. "Ah!" replied the gentleman, with a look of serious concern, "there you, and all truly Christian ministers, find a field of more exalted enterprise than the whole world of turmoil and strife, put together, can furnish. I envy you, my dear sir—I envy you, more than I can express to you." "It is, indeed, a field of exalted, of truly glorious enterprise, the visiting of death-beds—the pouring of heavenly consolation into the spirit that is leaving its frail clay tabernacle, and the gladdening of the human wretchedness which is left to mourn and weep," burst forth the good minister, forgetting that he stood in the bleak, cold, open street, and not in his pulpit; "but, oh, my good friend, what a dark, disconsolate scene would your Free-thinking make of the chamber of death, were it as universally spread as you wish it to be!" "It is there where you always have the advantage of me, sir," rejoined the gentleman; "I have acknowledged it, again and again; and I feel the force of that reflection so powerfully, sometimes, that I half resolve to spend the remainder of my life in some scheme of philanthropy, and, meanwhile, join in persuading men to believe Christianity, although I do not believe its historical evidences are worth a straw——" "But that would be wrong, sir!" said the minister interrupting the other, very earnestly. "So I think, sir," continued the gentleman; "and yet I feel sometimes as if I should become guilty of a crime by striving to take away what I regard as a pleasant deceit from men,—their chance, by imbibing a full confidence in Christianity, of expiring not merely with calmness, but with rapturous joy and triumph. Free-thinking will never enable even the largest intellect, the most highly cultivated man, to die thus; much less will it give such a death to an imperfectly educated or ignorant man. But then, I reflect again, that it would be morally and veritably criminal in me to join in strengthening what I sincerely believe to be falsehood."