"And so it would, sir," said the dissenting minister, taking the gentleman's arm, who offered it, that they might walk on to avoid some degree of the cold; "so it would, sir: it would render you a very contemptible creature. Let me tell you, sir, that with all the delight I experience in fulfilling some little of my duty as a Christian minister, the remembrance of it would not move me one inch towards the bed of a dying man with the view of offering him the consolations of revealed religion—if I believed such consolations to be a mere farce. I would scorn to mock him with false hopes. You know how deeply I regret your scepticism, my dear sir; but I would not see you veil it through a spurious tenderness. No, sir: truth and sincerity are the purest jewels in human character; even pity and benevolence, themselves, are gems of inferior water." "I wish all Christians were like yourself," said the gentleman, after a pause of admiration for the great and good being with whom he felt it a real privilege to walk; "but I see so little practice of goodness from the hundreds around me who profess a religion that enthrones it, that the sight tends much to confirm me in my old opinions." "Indeed, sir," observed the minister, in a very grave tone, "I must tell you that you will be guilty of great self-deceit, if you imagine that the wickedness of hypocrites, or the slackness of lukewarm professors, will form a valid excuse for your rejection of Christ's mission, should you, one day, prove it true." "I know it, my dear sir," replied the gentleman; "I know it well; though I thank you for your kind and well-meant zeal in reminding me of it. I will tell you one thought of mine, however,—and it is one that fixes itself very forcibly before my judgment,—if callousness to the sufferings of their workmen continues to increase among the manufacturers as rapidly as it has increased for the last ten years, Christianity will be openly scoffed at by the poor of the next generation, in the very streets where we are now walking." "You have only expressed what I expressed last Sunday morning from my own pulpit, sir," returned the minister,—seeming too deeply affected with his strong belief of the probability of such an event to be able to add more. "I hear that the wretched framework-knitters suffer more and more from abatements of wages and other encroachments upon their means of subsistence, of the most unfeeling and unprincipled character," resumed the gentleman; "and although hundreds are without work at the present time, and the complaints of suffering from want of food, fuel, and clothing, are so loud and frequent, yet not a single rich manufacturer of the many that profess religion, in Leicester, proposes to open a public subscription for the poor, according to the humane custom of past times. I heard a whisper that you had begun to stir up the languid charity of some of your friends towards the commencement of a subscription: was I rightly informed, sir?"