To the friend who joined her at the church-door, and, in George
Bascombe's absence, walked with them along Pine Street, Mrs.
Ramshorn remarked that the curate was certainly a most dangerous
man--particularly for young people to hear--he so confounded all the
landmarks of right and wrong, representing the honest man as no
better than the thief, and the murderer as no worse than anybody
else--teaching people in fact that the best thing they could do was
to commit some terrible crime, in order thereby to attain to a
better innocence than without it could ever be theirs. How far she
mistook, or how far she knew or suspected that she spoke falsely, I
will not pretend to know. But although she spoke as she did, there
was something, either in the curate or in the sermon, that had
quieted her a little, and she was less contemptuous in her
condemnation of him than usual.

Happily both for himself and others, the curate was not one of those
who cripple the truth and blind their own souls by

some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event--
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,
And ever three parts coward;

and hence, in proportion as he roused the honest, he gave occasion
to the dishonest to cavil and condemn. Imagine St. Paul having a
prevision of how he would be misunderstood, AND HEEDING IT!--what
would then have become of all those his most magnificent outbursts?
And would any amount of apostolic carefulness have protected him? I
suspect it would only have given rise to more vulgar misunderstandings
and misrepresentations still. To explain to him who loves not, is