Clinche, reported in the "Gazette"; wherein
that disciple of the meek Teacher invoked, as he did once a week, the
curses of the law upon his political opponents, praying the Lord to
sweep them immediately from the face of the earth. Which rendering of
Christian doctrine was so much relished by Joel, and the other leading
members of Mr. Clinche's church, that they hinted to him it might be as
well to continue choosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets
until the excitement of the day was over. The New Testament
was,--well,--hardly suited for the emergency; did not, somehow, chime in
with the lesson of the hour. I may remark, in passing, that this course
of conduct so disgusted the High-Church rector of the parish, that he
not only ignored all new devils, (as Mr. Carlyle might have called
them,) but talked as if the millennium, were _un fait accompli_, and he
had leisure to go and hammer at the poor dead old troubles of Luther's
time. One thing, though, about Joel: while he was joining in Mr.
Clinche's prayer for the "wiping out" of some few thousands, he was
using up all the fragments of the hot day in fixing a stall for a
half-dead old horse he had found by the road-side. Let us hope, that,
even if the listening angel did not grant the prayer, he marked down the
stall at least, as a something done for eternity.
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