 want of opportunity, must be ambitious for a larger sphere of work. Just as he was beginning to dare to allow himself the hope of some change in his work, some wider field, just as he was growing sure enough of himself to dare to accept any greater work which might have been offered to him, he must, by bringing himself into evil repute, lose every chance of preferment. And for what? For attempting to obtain a just judgment for the enemy of his faith; for holding out a brotherly hand to a man who might very probably not care to take it; for consorting with those who would at best regard him as an amiable fanatic. Was this worth all it would cost? Could the exceedingly problematical gain make up for the absolutely certain loss?
He took up the day's newspaper. His eye was at once attracted to a paragraph headed: "Mr. Raeburn at Longstaff." The report, sent from the same source as the report in the "Longstaff Mercury," which had so greatly displeased Raeburn that morning, struck Charles Osmond in a most unfavorable light. This bitter opponent of Christianity, this unsparing denouncer of all that he held most sacred, THIS was the man for whom he was sacrificing friendship, reputation, advancement. A feeling of absolute disgust rose within him. For a moment the thought came: "I can't have any more to do with the man."
But he was too honest not to detect almost at once his own Pharisaical, un-Christlike spirit.
"Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."
He had been selfishly consulting his own happiness, his own ease. Worse still, he, of all men in the world, had dared to set himself up as too virtuous forsooth to have anything to do with an atheist. Was that the mind which was in Christ? Was He a strait-laced, self-righteous Pharisee, too good, too religious to have anything to say to those who disagreed with Him? Did He not live and die for those who are yet enemies to God? Was not the work of reconciliation the work he came for? Did He calculate the loss to Himself, the risk of failure? Ah, no, those who would imitate God must first give as a free gift, without thought of self, perfect love to all, perfect justice through that love, or else they are not like the Father who "maketh His sun to
