medicines would tend less
to obscure the divine glory than a show of punctilious morality in one who was
not a professor. Besides, how was it to be known that the medicines would not be
blessed, if taken with due trust in a higher influence? A Christian must
consider not the medicines alone in their relation to our frail bodies (which
are dust), but the medicines with Omnipotence behind them. Hence a pious vendor
will look for leadings, and he is likely to find them in the cessation of demand
and the disproportion of expenses and returns. The grocer was thus on his guard
against the presumptuous disputant.
    »Mr Lyon may understand you, sir,« he replied. »He seems to be fond of your
conversation. But you have too much of the pride of human learning for me. I
follow no new lights.«
    »Then follow an old one,« said Felix, mischievously disposed towards a sleek
tradesman. »Follow the light of the old-fashioned Presbyterians that I've heard
sing at Glasgow. The preacher gives out the psalm, and then everybody sings a
different tune, as it happens to turn up in their throats. It's a domineering
thing to set a tune and expect everybody else to follow it. It's a denial of
private judgement.«
    »Hush, hush, my young friend,« said Mr Lyon, hurt by this levity, which
glanced at himself as well as at the deacon. »Play not with paradoxes. That
caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own
fingers and make them dead to the quality of things. 'Tis difficult enough to
see our way and keep our torch steady in this dim labyrinth: to whirl the torch
and dazzle the eyes of our fellow-seekers is a poor daring, and may end in total
darkness. You yourself are a lover of freedom, and a bold rebel against usurping
authority. But the right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and
not to wander in mere lawlessness. Wherefore, I beseech you, seem not to say
that liberty is licence. And I apprehend - though I am not endowed with an ear
to seize those earthly harmonies, which to some devout souls have seemed, as it
were, the broken echoes of the heavenly choir - I apprehend that there is a law
in music, disobedience whereunto would bring us in our singing to the level of
shrieking maniacs or howling beasts: so that herein we are well instructed how
true liberty can be nought but the transfer of obedience from the will of