For were they not, day by day, and hour by hour, face to face with the Almighty in His marvellous world--with the rising of His sun, with the flash of His lightning, with His clouds which dropped fatness, and with the heavens which declare His glory?
Nothing between them and the Most High, if they would open their dull eyes and see! And more than that.

Not a bit of their life,' but had been dear to the Lord Jesus--but He had spoken of it, taught from it, made it sacred.

The shepherd herding the sheep--how could he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the Good Shepherd?
The sower scattering the seed--how could he, of all men, forget and blaspheme the Heavenly Sower?
Oh, the crookedness of sin! Oh, the hardness of men's hearts! The secret of the denunciations which followed lay hidden deep in the speaker's personal history.

They were the utterances of a man who had stood for years at the 'mules,' catching, when he could, through the coarse panes of factory glass, the dim blue outlines of distant moors.

_Here_ were noise, crowd, coarse jesting, mean tyrannies, uncongenial company--everything which a nervous, excitable nature, tuned to poetry in the English way through religion, most loathed; _there_ was beauty, peace, leisure for thought, for holiness, for emotion.
Meanwhile the mind of David Grieve rose once or twice in angry protest.