This was not his happiest hour.

The eternal advantage of love was lost for the time in its present distress.
Hateful thoughts were the results of this self-indulgence, yet he hated more anything that came as interruption.

During these years the lover in him had not grown what the world calls wise.
For some minutes Finney, controlling the briskness of his ordinary pace, walked by Ephraim's side and contented himself with the gracious scene, passing remarks upon weather and crops.

Soon, for the value of time always pressed upon him, his business-like voice took a softened tone, and he began preaching a heart-felt sermon to his one listener.
The subject of the sermon was "the fire God gave for other ends," and he ventured to point out to Ephraim, in his plain, logical way, that it was wrong to waste on a woman that devotion which God intends only himself.
Ephraim smiled; it was a good-tempered, buoyant smile.

"Did it ever occur to you, Finney, to reflect that, with your opinions, had you been the Creator, you would never have made the world as it is made?
What time would you ever have thought it worth while to spend in developing the iridescence on a beetle's wing, in adjusting man's soul till it responds with storm or calm, gloom or glory, to outer influence, as the surface of the ocean to weather ?" Finney was puzzled, as he always was, by Ephraim's _bonhomie_ and his strange ideas.