He was not drunk; the fact that drunkenness in him appeared so likely to this man, who was the best friend he had, completed in his heart the work of revolt against the minister and the minister's God.

What right had God to take him up and clothe him and keep him in his right mind for a little while, just to let him fall at the first opportunity?
It was quite true that he had deserved it, no doubt; he had done wrong, and he was going to do wrong; but God, who had gone out of His way to mercifully convert him and keep him straight for a while, could certainly have gone on keeping him if He had chosen.

His mind was a logical one.

He had been taught to praise God for some extraordinary favour towards him; he had been taught that the grace which had changed his life for good was in no degree his own; and why then was he to bear all the disgrace of his return to evil?
In the next hours he walked the streets of the town, and talked to other men when need was, and did a little business on his own account in the agency in which he was engaged, and went home and took supper, watching the vagaries of his father's senile mania with more than common pity for the old man.

His own wretchedness gave him an aching heart of sympathy for all the sorrow of others which came across his mind that day.
The whole day was a new revelation to him of what tenderness for others could be and ought to be.
He did not hope to attain to any working out of this higher sympathy and pity himself.