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CHAPTER VII. 



POVERTY, HONOURABLE AND DISHONOURABLE FIRST IMPRES- 

 SIONS OF THE REV. MR STEWART LOOKS INTO HIS FATHER'S 



BIBLE THE SELFISH THEORY OF MORALS NEW-YEAR's- 



DAY MUSINGS IMPORTANT COMMENT UPON AND ADDITION 



TO THESE TEN DAYS AFTERWARDS THE CHANGE EFFECTED 



IN HIS SPIRITUAL STATE. 



ONE or two threads of our biographical narrative have 

 slipped through our hands, and it will be necessary 

 to gather them up before proceeding with the delineation 

 of Miller's religious experience. Swanson, as we saw, 

 alluded to his prospects of pecuniary support, and ex- 

 ulted in his trust in God. This was in October. In 

 November Miller replied. ' You tell me that you are 

 becoming (like myself) very poor, but you also inform me 

 that you are very happy. I know by experience that 

 simple, unambitious poverty and happiness are not such 

 enemies as is generally imagined but oh how I detest 

 the mean, cringing poverty that prompts a man of God's 

 forming to cast himself in the dust before his brother 

 man that compels him to smile at the stupid, cruel jibe 

 that wounds him, that teaches his knee to bend and ties 

 his tongue. This is poverty of spirit. I merely detest 

 it; but I cannot think of those mean insults which, com- 

 ing from the little great, make poverty truly bitter 

 without wishing for the return of the earliest days of 



