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The law consorts not
with my desires--it teaches selfishness, rather than self-denial;
and I have already found that some of its duties demand the blindness
and the silence of that best teacher from within, the watchful and
unsleeping conscience."
"Thou hast said rightly, Alfred Stevens; I have long thought that
the profession of the law hardeneth the heart, and blindeth the
conscience. Thou wilt do well to leave it, as a craft that leads
to sin, and makes the exercise of sin a duty; and if, as I rightly
understand thee, thou lookest to the gospel as that higher vocation
for which thy spirit yearneth, then would I say to thee, arise,
and gird up thy loins; advance and falter not;--the field is open,
and though the victory brings thee no worldly profit, and but
little worldly honor, yet the reward is eternal, and the interest
thereof, unlike the money which thou puttest out to usury in the
hands of men, never fails to be paid, at the very hour of its due,
from the unfailing treasury of Heaven. Verily, I rejoice, Alfred
Stevens, that I have met with thee to-day.


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