He stood as one on the keystone of a
bridge, and held communion now with these, now with those: on
this side the river and on that, both companies were his own.
He was not a man of much education, in the vulgar use of the
word; but he was a good way on in that education, for the sake of
which, and for no other without it, we are here in our
consciousness--the education which, once begun, will, soon or
slow, lead knowledge captive, and teaches nothing that has to be
unlearned again, because every flower of it scatters the seed of
one better than itself. The main secret of his progress, the
secret of all wisdom, was, that with him action was the beginning
and end of thought. He was not one of that cloud of false
witnesses, who, calling themselves Christians, take no trouble
for the end for which Christ was born, namely, their salvation
from unrighteousness--a class that may be divided into the
insipid and the offensive, both regardless of obedience, the
former indifferent to, the latter contentious for doctrine.
It may well seem strange that such a man should have gone into
business with such another as John Turnbull; but the latter had
been growing more and more common, while Marston had been growing
more and more refined. Still from the first it was an unequal
yoking of believer with unbeliever--just as certainly, although
not with quite such wretched results, as would have been the
marriage of Mary Marston and George Turnbull.
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