He demonstrated that it was a seed cake. The sermon was
really very amusing, and more than once he saw a smile pass over the sea
of faces underneath him. The Bishop was very angry, and gave my hero a
severe reprimand in the vestry after service was over; the only excuse he
could make was that he was preaching _ex tempore_, had not thought of
this particular point till he was actually in the pulpit, and had then
been carried away by it.
Another time he preached upon the barren fig-tree, and described the
hopes of the owner as he watched the delicate blossom unfold, and give
promise of such beautiful fruit in autumn. Next day he received a letter
from a botanical member of his congregation who explained to him that
this could hardly have been, inasmuch as the fig produces its fruit first
and blossoms inside the fruit, or so nearly so that no flower is
perceptible to an ordinary observer. This last, however, was an accident
which might have happened to any one but a scientist or an inspired
writer.
The only excuse I can make for him is that he was very young--not yet
four and twenty--and that in mind as in body, like most of those who in
the end come to think for themselves, he was a slow grower.
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