"Or a man whose principal crop is hay," said Squire Woodhouse.
"Or an importer of English cutlery," suggested Mr. Jodderel. "Still, the passage ought either to be explained away or lived up to, for if going contrary to business rules is necessary to inherit the new earth—it's contrary to sense that this earth can be got hold of by any such unbusiness-like operation—the new earth, otherwise the kingdom of heaven——"
"Members will please bear in mind the rule that remarks are to be made in regular order," interposed the leader hastily. "We will hear from Brother Hopper."
"I suppose meekness means patience," said the gentleman addressed, nervously clutching his coat-tail pocket with its precious contents; "not getting into a stew about everything, in fact; but how a man is to be so, when everything goes on the way it shouldn't, is more than I can tell, and how they're going to get the earth for their pains is a bigger puzzle yet."
Mr. Lottson being called upon, said:
"I can only repeat about this passage my remarks upon the one which preceded it. It means exactly what it says, but it means it only in a spiritual sense, and only to those to whom it was said—to the disciples of Christ, and those whose conditions of life are equally admirable and peculiar. The disciples were meek—all but Peter, that is—and he stopped being a man of the world after he learned that he couldn't be that and a consistent disciple too. And look at the result! Haven't the disciples of Christ inherited the earth? Hasn't the blood of the martyrs been the seed of the Church? Hasn't the non-resistent, patient, self-sacrificing course of Christian missionaries led to the conversion of powerful heathen nations, opened avenues of trade between them and Christian countries——"
"Which have straightway been traveled over by men who rob the heathen, poison them with rum, and kill them off with the popular vices of civilization," interrupted Captain Maile.