Outcast and Alien From the Commonwealth

"Moreover," said the minister--coming in an hour afterwards to take up the interrupted discussion--"the kirk of the Marrow overrides all considerations of affection or self-interest. If you are to enter the Marrow kirk, you must live for the Marrow, and fight for the Marrow, and, above all, you must wed for the Marrow--"

"As you did, no doubt," said Ralph, somewhat ungenerously.

Ralph had remained sitting in the study where the minister had left him.

"No, for myself," said the minister, with a certain firmness and high civility, which made the young man ashamed of himself, "I am no true son of the Marrow. I have indeed served the Marrow kirk in her true and only protesting section for twenty-five years; but I am only kept in my position by the good grace of two men--of your father and of Walter Skirving. And do not think that they keep their mouths sealed by any love for me. Were there only my own life and good name to consider, they would speak instantly, and I should be deposed, without cavil or word spoken in my own defence. Nay, by what I have already spoken, I have put myself in your hands. All that you have to do is simply to rise in your place on the Sabbath morn and tell the congregation what I have told you-- that the minister of the Marrow kirk in Dullarg is a man rebuking sin when his own hearthstone is unclean--a man irregularly espoused, who wrongfully christened his own unacknowledged child."