heightened the infamy of his position by an act of brazen sacrilege. He has sought to make plausible his weak, unimaginative lie that he received these goods instead of stealing them, by pretending that he received them in his capacity as a religious confessor, under conditions that bound him to a silence which the voice of God alone could break.
"That, in itself, is a claim that should bring the blush of shame to the cheek and rouse the hot resentment of every honest minister and of every honest priest, and make them join with the outraged feelings of honest laymen and of citizens generally in demanding that justice descend upon this man and strike him from the pedestal of self-righteous egotism upon which he stands.
"Turning again for a moment to the question of probabilities: I ask your Honor if it is probable, even thinkable, that any minister, standing in the position of regard in which this minister stood last Sunday morning before the eyes of his people, would deem a crisis like this insufficient to unseal his lips and absolve him from his confessional vows? His very duty to his God and to his congregation, to the poor dupes of his hypocrisy, to say nothing of his duty to himself, would compel him to go upon the witness stand voluntarily and reveal the name of the alleged thief!
"Such a consideration again forces upon any unbiased mind the conviction that this man is not speaking the truth. View him as a thief, and you suspect that his story is a lie. Try to view him as a minister, acting honestly and in good faith, and you no longer suspect, but you deeply and unalterably know that his story is a lie!"
Searle, now at the height of his self-induced passion, as well as at the climax of his argument, stood bent over, his eyes blazing at the judge, his face red, his neck swol-
