Salted With Fire

This story is not an easy read, but it's wonderful. The young minister is full of pride and thinks himself above others because of his holiness. However, he has an affair with a girl at the boarding-house, thinking her worry of only “flirtation” and not marriage. But when his affair is discovered, how will he respond? Will his pride be broken and true holiness have a chance, or is he doomed to forever be a hypocrite of false righteousness?

This deals mainly with pride. MacDonald manages to show the ashes of the young preacher's pride without offending the sensibilities with physical details of a flirtation (a child is conceived without more being pictured than a few kisses.) In a “Scarlet Letter”-esque situation, he must respond to the discovery when his congregation realizes what he has done.