Ralph finished his studies, but in the process he accumulated a large debt because of his penchant for fine art and expensive cigars. The debt had accumulated slowly but one day John became aware of how greatly it had grown. He did not tell his father, knowing the man would feel worse knowing and not having the means to help his boy out of trouble. Ralph sold all his fine art, even most of his books, to begin to pay the interest of his debt, then he found work as a clergyman in a country parish.
Although he spent over half of his clergyman's salary in keeping up with the interest of his debt, and over half of his monthly allowance from his mother's inheritance to go towards reducing the debt itself, it was not enough to make much progress. He began to see that he would be paying the debt for most of his life at the rate he was going.
To make matters worse, he was not a very good clergyman. He knew a lot in his head but had not yet seen that there ought to be a connection between what he knew to be true and what he did every day. He did all his duties faithfully but nothing that he gave out came from his own heart or life experience. He just passed on the faith as it had experienced by his predecessors. Thankfully he had godly predecessors.
And then he fell in love.
