CHAPTER II
AFTER CHAPEL
The chapel of the Luke Gospellers was full, and their pastor won his usual attention. With very considerable ability, through a ministry of some ten years, he had lifted his congregation along with himself to wider thinking. A tolerance rare amid the sects of Christianity belonged to him, and he had imparted something of it to those who suffered him to lead them.
"How great is man, and how small," said the preacher, as he drew to the close of his address. "How much he has grasped at; how little he can hold. He measures the journeys of the stars and the paths of comets, marked for them through utmost space by the God that made them; but he cannot measure the limit of the growing grass-blade or the breadth of the petal of a budding flower. He predicts when the earth's shadow will fall upon the moon; but he cannot foretell when the next raindrop will fall upon the earth. His intellect has reached out into the universe and read rightly among the laws of it; but the way of the wind and the birth of the cloud, the advent of the frost and the appointed day of the storm—these are hidden from him. So also with his conscious nature and his power to do and to withstand; he is sublime and pitiful at a breath; and his greatness and littleness interwoven, appear on every public page of his history and in every private tablet of his heart."
He exhorted them to know themselves, to read their souls by the light of the Word of God; he told them that within the spectrum of that light were rays that could reach to the darkest, secretest chambers of the human spirit, and search and purify and sweeten them.
They listened, were uplifted according to the measure of their understanding, and went home in the brightness of the teacher's earnest words. Then life and the fret of it came between; and some of the seed perished immediately, and some was scorched at the springing.
Agg and Joe Tapson walked together on their way back to Ruddyford, and behind them came Sarah Jane, Daniel, and their little boy.
Tapson had already dismissed the service, and was grumbling to Walter Agg. They did not know the truth concerning Brendon and the future of the farm; but of late, in certain directions, Daniel was still further advanced, and even Agg felt it hard, because he did not understand.
"He's bewitched Woodrow, if you ax me," said Joe. "'Tis the evil eye over again. Farmer can't call his soul his own now. He don't seem to care a groat for the place. Thicky big monster be always right. Why, if he wanted to pull down the house and build it again to a new pattern, I believe it would be done. Prout's no more good than a bird on a tree; though he used to hold his own very well. Now he always says 'ditto' to Brendon."
"Not that Brendon be what he exactly was, all the same," argued Agg. "He's much gentler and easier, despite his uplifting. He don't order anybody about, and he's always got a good word for a good job well done."