Concerning the financial affairs of the church she was kept well informed, for she was a liberal contributor, and also to all other good causes presented. From earliest years her eye had always been accustomed to the phases presented by a fashionable church, and everything moved forward so quietly and with such sacred decorum that the thought of anything wrong did not occur to her.
But the truth that one who was endeavoring to lead a better life had been practically turned from the door of God's house seemed to her a monstrous thing. How much truth was there in her husband's sarcasm? How far did her church represent the accessible Jesus of Nazareth, to whom all were welcomed, or how far did it misrepresent him? Now that her attention was called to the fact, she remembered that the congregation was chiefly made up of the elite of the city, and that she rarely had seen any one present who did not clearly present the fullest evidence of respectability. Were those whom the Master most emphatically came to seek and save excluded? She determined to find out speedily.
Summoning her coachman, she told him that she wished to attend church that evening. She dressed herself very plainly, and entered the church closely veiled. Instead of going to her own pew, she asked the judicious and discriminating sexton for a seat. After a careless glance he pointed to one of the seats near the door, and turned his back upon her. A richly dressed lady and gentleman entered soon after, and he was all attention, marshalling them up the aisle into Mrs. Arnot's own pew, since it was known she did not occupy it in the evening. A few decent, plain-looking women, evidently sent thither by the wealthy families in whose employ they were, came in hesitatingly, and those who did not take seats near the entrance, as a matter of course, were motioned thither without ceremony. The audience room was but sparsely filled, large families being represented by one or two members or not at all. But Mrs. Arnot saw none of Haldane's class present—none who looked as if they were in danger, and needed a kind, strong, rescuing hand—none who looked hungry and athirst for truth because perishing for its lack. In that elegant and eminently respectable place, upholstered and decorated with faultless taste, there was not a hint of publicans and sinners. One might suppose he was in the midst of the millennium, and that the classes to whom Christ preached had all become so thoroughly converted that they did not even need to attend church. There was not a suggestion of the fact that but a few blocks away enough to fill the empty pews were living worse than heathen lives.
The choir performed their part melodiously, and a master in music could have found no fault with the technical rendering of the musical score. They were paid to sing, and they gave to such of their employers as cared to be present every note as it was written, in its full value. As never before, it struck Mrs. Arnot as a performance. The service she had attended hitherto was partly the creation of her own earnest and devotional spirit. To-night she was learning to know the service as it really existed.
The minister was evidently a conscientious man, for he had prepared his evening discourse for his thin audience as thoroughly as he had his morning sermon. Every word was carefully written down, and the thought of the text was exhaustively developed. But Mrs. Arnot was too far back to hear well. The poor man seemed weary and discouraged with the arid wastes of empty seats over which he must scatter the seeds of truth to no purpose. He looked dim and ghostly in the far-away pulpit, and in spite of herself his sermon began to have the aspect of a paid performance, the effect of which would scarcely be more appreciable than the sighing of the wind without. The keenest theologian could not detect the deviation of a hair from the received orthodox views, and the majority present were evidently satisfied that his views would be correct, for they did not give very close attention. The few plain domestics near her dozed and nodded through the hour, and so gained some physical preparation for the toils of the week, but their spiritual natures were as clearly dormant as their lumpish bodies.
After the service Mrs. Arnot lingered, to see if any one would speak to her as a stranger and ask her to come again. Such was clearly not the habit of the congregation. She felt that her black veil, an evidence of sorrow, was a sort of signal of distress which ought to have lured some one to her side with a kind word or two, but beyond a few curious glances she was unnoticed. People spoke who were acquainted, who had been introduced to each other. As the worshippers (?) hastened out, glad to escape to regions where living questions and interests existed, the sexton, who had been dozing in a comfortable corner, bustled to the far end of the church, and commenced, with an assistant, turning out the lights on either side so rapidly that it seemed as if a wave of darkness was following those who had come thither ostensibly seeking light.
Mrs. Arnot hastened to her carriage, where it stood under the obscuring shadow of a tree, and was driven home sad and indignant—most indignant at herself that she had been so absorbed in her own thoughts and life that she had not discovered that the church to build and sustain which she had given so liberally was scarcely better than a costly refrigerator.
CHAPTER XXXIII
A DOUBTFUL BATTLE IN PROSPECT
The painful impression made by the evening service that has been described acted as a rude disenchantment, and the beautiful church, to which Mrs. Arnot had returned every Sabbath morning with increasing pleasure, became as repulsive as it had been sacred and attractive. To her sincere and earnest spirit anything in the nature of a sham was peculiarly offensive; and what, she often asked herself, could be more un-Christlike than this service which had been held in his name?