They walked all the way, not because Cleve had not a dime to pay car fare—though he had not—but because Palma never wished to tax the horses on the Sabbath day except in cases of absolute necessity.
“Because,” she urged, “the merciful command of the Lord provides for the rest of the beast as well as of the man, and these horses work hard enough all the week to rest on Sunday.”
And Stuart had always yielded to her scruples in this respect.
The organ was pealing forth a fine voluntary when they entered the church and took their seats. The music ceased and the service began. Palma entered into it with all the loving devotion of her heart and soul. Cleve could not concentrate his thoughts on worship, though he tried to do so.
After a little while, in due course, the first hymn was given out, and the first line fell like a trumpet blast, calling the Christian soul to hope and courage:
“Give to the winds thy fears!
Hope and be undismayed!
God hears thy sighs and sees thy tears,
God shall lift up thy head.”
The words thrilled him, aroused him; all the black shadows of grief, shame, despair and desperation, which had bowed and cowed his spirit with the sense of helplessness and humiliation, rolled away as before a rising sun. It seemed wonderful, miraculous, a memory of divine intervention that never left him in all his after life. He had always worshiped God as the supreme ruler of the universe; but never had known Him as the Heavenly Father. But from this hour he knew, or rather he felt, that “the God of the universe, the God of the race, was the God of the individual man,” the giver of life, the giver of heaven, the giver of the daily bread as well.