The blacksmith laughed.
“Not so bad, farmer,” he said. “'Tis only our neighbour Jake that compares himself with St. Paul, the Apostle.”
“I heard the profanity. He would ha' done better to abide at home,” said the farmer severely.
The blacksmith laughed again.
“There fell, as it were, scales from my eyes when I heard preaching for the first time—when I heard a parson for the first time,” resumed the carrier, looking out of a window, and apparently unconscious of any of the remarks of his friends. “Ay, 'twas for the first time, albeit I had scarce missed church for a whole Sunday since I were a lad. That was what struck me most, neighbours—that I could go Sunday after Sunday, in good black cloth, too, and hear the holy service read, in a sort of way, and the sacred psalms sung, while the fiddle and the double bass and the viol made sweet music, and yet have no real and true yearning after the truth, seems little short of a miracle, doesn't it?”
“Not when one knows that your heart was hard, Jake—ay, sir, it must ha' been harder than steel,” said the blacksmith, shaking his head in mock gravity.
“You scoff, smith, you scoff, I know; but you speak the truth unwittingly,” said the carrier with some sadness. “My heart was like the nether millstone—your pardon, miller, I meant not to say a word that would cast a slight upon your calling: 'tis right for your nether millstone to be hard.”
“The harder the better, and no offence, neighbour,” said the miller generously.
“None was meant, sir,” said the carrier. “We were discoursing of my heart—hard—hard. And I was a reader o' the Book all my life. That's the strange thing; but I sought not to understand what I read and I got no help from parson—-no, nor yet from Archdeacon Eaton, that I listened to twice—no, nor the Dean himself in his own Cathedral at Exeter. With the new light that came to me, I was able to perceive that their discourse was a vain thing—not helpful to a simple man who thought something of himself, albeit jangling with the other tinkling cymbals every Sunday, kneeling (on the knees of my body) when we called ourselves miserable sinners. Miserable sinners! I tell ye, friends, I gave no thought to the words. I slurred through the General Confession at a hand gallop—just the pace that parson gets into when he warms to his work.”
“There's few left of the cloth and none of the laity can pass parson when he gets warmed to it. To hear him in the Litany is like watching him go 'cross country when he be mounted on King George, his big roan,” said the blacksmith reflectively.