IX
"Listen, Juffrouw," said Daatje, the following morning, when all was ready for going to church, "for forty years I have served you faithfully and well; but I just want to say to you, that if you bring any more heathen or Hottentots into the house—into the parlor, rather—in the future, I will leave in a jiffy, as sure as fate!"
"Will you, Daatje?" said Aunt Seréna, drily, asking for her prayer-book. Johannes sat stiffly in his Sunday collar, struggling to draw his thread gloves smoothly over his finger-tips. Then, under two umbrellas, the three set out for church.
Already Dominie Kraalboom was sitting in the chancel, busily stroking his freshly shaven cheeks, and thoughtfully watching the coming in of his flock. Not one of the circle was missing. The clothing of the congregation, wet with rain, gave out a peculiar odor; chairs were noisily shoved about over the flat, blue tombstones, while above the sound of shuffling feet and of slamming doors the deep throbbing of the organ was heard.
The dominie soon caught sight of Johannes; and the little man had cause to feel conceited by reason of all the attention paid him. Johannes said to himself that it certainly must be his own imagining (for what could such a great man have to do with a little boy?) but it appeared as if the entire sermon was written for, and especially aimed at, Johannes.
The text was: "Who shall understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults."
The dominie dwelt upon the sin of arrogance, and the numbers of young people who were wrecked through it ere they rightly understood what it was, and said that they ought to desire to be cleansed from it.
Young people, said the dominie, were conceited and presumptuous, and full of evil; but they were themselves unconscious of it. They thought they knew more than their elders, and they listened, far too willingly, to pernicious dogmas that would make all men equal—that would reason away royal and divine authority, and that made people rebellious, and discontented with the sphere in which God had placed them.
"The true Christian," said the dominie, "cares for neither gold nor goods. He has higher aspirations. If he be blessed with them, let him manage them well, for they are only lent to him. If he be poor, then let him not repine nor complain, knowing that everything is ordered for the best, and that true riches are not of this world."