“Her presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne’er seen but wonder’d at,”
was the actual queen of the neighbourhood; for, though she was the very soul of kindness, she was determined to have her own way, and had it.
Although I did not know all this at the time, such were the two ladies who held these different opinions about my preaching; the one who did nothing but read Messrs Addison, Pope, Paley, and Co., considering that I neglected the doctrine of works as the seal of faith, and the one who was busy helping her neighbours from morning to night, finding little in my preaching, except incentive to benevolence.
The next point where my recollection can take up the conversation, is where Miss Hester made the following further criticism on my pulpit labours.
“You are too anxious to explain everything, Mr Walton.”
I pause in my recording, to do my critic the justice of remarking that what she said looks worse on paper than it sounded from her lips; for she was a gentlewoman, and the tone has much to do with the impression made by the intellectual contents of all speech.
“Where can be the use of trying to make uneducated people see the grounds of everything?” she said. “It is enough that this or that is in the Bible.”
“Yes; but there is just the point. What is in the Bible? Is it this or that?”
“You are their spiritual instructor: tell them what is in the Bible.”
“But you have just been objecting to my mode of representing what is in the Bible.”