“Then why do you allude to it?” said the vicar, rather warmly.
“Because I maintain that it was perfectly unsuited for a simple-minded, ignorant congregation of fishermen and miners. What do they care about how Saint Augustine wrote, or Polycarp thought, or the doings of Chrysostom the Golden Mouthed? Your words about the heresies and the Gnostics and Manichaeans were all thrown away. The early days of the Church don’t interest them a bit, but they can understand about the patriarchs and their troubles and weaknesses, because the masterly hand that wrote their lives painted them as men similar to themselves.”
“Mr Trethick!”
“All right; I’ve just done,” said Geoffrey. “There was another sermon of yours too, I heard you preach, a well-meant one, but somehow you did not get hold of them. You had taken the text about the apostles becoming fishers of men, and the rough fellows could not see that it was their duty to give up their boats and nets, and forsake their wives and little ones, as you downright told them they ought.”
“I hope I know my duty, Mr Trethick,” said the vicar, sternly.
“I hope you do, sir; but somehow, as I say, you don’t get hold of them. Now Pengelly seems to fit what he says to their everyday life, and shows them how to follow the apostles’ example in their self-denial and patience. Why, my dear sir, the people here care no more for the early fathers of the Church than—than I do,” he added, at a loss for a simile.
“Mr Trethick, you surprise me,” gasped the vicar, “you pain me.”
“Do I?” said Geoffrey. “Well, I don’t want to do so. Now that man on Sunday night; he took for his text—”
“Miss Penwynn, Mr Trethick,” said the vicar, rising, “I find—the time—I must say good-morning.”
“I’m afraid I’ve been too free-speaking,” said Geoffrey, earnestly, as he held out his hand. “It’s a bad habit of mine to get warm in argument; and I dare say I’ve been preaching most heretically.”