John Cameron stood watching him as he talked.
“He’s a good old guy,” he thought gravely, “but he doesn’t get my point. He evidently believes what he says, but I don’t just see going blindfolded into a church. However, there’s something to what he says about going where God is if I want to find him.”
Out loud he merely said:
“I’ll think about it, Doctor, and perhaps come in to see you the next time I’m home.” Then he excused himself and went on to the store.
As he walked away he said to himself:
“I wonder what Ruth Macdonald would say if I asked her the same question? I wonder if she has thought anything about it? I wonder if I’d ever have the nerve to ask her?”
The next morning he suggested to his mother that they go to Doctor Thurlow’s church together. She would have very much preferred going to her own church with him, but she knew that he did not care for the minister and had never been very friendly with the people, so she put aside her secret wish and went with him. To tell the truth she was very proud to go anywhere with her handsome soldier son, and one thing that made her the more willing was that she remembered that the Macdonalds always went to the Presbyterian church, and perhaps they would be there to-day and Ruth would see them. But she said not a word of this to her boy.
John spent most of the time with his mother. He went up to college for an hour or so Saturday evening, dropping in on his fraternity for a few minutes and realizing what true friends he had among the fellows who were left, though most of them were gone. He walked about the familiar rooms, looking at the new pictures, photographs of his friends in uniform. This one was a lieutenant in Officers’ Training Camp. That one had gone with the Ambulance Corps. Tom was with the Engineers, and Jimmie and Sam had joined the Tank Service. Two of the fellows were in France in the front ranks, another had enlisted in the Marines, it seemed that hardly any were left, and of those three had been turned down for some slight physical defect, and were working in munition factories and the ship-yard. Everything was changed. The old playmates had become men with earnest purposes. He did not stay long. There was a restlessness about it all that pulled the strings of his heart, and made him realize how different everything was.
Sunday morning as he walked to church with his mother he wondered why he had never gone more with her when he was at home. It seemed a pleasant thing to do.
The service was beautifully solemn, and Doctor Thurlow had many gracious words to say of the boys in the army, and spent much time reading letters from those at the front who belonged to the church and Sunday school, and spoke of the “supreme sacrifice” in the light of a saving grace; but the sermon was a gentle ponderous thing that got nowhere, spiced toward its close with thrilling scenes from battle news. John Cameron as he listened did not feel that he had found God. He did not feel a bit enlightened by it. He laid it to his own ignorance and stupidity, though, and determined not to give up the search. The prayer at the close of the sermon somehow clinched this resolve because there was something so genuine and sweet and earnest about it. He could not help thinking that the man might know more of God than he was able to make plain to his hearers. He had really never noticed either a prayer or a sermon before in his life. He had sat in the room with very few. He wondered if all sermons and prayers were like these and wished he had noticed them. He had never been much of a church goer.