"Bought it! Oh!" They were silenced. Not one of them could have bought a church, and wouldn't have if they could. They would have bought a good mansion for themselves against their retiring-day. Few of them understood it. Only the man who was going to darkest Africa to work in the jungles, and a couple who were bound, one for the leper country, and another for China, had a light of understanding in their eyes, and gripped Courtland's hand with reverence and ecstatic awe.
"But, man alive!" lingered one, unwilling to leave his brilliant friend in such a hopeless hole. "Don't you realize if you don't hitch on to some denomination, or board of trustees, or something, your work won't count in the long run? Who's to carry on your work and keep up your name and what you have done, after you are gone? You're foolish!" He had just received a flattering call to a city church himself, and he knew he was not half so well fitted for it as Courtland.
But Courtland flung up his hat in a boyish way and laughed. "I should worry about my name after I am gone," he said. "And as for the work, it's for me to do, isn't it? Not for me to arrange for after I'm dead. If my heavenly Father wants it to keep up after I'm gone He'll manage to find a way, won't He? My job is to look after it while I'm here. Perhaps it won't be needed any longer after I'm gone. God sent me here to buy His church when it was for sale, didn't He? Well, then, if it is for sale again he'll find somebody else to buy it, unless He is done with it. The New Jerusalem may be here by that time and we won't have to have any churches. God Himself shall be the tabernacle! So you see I'm just going on running my own little old church the best I can with what God gives me, and I won't trouble any boards at present, not so long as I have money enough to keep the wheels moving."
They went away then with doubtful looks, and Courtland heard one say to another, shaking his head in a dubious way:
"I don't like it. It's all very irregular!"
And the other replied: "Yes! It's a pity about him! He might have done something big if he hadn't been so impractical!"
"The poor stews!" said Pat, dryly, looking after them. "They haven't got religion enough to carry them over till next week, the most of them, and what they'll do when they really see what kind the Lord is I can't guess! I wonder what they think that rich young man that Jesus loved would have been like, anyway, if he hadn't gone away sorrowful and kept his vast possessions. Cut it out, Pat! You're letting the devil in again and getting censorious! Just shut your mouth and saw wood! They'll find out some little old day in the morning, I guess."
Courtland wrote it all to Bonnie, all the happenings at seminary and church, what the theologues had said about his being impractical and irregular, and Bonnie, with a tender smile, leaned down and kissed the words in the letter, and murmured, "Dear impractical beloved!" all softly to herself.
For Bonnie was very happy. The possession of great wealth that would have to be spent in the usual way, surrounded by social distinction, attended by functions and society duties, would have been an inexpressible burden to her. But money to be used without limit in helping other people was a miracle of joy. To think that it should have come to her!
Yet there was something greater than the money and the new interests that were opening up before her, and that was the wonder of the man who had chosen her to be his wife. That such a prince among men, such a friend of God, should have passed by others of rank, of beauty and attainments far greater than hers, and come away out West to take her, fairly overwhelmed her with wonder when she had time to think about it. For she was as busy as she was happy in these days. There was her school work, her music, the little home duties, all she could make Mother Marshall leave for her; the beautiful sewing she was doing on her simple bridal garments; and stealing time from all to write the most wonderful letters to the insatiable lover in the East.