The sermon was no marked achievement in coherence, but neither was Browett a coherent personality. It was, however, a swift, vivid sermon—a short and a busy one, with a reason for each of its parts, incoherent though the parts were. For Browett was a cynic doubter of his own faith; at once an admirer of Voltaire and a believer in the Established Order of Things; despising a radical and a conservative equally, but, hating more than either, a clumsy compromiser. He must be preached to as one not yet brought into that flock purchased by God with the blood of His Son; and at the same time, as one who had always been of that flock and was now inalienable from it. In a word, Browett's doubt and his belief had both to be fed from the same spoon, a fact that all young preachers of God's word would not have fathomed.
Thus our young rector proved his power. His future rolled visibly toward him. During the rest of that service there sounded in his ears an undertone from out the golden centre of that future: "Reverend Father in God, we present unto you this godly and well-learned man to be ordained and consecrated Bishop——"
Rewarded, indeed, was he for the trouble he had taken long months before to build that particular sermon to fit Browett, after specifications confided to him by an obliging parishioner—keeping it ready to use at a second's notice, on the first morning that Browett should appear.
How diminished would be that envious railing at Success could we but know the hidden pains by which alone its victories of seeming ease are won!
The young minister could now meet Browett as man to man, having established a prestige.
It had been said by those who would fain have branded him with the stigma of disrepute that Browett's ethics were inferior to those of the prairie wolf; meaning, perhaps, that he might kill more sheep than he could possibly devour.
Browett had views of his own in this matter. As a tentative evolutionist he looked upon his survival as unimpeachable evidence of his fitness,—as the eagle is fitter than the lamb it may fasten upon. Again, as a believer in Revealed Religion, he accepted human society according to the ordinance of God, deeming himself as Master to be but the rightful, divinely-instituted complement of his humblest servant—the two of them necessary poles in the world spiritual.
One of the few fads of Browett being the memorial window, it was also said by enviers that if he would begin to erect a window to every small competitor his Trust had squeezed to death there would be an unprecedented flurry in stained glass. But Browett knew, as an evolutionist, that the eagle has a divine right to the lamb if it can come safely off with it; as a Christian, that one carries out the will of God as indubitably in preserving the established order of prince and subject, of noble and plebeian, as in giving of his abundance to relieve the necessitous—or in endowing universities which should teach the perpetual sacredness of the established order of things in Church and State.
In short, he derived comfort from both poles of his belief—one the God of Moses, a somewhat emotional god, not entirely uncarnal—the other the god of Spencer, an unemotional and unimaginative god of Law.
It followed that he was much taken with a preacher who could answer so appositely to the needs of his soul as did this impressive young man in a chance sermon of unstudied eloquence.