She reached out her hand to the clergyman in a grateful clasp, but she said nothing, and, before he could speak to her a single word of comfort or consolation, she entered her coach and was driven away.
“It was a decent funeral,” commented one of the toilers, as he shuffled slowly down the path leading to the cemetery gate.
“It was that,” responded the fellow-worker at his side. “A labor-leader at the house and a preacher at the grave. What more could the man ask?”
“An’ not too much religion in it either. Religion don’t fit the workin’ man; an’ this priest seemed to sense it an’ cut it out, more credit to him. They say he’s a devilish good preacher, too, an’ stands up great for labor. I’ve a mind I’ll go hear him next Sunday.”
“I’ll go with ye, Thomas.”
“Come along. We’ll go together.”
CHAPTER V
AN UNUSUAL SERMON
When the rector of Christ Church entered the chancel on the Sunday morning following the funeral of John Bradley, and looked out over the well-filled pews, he had no reason to be dissatisfied with the size of his congregation. Yet a full church was no unusual thing. For many Sundays now, people had been coming in ever greater numbers to hear him preach. They were attracted not alone by his ability, his earnestness and his spirituality; but also by the novelty of his message to society concerning the proper relation of the Church to the wage-workers and to the poor. It was by the attendance of the wage-working class that congregations had, for the most part, been swollen. There were few accessions from homes of wealth. To the rich and the exclusive the new interpretation of the Gospel of Christ had not proved to be especially attractive. They had not formally repudiated it. They had not absented themselves from the services in order that they might not hear it. They had not relinquished any proper effort to uphold and maintain the dignity and usefulness of the Church, notwithstanding the divergent views of the rector on certain matters of no little importance. So that, on this particular Sunday morning, there was no evidence of desertion on the part of the rich and the well-to-do. It was noted, however, that the pews in the rear of the church, those renting at low prices and therefore occupied by parishioners in moderate or humble circumstances, were the ones that were filled to overflowing. It was plainly evident that more than one laboring-man and working-woman had followed the example of the lookers-on at John Bradley’s funeral, and had come to hear the minister preach. The story of his address at the grave on the preceding Sunday had spread through the ranks of the toilers, and was responsible in no small degree for the size of the congregation to-day. People wanted to hear, in his own pulpit, the clergyman who could stand by the open grave of a common laborer, one not given either to religious beliefs or practices, and say things acceptable to all of the dead man’s friends, believers and disbelievers alike. So they had come, men in rusty attire, with stolid countenances and awkward bearing, women with bent shoulders and toil-hardened hands, and care-worn faces looking out from under the brims of hats and bonnets that had done Sunday service for unknown years. They did not respond to the prayers, nor join in the litany, nor kneel nor rise in accordance with the rubrics. But they were silent, attentive, respectful. They came not so much to worship as to listen.
The text that morning was the question asked by those offended aristocrats of old: