With pleasure and relief he turned from the Industrials to the Soldiers. What a fine spirit animated them! With Mrs. Yellam, he had arrived, by a different road, at the same conclusion.
Our men of all ranks were facing unspeakable horrors with a laugh.
How had it come to pass?
According to Hamlin's teaching, a supreme Sacrifice, a Divine Atonement, had regenerated the pagan world. Did sacrifice make not only for regeneration but for joyousness? Lionel Pomfret, still on his crutches, was joyous. The Squire, after the sale of many heirlooms, was joyous. A finer humanity informed him, radiating from him.
The Parson pondered these things in his heart. He might have found another object-lesson in William Saint. He was unmistakably prospering, making money hand over fist. But he was not joyous.
Very reluctantly, Hamlin decided that the time for peace might be far distant, if the designs of Omnipotence were rightly apprehended by him. Armageddon would continue till pain had purged the whole world, till materialism in its hydraheaded forms was slain by spirituality, by a faith, simple as that preached by the Nazarene, which counted worldly gain as naught if such gain involved the loss of the soul.
Faithful to his promise to Alfred, Hamlin kept a watchful eye on Mrs. Yellam. Her empty pew had affected him poignantly. He thought of empty pews throughout Europe. They stood mute witnesses against teachers and preachers, against creeds that crumbled when the cannon thundered. He respected this old woman for braving gossip by staying at home. She had moral courage, nearly as rare and even more precious than common-sense. But when she came back to her pew, when he heard her loud responses, he realised sadly that her son, not her God, had found this wandering sheep and led it back to the fold.
At any moment the pew might be empty again.
Next Sunday, he took for his text the verse out of the hundredth-and-sixth Psalm:
"And He gave them their desire; but withal He sent leanness into their soul."