Dr. Harrow and Mr. Simpson entered the room, and the others quitted it, and hardly were they gone ere the unseen guest stole out from the shadows and looked into the old man’s eyes. There was neither fear nor reluctance in them, nothing but welcome, and a trust which was transcendent; and in a few moments the unseen guest folded the longing spirit of the old man in a strong embrace and bore it to where “beyond these voices there is peace.”
Thus Sidney was married. Thus the mantle of the pastorate of Dole fell upon his shoulders.
CHAPTER X.
For six months Sidney had been minister of Dole, and already his people adored him. Never had they heard such sweet and winning sermons; never had they realized the beauty and tenderness of the gospel, never had they gone to their church with such assurance of comfort as they did now.
As Sidney learned to know them better and better, he was enabled to comprehend more and more fully the narrow lives they led, the petty poverties which afflicted them, the sore struggle it was for most of them to make ends meet. Swayed by his great sympathy he sought in Holy Writ for all the words of comfort, peace, and promise. He read these passages to them in a voice which yearned towards them from his very heart, and then he would close the Bible and preach to them lessons of the sweetest and purest morality, illuminated by illustrations drawn from the fields they tilled, from the woods, and from the varied phenomena of natural life as it was manifested about them; his discourses came to them with a sweet and homelike sense of comfort. Dumbly and instinctively they loved their barren hills and meagre meadows with a great love, and it seemed to them that now they were being given reasons for the love which was in them.
If Sidney did not preach Christ he at least preached His word—and in His spirit, and the people to whom he preached never doubted of the chaos which was in the soul of their teacher. Their teacher who night and day kept their joys and sorrows in his heart.
Sidney was walking home through the powdery snow to the parsonage when he met Temperance; her face was set, and she was evidently in some distress of mind. One of Sidney’s first pastoral duties had been to marry Temperance and Nathan. They were established in the old Lansing house, for Nathan had rented the farm. Old Mr. Lansing lived with them.
“Well, Temperance!” said Sidney. “It’s an age since I’ve seen you; how’s everyone with you?”