It did seem to me that the good man's discourse had been written expressly for me. It was as plain as a mother's talk with her children; not full of Latin, nor yet of stories to make the people laugh, like those of the preaching friars in general.
* From Tyndale's translation.
The preacher showed how each one had his cross to bear, and that not of his own choosing, but of God's. The crosses we chose for ourselves were many times but painted crosses, while those which our Father in heaven laid upon us were real—hard and sharp oftentimes, but yet capable of being made into a blessing if we did but take them up and carry them according to His will and in his spirit. Much more he said which I will not try to repeat—about the little crosses of every day, the thwarting of our plans, the fault-findings and injustice of those we are trying our best to save, and other such like trials, which might all be turned—so said the preacher—from curses to crosses, if only met in the right spirit.
It was a very plain and simple discourse as I said, but it did me a great deal of good. It made me sensible that I had been repining and fretting over my cross instead of taking it up, and that I had thus missed the blessing which I might have found even in the bitter grief which had been darkening both heaven and earth for me.
"What think you of that sermon?" said Master Yates to one of his neighbors, as they lingered at the church door for the usual greeting and gossip.
"Humph! Call that a sermon!" answered the other. "Why, there was not a bit of Latin in it, and even a plain man like me could understand every word."
"Now that was the beauty of it, to my thinking," said Master Yates. "Where is the use of a sermon that nobody understands?"
"Yes, those are your new-fangled ways. What is the use of the blessed mass; I am sure nobody understood a word of that?"
"A good many folks would like to hear that riddle solved," said a decent man who stood near.
Whereat two or three laughed, and old Master Andrews moved away, muttering angrily that it was never a good world since these new notions came into it. A fine thing, indeed, when shepherds and plowmen took on them to think about such matters.