“And there is only one way for sin to end, however it may look at the beginning, and it won’t help you to have Clif fall into the same condemnation. There, good-night.”
“I don’t know about that last,” said Ben to himself. “It would seem kind o’ good to have Clif round ’most anywhere. But he’s going to work straight this time, I expect, and I guess he’ll have all the better chance to walk straight too.”
Chapter Five.
The Minister.
The event of the summer to the people of Gershom was the coming of the new minister. It is not to be supposed that with a population of a good many hundreds there was uniformity of opinion in religious matters in the town. To say nothing of the North Gore people, the people of Gershom generally believed in the right of private judgment, and exercised it to such purpose that, within the limits of the township, at least a half dozen denominations were represented. The greater number of these, however, had not had much success in establishing their own peculiar form of worship, except for a little while at a time, and the greater part of the people were at this time more or less closely identified with the village corporation. So that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that all Gershom was moved to welcome the Reverend William Maxwell among them.
Never, except perhaps in their most confidential whispers among themselves, did the wise men of Gershom confess that they were disappointed in their minister. They had not expected perfection, or they said they had not, but each and every one of them had expected some one very different from the silent, sallow, heavy-eyed young man whom Jacob Holt, at whose home he was for the present to live, introduced to them.
Something had been said of the getting up of a monster tea-meeting to welcome him, but uncertainty in the time of his coming, because of illness, had prevented this, and as soon as he was seen there was a silent, but general decision among those in authority that this would not have been a successful measure. So he was conducted from house to house by Jacob Holt, or some other of the responsible people, and he was praised to his flock, and his flock were praised to him, but there was not much progress made toward acquaintance for a while, and even the least observing of them could see that there were times when contact with strangers, to say nothing of the necessity of making himself agreeable to them, was almost more than the poor young man could bear.
Still, nobody confessed to disappointment. On the contrary, Jacob Holt and the rest of the leaders of public opinion declared constantly that he was “the right man in the right place.” Of Scottish parentage, brought up from his boyhood in Canada, and having received his theological education in the United States, if he were not the man to unite the various contending national elements in Gershom society, where was such a man to be found?