'You have taken my gold and silver, and made idols unto yourselves.'
'If I am a father, where is my honor?'
'If I am a master, where is my fear?'
I have made hundreds of meditations on these words, and preached them many a time. Then, again, our people are naturally poetic; the poetry has been crushed out of their natures by modern education. Yet they relish a fine line or expression. And again, their own language is full of aphorisms, bitter and stinging enough, we know, but sometimes exquisite as befits a nation whose forefathers lived in tents of skins. Now give them a few of the thousand proverbs of Solomon, and they will chew them as a cow chews the cud. But I should go on with this subject forever."
"But what about the use of sarcasm, sir? Your allusions to the Gaelic sarcasms reminded me of it. I often heard people say that our congregations dread nothing so much as sarcasm."
"I'm glad you reminded me of it. I can speak on the matter like a professor, for I was past-master in the science. I had a bitter tongue. How deeply I regret it, God only knows. I have often made an awful fool of myself at conferences, at public meetings, etc.; I have often done silly and puerile things, what the French call bêtises; I think of them without shame. But the sharp, acrid things I have said, and the few harsh things I have done, fill me with confusion. There's the benefit of a diary. It is an examination of conscience. I remember once at a station, a rather mean fellow flung a florin on a heap of silver before me. He should have paid a half-crown. I called his attention to it. He denied it. It was the second or third time he had tried that little game. I thought the time had come for a gentle remonstrance. I said nothing till the people were about to disperse. Then I said I had a story to tell them. It was about three mean men. One was an employer of labor in America, who was so hard on his men that when his factory blew up he docked them, or rather their widows, of the time they spent foolishly up in the sky. There was a titter. The second was a fellow here at home, who stole the pennies out of the eyes of a corpse. There was a roar. 'The third, the meanest of the three, I leave yourselves to discover. He isn't far away.' The bolt went home, and he and his family suffered. He never went to a fair or market that it was not thrown in his face; and even his little children in the schools had to bear his shame. I never think of it without a blush. Who wrote these lines?—
'He who only rules by terror
Doeth grievous wrong;
Deep as Hell I count his error,
Listen to my song.'"
"I'm not sure," said Father Letheby. "I think it was Tennyson."
"Thank God, the people love us. But for that, I should despair of our Irish faith in the near future."
"You said, 'Preach not yourself, but God'?"