Cleo held his hand and rejoiced, “What a wonderful crowd there is this morning! I’m so glad!”
Together they peeped through the parlor door into the auditorium, and he almost put his arm about her firm waist. . . . It would have seemed natural, very pleasant and right and sweet.
When he marched out to the chancel, the church was full, a dozen standing. They all breathed with admiration. (He learned later that the last pastor had had trouble with his false teeth and a fondness for whining.)
He led the singing.
“Come on now!” he laughed. “You’ve got to welcome your new preacher! The best way is to put a lot of lung-power into it and sing like the dickens! You can all make some kind of noise. Make a lot!”
Himself he gave example, his deep voice rolling out in hymns of which he had always been fond: “I Love to Tell the Story” and “My Faith Looks up to Thee.”
He prayed briefly—he was weary of prayers in which the priest ramblingly explained to God that God really was God. This was, he said, his first day with the new flock. Let the Lord give him ways of showing them his love and his desire to serve them.
Before his sermon he looked from brother to brother. He loved them all, that moment; they were his regiment, and he the colonel; his ship’s crew, and he the skipper; his patients, and he the loyal physician. He began slowly, his great voice swelling to triumphant certainty as he talked.
Voice, sureness, presence, training, power, he had them all. Never had he so well liked his rôle; never had he acted so well; never had he known such sincerity of histrionic instinct.
He had solid doctrine for the older stalwarts. With comforting positiveness he preached that the atonement was the one supreme fact in the world. It rendered the most sickly and threadbare the equals of kings and millionaires; it demanded of the successful that they make every act a recognition of the atonement. For the young people he had plenty of anecdotes, and he was not afraid to make them laugh.