“Can you name the contradictory passages?” demanded the vicar, after an imperceptible start.
“Well, I can’t say as I can,” admitted the farmer; “but I’d know them if I heard them.”
Mr. Langrove rose, and took down a large manuscript volume from a shelf directly over his head. Opening it at random, his eye fell upon the text: “Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” He lingered on it for a second, then turned over the leaves, and, having found the place he wanted, he read aloud the first and last few pages of the preceding Sunday’s sermon.
“Where do you see the contradiction?” he inquired, looking up and laying his hand on the page.
“Well, as you read it now, I can’t say it sounds much amiss,” replied Mr. Griggs, lifting his feet and bringing them down again with a dubious thud. “I expect the fault was in the way of saying it. You don’t speak plain enough; if you spoke plainer, folks would most likely understand you better. Many as have joined the Connection say as it was that as drove them to us. They couldn’t understand you; they often came away puzzled.”
A transient flush rose and died out in the vicar’s face, and his lips trembled a little. But Farmer Griggs did not notice this; he was looking at his boots, and pondering on the wisdom of his own words. Mr. Langrove had been pretty well trained to forbearance of late years, and, though he was too humble-minded and too honest to pretend to be indifferent to the humiliating interference he had to suffer, he was surprised to find how keenly he smarted under the present one, and mortified to feel how alive the old man was in him, in spite of the many blows he had dealt him. He never, since he was a school-boy, was conscious of such a strong desire to kick a fellow-creature; and this rising movement was no sooner strangled by an imperious effort of self-control than it rose up instantaneously in the milder form of an impulse to open the door and show his visitor out. Before this second rebellion of the old man was put down, Farmer Griggs, mistaking the vicar’s momentary silence for a tacit acknowledgment of his shortcomings, observed:
“It’s a solemn thing to break the word; and the plainer and simpler one speaks the better it is for those that hear it, though it mayn’t be such a credit for them that speak it. There’s them that say you think more about making a fine sermon than doing good to souls—which is no better than spiritual pride. You can’t shut folks’ mouths, no more than you can stop the river from running; they will say what they think.”
“Yes, and that is why we are commanded to think no evil,” rejoined the vicar. “We are too ready to judge of other people’s motives, when in all conscience we are hard set enough to judge our own. If we go to church to pick holes in the sermon, as you say, we had better stay away. The preacher may be a very poor one, but, trust me, while he does his best, those who listen in the right spirit will learn no harm from him; those who have not that spirit would do well to ask for it, and meantime to study the chapter of S. James on the use of the tongue.”
The vicar rose, as if to intimate that the audience was at an end.
“Well, there may be something in that,” remarked the farmer, rising slowly; “but, for my own part, I never had much opinion of James. Paul is the man; if it hadn’t been for Paul, it’s my belief the whole concern would have been a failure.[92] Good-morning, sir.” And without waiting to see the effect of this startling announcement of his private views, Farmer Griggs bowed himself out.