“I call a good deal of that hymn immoral. Think of that gentle soul caring to gain a kingly crown. Think of his having a blood-red banner. Think of him going forth to war. It’s a wicked hymn, some of it.”
“Oh, well,” said our minister, “those things are just figurative. You mustn’t take them too literally, Miss Marsh.”
I looked over at him, across my cherries.
“We’re saying that pretty often these days,” I said. “Sometimes it’s glorious true and sometimes it’s stupid false.”
“Well,” he says, “that needn’t enter into the services for these Sundays. We might of course do well to pick out the hymns with care. What else had you thought of?”
“I thought,” I said, “of having the Sunday School come in then and march down the aisle, singing—not ‘We Are Little Soldiers,’ or anything like that, but ‘I Think When I Read That Sweet Story of Old,’ say. And then have them repeat something—well,” I says, “I found a little verse the other day. I never saw it before—mebbe you have. I’ve been meaning to ask the superintendent how it would be to have the children learn to say that.”
I said it for him:
“ ‘The year’s at the Spring,
The day’s at the morn,
Morning’s at seven,
The hill-side’s dew-pearled.
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn,
God’s in his heaven,
All’s right with the world.’
“And then,” I says, “have them add: ‘And oh God, help the last line to get to be true for everybody, and help me to help make it true. Amen,’ That,” I says, “might do for one day. Then you talk to ’em for five minutes. And then dismiss them.”
“Dismiss them?” he said. “Not have them remain to the service?”