The sermon was a little better, for somewhere hidden within him
this pale young man had a spark of the divine fire, but it was so
dampened by the atmosphere of the church that it never rose above
a pale luminosity.
I found the service indescribably depressing. I had an impulse to
rise up and cry out--almost anything to shock these people into
opening their eyes upon real life. Indeed, though I hesitate
about setting it down here, I was filled for some time with the
liveliest imaginings of the following serio-comic enterprise:
I would step up the aisle, take my place in front of the Chief
Pharisee, wag my finger under his nose, and tell him a thing or
two about the condition of the church.
"The only live thing here," I would tell him, "is the spark in
that pale minister's soul; and you're doing your best to smother
that."
And I fully made up my mind that when he answered back in his
chief-pharisaical way I would gently--but firmly remove him from
his seat, shake him vigorously two or three times (men's souls
have often been saved with less!), deposit him flat in the aisle,
and yes--stand on him while I elucidated the situation to the
audience at large. While I confined this amusing and interesting
project to the humours of the imagination I am still convinced
that something of the sort would have helped enormously in
clearing up the religious and moral atmosphere of the place.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87