Esther | Page 2

silent
until the litany ended and the organ began again. Under the prolonged
rustle of settling for the sermon, more whispers passed.
"He is all eyes," murmured Esther; and it was true that at this distance
the preacher seemed to be made up of two eyes and a voice, so slight
and delicate was his frame. Very tall, slender and dark, his thin, long
face gave so spiritual an expression to his figure that the great eyes
seemed to penetrate like his clear voice to every soul within their range.
"Good art!" muttered her companion.
"We are too much behind the scenes," replied she.
"It is a stage, like any other," he rejoined; "there should be an
_entre-acte_ and drop-scene. Wharton could design one with a last
judgment."
"He would put us into it, George, and we should be among the wicked."
"I am a martyr," answered George shortly.
The clergyman now mounted his pulpit and after a moment's pause said
in his quietest manner and clearest voice:
"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
An almost imperceptible shiver passed through Esther's figure.
"Wait! he will slip in the humility later," muttered George.

On the contrary, the young preacher seemed bent on letting no trace of
humility slip into his first sermon. Nothing could be simpler than his
manner, which, if it had a fault, sinned rather on the side of plainness
and monotony than of rhetoric, but he spoke with the air of one who
had a message to deliver which he was more anxious to give as he
received than to add any thing of his own; he meant to repeat it all
without an attempt to soften it. He took possession of his flock with a
general advertisement that he owned every sheep in it, white or black,
and to show that there could be no doubt on the matter, he added a
general claim to right of property in all mankind and the universe. He
did this in the name and on behalf of the church universal, but there
was self-assertion in the quiet air with which he pointed out the nature
of his title, and then, after sweeping all human thought and will into his
strong-box, shut down the lid with a sharp click, and bade his audience
kneel.
The sermon dealt with the relations of religion to society. It began by
claiming that all being and all thought rose by slow gradations to
God,--ended in Him, for Him--existed only through Him and because
of being His.
The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the
plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of
Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the
materialism of to-day, were all emanations of divine thought, doing
their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all,
not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as
instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends. The preacher
then went on to criticise the attitude of religion towards science. "If
there is still a feeling of hostility between them," he said, "it is no
longer the fault of religion. There have been times when the church
seemed afraid, but she is so no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your
microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached;
reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the
church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew
only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all
thought and matter only one central idea,--that idea which the church

has never ceased to embody,--I AM! Science like religion kneels before
this mystery; it can carry itself back only to this simple consciousness
of existence. I AM is the starting point and goal of metaphysics and
logic, but the church alone has pointed out from the beginning that this
starting-point is not human but divine. The philosopher says--I am, and
the church scouts his philosophy. She answers:--No! you are NOT, you
have no existence of your own. You were and are and ever will be only
a part of the supreme I AM, of which the church is the emblem."
In this symbolic expression of his right of property in their souls and
bodies, perhaps the preacher rose a little above the heads of his
audience. Most of his flock were busied with a kind of speculation so
foreign to that of metaphysics that they would have been puzzled to
explain what was meant by Descartes' famous COGITO ERGO SUM,
on which the preacher laid so much stress. They would have preferred
to put the fact of their existence on almost any