The Romance of Zion Chapel | Page 6

to be in
a measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individually
considered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed to
be set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made help
in the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest you
needed and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken the
single gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the fool
wisely,--that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. To
encourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talent
she has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr.
Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayer
meetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures were
really and usefully alive, but at no other point of their circumferences.
However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the Reverend
Theophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a lover
of character for its own sake, and to the student of character there is no
such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisome
an old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord
in prayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imagines
that to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith.
Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderry
breathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second,
according to his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times,
he was there, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and
endlessly beaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say,
"Didn't I say he was the man for New Zion?"
The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the old
disused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time every
possible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance,
prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcas
society, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and the

ladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zion
had indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and social
activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost
beginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli
Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed
of the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till
not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion
Street heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very
High Street itself should hum and whizz.
The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of Theophilus
Londonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon be
humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the
ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion.
Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it,
then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on,
faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves,
and the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will
whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of
Theophilus Londonderry.
Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion.
CHAPTER VI
OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN
Darwin expended many years of his life in the study of disagreeable
animals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism to
environment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if he
had begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history has
been one unbroken succession of inspired and noble adaptations!
Woman's adaptability to man is one of the most mysterious, as it is
perhaps the most pathetic, of all the modes of her mysterious being.
Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of the
rock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of
course, she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her

chameleon to a like degree or indeed in a like manner. Such
adaptability is not one of the forms of his greatness, and even when he
achieves it, it is not becoming to him.
For woman's adaptability is not the domination of a weaker nature by a
stronger, it is in itself a noble and world-necessary form of strength.
Strength is needed as well for the taking as the making of an
impression,--something more than mere ductility. Weakness may never
bear the stamp