The Romance of Zion Chapel | Page 6

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 of power,--it breaks in the moulding; and it is rather because woman is so strong that she is able to take the Caesarean stamp of any form of power. Nor cares she by whose hands she is moulded, whose image she wears, be it warrior, poet, or priest, so long as she feels the veritable grasp and impress of power. Some women are already made in the image of the man they