Country life -- Fiction; Vicars, Parochial -- England -- Fiction
Suppose I am sitting there now while I say one word for our
congregations in winter. I was very particular in having the church
well warmed before Sunday. I think some parsons must neglect seeing
after this matter on principle, because warmth may make a weary
creature go to sleep here and there about the place: as if any healing
doctrine could enter the soul while it is on the rack of the frost. The
clergy should see—for it is their business—that their people have no
occasion to think of their bodies at all while they are in church. They
have enough ado to think of the truth. When our Lord was feeding even
their bodies, He made them all sit down on the grass. It is worth
noticing that there was much grass in the place—a rare thing I should
think in those countries—and therefore, perhaps, it was chosen by Him
for their comfort in feeding their souls and bodies both. If I may
judge from experiences of my own, one of the reasons why some churches
are of all places the least likely for anything good to be found in,
is, that they are as wretchedly cold to the body as they are to the
soul—too cold every way for anything to grow in them. Edelweiss,
“Noble-white”—as they call a plant growing under the snow on some of
the Alps—could not survive the winter in such churches. There is small
welcome in a cold house. And the clergyman, who is the steward, should
look to it. It is for him to give his Master’s friends a welcome to his
Master’s house—for the welcome of a servant is precious, and now-a-days
very rare.
And now Mrs Stone must have finished. I go into the old church which
looks as if it were quietly waiting for its people. No. She has not
done yet. Never mind.—How full of meaning the vaulted roof looks! as
if, having gathered a soul of its own out of the generations that have
worshipped here for so long, it had feeling enough to grow hungry for a
psalm before the end of the week.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account