But Valentine was not at all what Mr. Craik meant by a good churchman.
Such religious opinions and feelings as had influence over him, had come
from the evangelical school. His old father and uncle had been very
religious men, and of that type, almost as a matter of course. In their
early day evangelical religion had been as the river of God--the one
channel in which higher thought and fervent feeling ran.
Valentine had respected their religion, had seen that it was real, that
it made them contented, happy, able to face death with something more
than hope, able to acquiesce in the wonderful reservations of God with
men, the more able on account of them to look on this life as the
childhood of the next, and to wait for knowledge patiently. But yet, of
all the forms taken by religious feeling, Valentine considered it the
most inconvenient; of all the views of Christianity, the most difficult
to satisfy.
He told the vicar he did not see why his grandmother was to be called a
saint because she had gone through great misfortunes, and because it had
pleased her to be _trundled_ to church, on all Sundays and saints' days,
besides attending to the other ordinances of the church and the
sacraments.
When he was mildly admonished that a site seemed to presuppose a
church, he assented, and with one great plunge, during which he
distinctly felt, both that his position as landlord was not to be
defended, and that this good use of the money might make things more
secure, he gave a promise to build one--felt a twinge of compunction,
and a glow of generosity, but blushed hotly when Mr. Craik observed that
the old church, being put in decent repair, and chiefly used for
marriages and for the burial service, it might, perhaps be a pleasing
testimony, a filial act, to dedicate the new one to St. Elizabeth,
"Simply in reverend recollection, you know, Melcombe, of that having
been--been your grandmother's name."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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