The next evening he listened to the best sermon he had yet heard from
that pulpit—a summary of the facts bearing on the resurrection of our
Lord;—with which sermon, however, a large part of the congregation was
anything but pleased; for the minister had admitted the impossibility of
reconciling, in every particular, the differing accounts of the doings
and seeings of those who bore witness to it.
“—As gien,” said the soutar, “the Lord wasna to shaw himsel till a’
that had seen he was up war agreed as to their recollection o’ what fouk
had reportit!”
He went home edified and uplifted by his fresh contemplation of the
story of his Master’s victory: thank God! he thought; his pains were
over at last! and through death he was lord for ever over death and
evil, over pain and loss and fear, who was already through his father
lord of creation and life, and of all things visible and invisible! He
was Lord also of all thinking and feeling and judgment, able to give
repentance and restoration, and to set right all that selfwill had set
wrong! So greatly did the heart of his humble disciple rejoice in him,
that he scandalized the reposing sabbath-street, by breaking out, as he
went home, into a somewhat unmelodious song, “They are all gone down to
hell with the weapons of their war!” to a tune nobody knew but himself,
and which he could never have sung again. “O Faithful and True,” he
broke out once more as he reached his own house; but checked
himself abruptly, saying, “Tut, tut, the fowk’ll think I hae been
drinkin’!—Eh,” he continued to himself as he went in, “gien I micht but
ance hear the name that no man kens but Himsel!”
The next day he was very tired, and could get through but little
work; so, on the Tuesday he felt it would be right to take a holiday.
Therefore he put a large piece of oatcake in his pocket, and telling
Maggie he was going to the hills, “to do nae thing and a’thing, baith at
ance, a’ day,” disappeared with a backward look and lingering smile.
He went brimful of expectation, and was not disappointed in those he met
by the way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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