He now found that he could see the Porter pew easily by turning his head slightly. The roses in Evelyn's hat were very pretty; he wondered whether she came every Sunday; he concluded that she did; and he decided that he should attend hereafter. The bishop had carried no manuscript into the pulpit with him, and he gave his text from memory, resting one arm on the pulpit rail. He was an august figure in his robes, and he seemed to Wheaton, as he looked up at him, to pervade and possess the place. Wheaton had a vague idea of the episcopal office; bishops were, he imagined, persons of considerable social distinction; in his notion of them they ranked with the higher civil lawgivers, and were comparable to military commandants. In a line with the Porters he could see General Whipple's white head--all the conditions of exalted respectability were present. _And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, 'For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.'_ _For now the Lord hath made room for us._ The preacher sketched lightly the primal scene to which his text related. He knew the color and light of language and made it seem to his hearers that the Asian plain lay almost at the doors of the cathedral. He reconstructed the simple social life of the early times, and followed westward the campfires of the shepherd kings. He built up the modern social and political structure, with the home as its foundation, before the eyes of the congregation. A broad democracy and humanity dominated the discourse as it unfolded itself. The bishop hardly lifted his voice; he did not rant nor make gestures, but he spoke as one having authority. Wheaton turned uneasily and looked furtively about. He had not expected anything so earnest as this; there was a tenseness in the air that oppressed him. What he was hearing from that quiet old man in the pulpit was without the gloss of fashion; it was inconsonant with the spirit of the place as he had conceived it. Doctor Morningstar's discourses on Browning's poetry had been far more entertaining. _For now the Lord hath made room for us._ The preacher's voice was even quieter as he repeated these words. "We are very near the heart of the world, here at the edge of the great plain. Who of us but feels the freedom, the ampler ether, the diviner air of these new lands? We hear over and over that in the West, men may begin again; that here we may put off our old garments and re-clothe ourselves. We must not too radically adopt this idea. I am not so sanguine that it is an easy matter to be transformed and remade; I am not persuaded that geography enters into heart or mind or soul so that by crossing the older borders into a new land we obliterate old ties. Here we may dig new wells, but we shall thirst often, like David, for a drink of water from the well by the gate of Bethlehem."