The Story of a Country TownHowe, E. W. (Edgar Watson)
General
The Story of a Country Town
Howe, E. W. (Edgar Watson)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Kansas -- Fiction
I had remarked of my father’s religion that it was a yoke that did not
fit him, and which was uncomfortable to wear; but the Rev. Goode
Shepherd’s religion was his vocation and pleasure, and he believed in it
with all the strength of which he was capable. That he was poor was
evidence to him that he was accepted of the Master who had sent him,
rather than that his life had been a failure; and the work expected of
him he performed cheerfully and with enthusiasm. He had no desire to do
anything which was not religious; and the higher walks of his
profession, and heaven finally as his reward, were all he desired or
expected. There was abundant scope in theology for his ambition, and,
far from craving an active business life, he rather chose his profession
because it offered excuse for knowing so little about the affairs of
men.
I have thought that because he took pleasure in his religion, and loved
it, was one reason why it was not so hard and unforgiving as my
father’s, for on this question there was nothing in common between them
except that both believed that there is a heaven, and that it is
desirable to be saved. The Rev. Goode Shepherd believed that learning
and luxury could go hand in hand with religion; my father, that luxury
was an invention of the Devil to make men forget, and that learning
could be trusted to only a very few, because, unless coupled with the
most pronounced piety, it was very dangerous. The Rev. Goode Shepherd
believed that a religious life was most easily lived, and that a
merciful Providence had ordered it that way because the children of men
are weak; my father, that the easy road to travel was the broad one
which led to torment, and that the other was narrow and difficult, but
ending very pleasantly as a recompense for travelling it, and that it
was ordered that way so that only the brave and deserving should win the
prize, ridding the righteous of the weak and the undeserving by burning
them up. The Rev. Goode Shepherd believed that while walking the golden
streets of the heavenly city he would meet many of the friends he had
worried about, saved by love infinitely greater than he expected; my
father, that he would miss many faces in Paradise he had half expected
to see, but who had fallen exhausted by the wayside and given up the
struggle.
The new dispensation did much for Fairview, and its advancement after
the coming of Mr. Shepherd was certainly more rapid than it had ever
been before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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