Children of clergy -- Fiction; Christian fiction; Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Scotland -- Fiction
"I must now glance at another point in my history, one on which I cannot
dwell. Never since my father's death had I attended public worship. Nothing
had drawn me thither; and I hardly know what induced me one evening to step
into a chapel of which I knew nothing. There was not even Sunday to account
for it. I believe, however, it had to do with this, that all day I had been
feeling tired. I think people are often ready to suppose that their bodily
condition is the cause of their spiritual discomfort, when it may be only
the occasion upon which some inward lack reveals itself. That the spiritual
nature should be incapable of meeting and sustaining the body in its
troubles is of itself sufficient to show that it is not in a satisfactory
condition. For a long time the struggle for mere existence had almost
absorbed my energies; but things had been easier for some time, and a
re-action had at length come. It was not that I could lay any thing
definite to my own charge; I only felt empty all through; I felt that
something was not right with me, that something was required of me which
I was not rendering. I could not, however, have told you what it was.
Possibly the feeling had been for some time growing; but that day, so far
as I can tell, I was first aware of it; and I presume it was the dim cause
of my turning at the sound of a few singing voices, and entering that
chapel. I found about a dozen people present. Something in the air of the
place, meagre and waste as it looked, yet induced me to remain. An address
followed from a pale-faced, weak-looking man of middle age, who had no gift
of person, voice, or utterance, to recommend what he said. But there dwelt
a more powerful enforcement in him than any of those,--that of earnestness.
I went again, and again; and slowly, I cannot well explain how, the sense
of life and its majesty grew upon me. Mr. Walton will, I trust, understand
me when I say, that to one hungering for bread, it is of little consequence
in what sort of platter it is handed him. This was a dissenting chapel,--of
what order, it was long before I knew,--and my predilection was for the
Church-services, those to which my father had accustomed me; but any
comparison of the two to the prejudice of either, I should still--although
a communicant of the Church of England--regard with absolute indifference.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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