The spiritual exercises of the Revd.
Howel had become jejune, and limited very much by his failing sight.
The recovery after the operation had come too late in life to bring
about any expansion of public or private devotions. Family prayers
were reduced to the recital from memory of an exhortation, a
confession, and an absolution, followed by the Lord's Prayer and a
benediction. Services in the church were limited to Morning and
Evening prayers, with Communion on the first Sunday in the month,
and a sermon following Morning prayer. There was no one to play the
organ if the schoolmistress failed to turn up--as she often did.
David however scrupulously turned the normal congregation of
five--Bridget, the maid of the time-being, the gardener-groom, the
sexton, and a baker-church-warden--into six by his unvarying
attendance. In the course of half his stay the rumour of his being
present and of his good looks and great spiritual improvement
attracted quite a considerable congregation, chiefly of young women
and a few sheepish youths; so that his father was at one and the
same time exhilarated and embarrassed. Was this to be a Church
revival? If so, he readily pardoned David his theories on the
Dinosaurs and his doubts as to the unvarying evidence of Divine
Wisdom in the story of Creation.
If any other consideration than a deep affection for this dear old
man and repentance for his unwise ebullitions of Free Thought had
guided David in the matter it was an utter detestation of the
services and the influence of the Calvinist Chapel in the village,
the Little Bethel, presided over by Pastor Prytherch, a fanatical
blacksmith, who alternated spells of secret drunkenness and episodes
of animalism by orgies of self-abasement, during which he--in
half-confessing his own lapses--attributed freely and unrebukedly
the same vices to the male half of his overflowing congregation.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151