In presbyter, curate, bishop, or cardinal, ambition can fare but as
that of the creeping thing to build its nest in the topmost boughs
of the cedar. Worse than that; my simile is a poor one; for the
moment a thought of ambition is cherished, that moment the man is
out of the kingdom. Their son with already a few glimmering insights,
which had not yet begun to interfere with his acceptance of the
doctrines of his church, made no opposition to their wish, but
having qualified himself to the satisfaction of his superiors, at
length ascended the pulpit to preach his first sermon.
The custom of the time as to preaching was a sort of compromise
between reading a sermon and speaking extempore, a mode morally
as well as artistically false: the preacher learned his sermon by
rote, and repeated it--as much like the man he therein was not,
and as little like the parrot he was, as he could. It is no wonder,
in such an attempt, either that memory should fail a shy man, or
assurance an honest man. In Mr Graham's case it was probably the
former: the practice was universal, and he could hardly yet have
begun to question it, so as to have had any conscience of evil.
Blessedly, however, for his dawning truth and well being, he failed
--failed utterly--pitifully. His tongue clave to the roof of his
mouth; his lips moved, but shaped no sound; a deathly dew bathed
his forehead; his knees shook; and he sank at last to the bottom
of the chamber of his torture, whence, while his mother wept below,
and his father clenched hands of despair beneath the tails of his
Sunday coat, he was half led, half dragged down the steps by the
bedral, shrunken together like one caught in a shameful deed, and
with the ghastly look of him who has but just revived from the faint
supervening on the agonies of the rack.
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