To those who understood, it was as if he would force his way through
every stockade of prejudice, ditch of habit, rampart of indifference,
moat of sin, wall of stupidity, and curtain of ignorance, until he
stood face to face with the conscience of his hearer.
"Rank Arminianism!" murmured the woman. "Whaur's the gospel o' that?"
But still she listened with seeming intentness, while something
of wonder mingled with the something else that set in motion every
live wrinkle in her forehead, and made her eyebrows undulate like
writhing snakes.
At length the preacher rose to eloquence, an eloquence inspired by
the hunger of his soul after truth eternal, and the love he bore
to his brethren who fed on husks--an eloquence innocent of the
tricks of elocution or the arts of rhetoric: to have discovered
himself using one of them would have sent him home to his knees in
shame and fear--an eloquence not devoid of discords, the strings
of his instrument being now slack with emotion, now tense with
vision, yet even in those discords shrouding the essence of all
harmony. When he ceased, the silence that followed seemed instinct
with thought, with that speech of the spirit which no longer needs
the articulating voice.
"It canna be the stickit minister!" said the woman to herself. The
congregation slowly dispersed, but she sat motionless until all
were gone, and the sad faced woman was putting out the lights.
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