A swift intaken breath told how Dole comprehended this—the determination to be the minister’s wife was easily comprehensible—but the means appalled these people with their faith in the mystic election of priests.
With searching syllables Sidney brought forth the secrets of his soul, and translated to his hearers the doubts and fears, the hopes and ideals which dwelt with him during the period of his long probation.
With face wrung with reminiscent agony he spoke of the day when, after his Profession of Faith, he was solemnly set apart to the service of the God in whom he did not believe.
In some way he made them comprehend his suffering, and a long-drawn groan went up from the over-wrought people, nearly every one of whom had at one time or another agonized beneath “conviction of sin,” to whom these spiritual wrestlings were sacred as the birth-pangs of their mothers. With humbleness of spirit he traced his course among them.
He told them in simple touching words of his love for them, of his hopes for the little village in the valley, of his secret plans for their welfare.
Day by day he traced his path among them till he came to the sermon of the preceding Sunday, and, quite suddenly it all came back to him, all its cruelty, its innuendo, its bitter Mosaic logic, writ as in letters of fire upon his heart.
With an exceeding bitter cry he said, “Ah, brothers! This is the evil thing of my ministry. I forgot that the true physician uses the knife as well as the healing unguent. I shrank from paining you, I so eagerly wanted your love; I so dearly coveted your confidences; I so ceaselessly sought your sympathy that I could not bring myself to say anything to wound you. It seems to me that for hard-wrought hands like yours there must be recompense waiting; for weary feet like yours, which have travelled by such stony ways, I thought there must be pleasant paths, and as we are forbidden to take judgment upon us, so doubtless I sinned in judging you so mercifully, but I am too weak to condemn. But my wife, my beautiful wife, more spiritual than I, did not fall into this error, and took the burden from which I shrank. She chose my text for me last Sunday, and when, after reading it, I found myself without words, dumb for very pity before you, suddenly there entered into me the spirit of Vashti, my wife; I cannot explain this to you, but it is true. It was her holy spirit which spake through my unworthy lips.”