But the Dean was reading his report now, in a high, lecture-room voice. It was very brief.
"As for the matters at issue," it confessed, "your committee finds it humanly impossible to place the responsibility for this regretful division. It believes the only future for the congregation is in a wise, constructive, forward-moving leadership which can forget the past entirely.
"It finds that such a leadership now exists in one thoroughly familiar with the difficulties of the situation and enjoying the confidence of both factions; and it recommends that this congregation make sure the future by calling to its pastorate the one man whom the committee believes supremely fitted for the task, our wise and faithful brother, John Hampstead."
The congregation had not thought of Hampstead as a minister. He had not permitted them to do so. To them this recommendation was a surprise.
But to John it was a shock! His face turned a faded yellow. His eyes wandered in a hunted way from the face of the Dean to that of the Evangelist, and then slowly they swept the congregation to meet everywhere looks of approval at the Dean's words.
"But," he protested breathlessly, like a man fighting for air, "I am not a minister. I am a book agent. I have been an actor. I am unfit to stand before the table of the Lord, to hold the hand of the dying, to speak consolation to the living beside the open grave! I am unfit--unfit--for any holy office!"
But his desperate protestation sounded unconvincing even to himself. He had been doing some of these things already and with a measure at least of acceptation. All at once it seemed as if there was no resisting, as if a trap had been laid for him and for his liberties; and he struck out more vehemently:
"Think what it means, you young men! I ask you especially--" and John held out his hands towards them, scattered through the audience--"What it means to abandon life and the world by donning the uniform of the professional clergyman! Wherever you go, in a train, in a restaurant, upon a street, you are no longer free, but a slave--to forms and to conventions. You must live up, not to your ideal of what a minister is, but to the popular ideal of how a minister should appear. It is a vow to hypocrisy!