"But answer me one question: Ain't it Christ that teaches
men to pray?"
"Surely," answered Mary. "He taught them with his mouth when he
was on the earth; and now he teaches them with his mind."
"Then, miss, I will tell you why it seems to me that churches
can't be the places to tune the fiddles for that kind of consort
--and that's just why I more than don't care to go into one of
them: I never heard a sermon that didn't seem to be taking my
Christ from me, and burying him where I should never find him any
more. For the somebody the clergy talk about is not only nowise
like my Christ, but nowise like a live man at all. It always
seemed to me more like a guy they had dressed up and called by
his name than the man I read about in my mother's big Testament."
"How my father would have delighted in this man!" said Mary to
herself.
"You see, miss," Jasper resumed, "I can't help knowing something
about these matters, because I was brought up in it all, my
father being a local preacher, and a very good man. Perhaps, if I
had been as clever as Sister Ann, I might be thinking now just as
she does; but it seems to me a man that is born stupid has much
to be thankful for: he can't take in things before his heart's
ready for believing them, and so they don't get spoiled, like a
child's book before he is able to read it. All that I heard when
I went with my father to his preachings was to me no more than
one of the chapters full of names in the Book of Chronicles--
though I do remember once hearing a Wesleyan clergyman say that
he had got great spiritual benefit from those chapters.
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