I have seen him conduct a children's
service, and then he is in high content, surrounded by clean and
well-brushed infants, and smiling girls. He sits in a chair on the
chancel steps, in a paternal attitude, and leads them in a little
meditation on the childhood of the Mother of Christ. Whenever he
describes a scene out of the Bible, and he is fond of doing this, it
always sounds as if he were describing a stained-glass window; his
favourite qualities are meekness, submissiveness, devotion, holiness;
and he is apt to illustrate his teaching by the example of the
Apostles, whom we are to believe were men of singular modesty because
we hear so very little about them. The modern world has no existence
for him whatever; and yet one cannot say that he lives in the Middle
Ages, because he knows so little about them; he moves in a paradise of
cloistered virgins and mild saints; and the virtue that he chiefly
extols is the virtue of faith; the more that reason revolts at a
statement, the greater is the triumph of godly faith involved in
accepting it unquestioned.
The result is that the little girls love him, the boys laugh at him,
the women admire him, the men regard him as not quite a man. The only
objects for which he raises money diligently are additions to the
furniture of the church; he takes a languid interest in foreign
missions, he mistrusts science, and social questions he frankly
dislikes.
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