His voice steadied and strengthened as he read. Renewed contact with
the minds of those vanished teachers gave him a delight which
infused itself into the uttered words, and made them also joyful;
and if the curate preached to no one else in the congregation,
certainly he preached to himself, and before it was done had entered
into a thorough enjoyment of the sermon.
A few in the congregation were disappointed because they had looked
for a justification and enforcement of the confessional, thinking
the change in the curate could only have come from that portion of
the ecclesiastical heavens towards which they themselves turned
their faces. A few others were scandalized at such an innovation on
the part of a young man who was only a curate. Many however declared
that it was the most interesting sermon they had ever heard in their
lives--which perhaps was not saying much.
Mrs. Ramshorn made a class by herself. Not having yet learned to
like Wingfold, and being herself one of the craft, with a knowledge
of not a few of the secrets of the clerical--prison-house, shall I
call it, or green-room?--she was indignant with the presumptuous
young man who degraded the pulpit to a level with the dock.
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