Reform God’s people themselves!  The Deacon was too old a boy to tell tales out of school, but he knew well enough there was room for reform.  Of course there was—­weren’t we all poor sinners?—­when we would do good wasn’t evil ever present with us?—­what business had other sinners to complain, when they weren’t, at least, any better?  Besides, suppose he were to try to reform the ways of Brother Graves and Deacon Struggs and others he had in his mind—­would they rest until they had attempted to reform him?  And who was to know just what quantity and quality of reform was necessary?  “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines.”  The matter was too great for his comprehension, so he obeyed the injunction, “Commit thy way unto the Lord.”

But the Lord relegated the entire matter to the Deacon.  Hay did a full day’s work, the Deacon made a neat little sum by recovering on an old judgment he had bought for a mere song, and the Deacon’s red cow made an addition to the family in the calf-pen; yet the Deacon was far from comfortable.  The idea that certain people must stay away from God’s house until God’s people were reformed, seemed to the Deacon’s really human heart something terrible.  If they would be so proud—­and yet, people who would stand outside the meeting-house and listen, and pray and weep because their children were as badly off as they, could scarcely be very proud.  He knew there couldn’t be many such, else this out-of-door congregation would be noticed—­there certainly wasn’t a full congregation of modest mechanics in the vestibule of which Hay spoke, and yet, who could tell how many more were anxious and troubled on the subject of their eternal welfare.

What a pity it was that those working-men who wished to repair to the sanctuary could not have steady work and full pay!  If he had only known all this early in the morning, he did not know but he might have hired him at three dollars; though, really, was a man to blame for doing his best in the labor market?  “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”  Gracious! he could almost declare he heard the excited carpenter’s voice delivering that text.  What had brought that text into his head just now?—­he had never thought of it before.

The Deacon rolled and tossed on his bed, and the subject of his conversation with the carpenter tormented him so he could not sleep.  Of one thing he was certain, and that was that the reform of the Church at Pawkin Centre was not to be relied on in an extremity, and was not such hungering and thirsting after righteousness an extreme case?—­had he ever really known many such!  If Hay only had means, the problem would afford its own solution.  The good Deacon solemnly declared to himself that if Hay could give good security, he (the Deacon) would try to lend him the money.