She laughed a little, as if to reassure her puzzled listener.

“A fire eating away inside, Aunt Bell—­burning out my goodness—­if the firemen would only come with engines and axes and hooks and things, and water—­I’d submit to being torn apart as meekly as any old house—­it hurts so!”

CHAPTER VIII

THE APPLE OF DOUBT IS NIBBLED

The rector of St. Antipas came from preaching his Easter sermon.  He was elated.  Of the sermons delivered in New York that morning, he suspected that his would be found not the least ingenious.  Telling excerpts would doubtless appear in the next day’s papers, and at least one paper would reprint his favourite likeness over the caption, “Dr. Allan Delcher Linford, the Handsome and Up-to-Date Rector of St. Antipas.”  Under this would be head-lines:  “The Resurrection Proved; a Literal Fact in History not less than a Spiritual Fact in the Human Consciousness.  An Unbroken Chain of Living Witnesses.”

He even worded scraps of the article on his way from the church to his study: 

“An unusually rich Easter service was held at fashionable St. Antipas yesterday morning.  The sermon by its able and handsome young rector, the Reverend Dr. Linford, was fraught with vital interest to every thinking man.  The Resurrection he declares to be a fact as well attested as the Brooklyn Bridge is to thousands who have never seen it—­yet who are convinced of its existence upon the testimony of those who have.  Thus one who has never seen this bridge may be as certain of its existence as a man who crosses it twice a day.  In the same way, a witness to the risen Christ tells the glorious truth to his son, a lad of fifteen, who at eighty tells it to his grandson.  ‘Do you realise,’ said the magnetic young preacher, ’that the assurance of the Resurrection comes to you this morning by word of mouth through a scant three thousand witnesses—­a living chain of less than three thousand links by which we may trace our steps back to the presence of the first witness—­so that, in effect, we have the Resurrection on the word of a man who beheld the living Saviour this very morning?  Nay; further, in effect we ourselves stand trembling before that stone rolled away from the empty but forever hallowed tomb.  As certainly as thousands know that a structure called the Brooklyn Bridge exists, so upon testimony of the same validity do we know that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed on him might not perish but have everlasting life.”  God has not expected us to trust blindly:  he has presented tangible and compelling evidence of his glorious scheme of salvation.’  The speaker, who is always imbued with the magnetism of a striking personality, was more than usually effective on this occasion, and visibly moved the throng of fashionable worshippers that—­”

“Allan, you outdid yourself!” Aunt Bell had come in and, in the mirror over the dining-room mantel, was bestowing glances of unaffected but strictly impartial admiration upon the bonnet of lilac blossoms that rested above the lustrous puffs of her plenteous gray hair.