Meantime the minister ascended the pulpit stair, with all the solemnity of one of the self-elect, and a priest besides.  He was just old enough for the intermittent attacks of self-importance to which all youth is exposed, to have in his case become chronic.  He stood up and worshipped his creator aloud, after a manner which seemed to say in every tone:  “Behold I am he that worshippeth Thee!  How mighty art Thou!” Then he read the Bible in a quarrelsome sort of way, as if he were a bantam, and every verse were a crow of defiance to the sinner.  Then they sang a hymn in a fashion which brought dear old Scotland to Hugh’s mind, which has the sweetest songs in its cottages, and the worst singing in its churches, of any country in the world.  But it was almost equalled here; the chief cause of its badness being the absence of a modest self-restraint, and consequent tempering of the tones, on the part of the singers; so that the result was what Hugh could describe only as scraichin.1

I was once present at the worship of some being who is supposed by negroes to love drums and cymbals, and all clangorous noises.  The resemblance, according to Hugh’s description, could not have been a very distant one.  And yet I doubt not that some thoughts of worshipping love mingled with the noise; and perhaps the harmony of these with the spheric melodies, sounded the sweeter to the angels, from the earthly discord in which they were lapped.

Then came the sermon.  The text was the story of the good Samaritan.  Some idea, if not of the sermon, yet of the value of it, may be formed from the fact, that the first thing to be considered, or, in other words, the first head was, “The culpable imprudence of the man in going from Jerusalem to Jericho without an escort.”

It was in truth a strange, grotesque, and somewhat awful medley —­ not unlike a dance of death, in which the painter has given here a lovely face, and there a beautiful arm or an exquisite foot, to the wild-prancing and exultant skeletons.  But the parts of the sermon corresponding to the beautiful face or arm or foot, were but the fragments of Scripture, shining like gold amidst the worthless ore of the man’s own production —­ worthless, save as gravel or chaff or husks have worth, in a world where dilution, and not always concentration, is necessary for healthfulness.

But there are Indians who eat clay, and thrive on it more or less, I suppose.  The power of assimilation which a growing nature must possess is astonishing.  It will find its food, its real Sunday dinner, in the midst of a whole cartload of refuse; and it will do the whole week’s work on it.  On no other supposition would it be possible to account for the earnest face of Miss Talbot, which Hugh espied turned up to the preacher, as if his face were the very star in the east, shining to guide the chosen kings.  It was well for Hugh’s power of endurance, that he had heard much the same thing in Scotland, and the same thing better dressed, and less grotesque, but more lifeless, and at heart as ill-mannered, in the church of Arnstead.