“Mr. Laicus,” said he, “I will think of it.  Perhaps you are right.  I have always meant to do my duty, if my duty was made clear.  Perhaps I have failed, failed possibly in a point of prime importance.  I do not know.  I am in a maze.  I believe there is a knowledge of God that I do not possess, a love of God that I do not experience.  I believe in it because I believe in you M. Laicus, and yet more because I believe in my wife.  But may be it will come in time.  Time works wonders.”

My very words to Jennie.  And Jennie’s answer was mine to him.

“Time never works Mr. Gear.  It eats, and undermines, and rots, and rusts, and destroys.  But it never works.  It only gives us an opportunity to work.”

And so I came away.

CHAPTER XVII.

Wanted—­A Pastor.

We are in a sorry condition here at Wheathedge.  The prospects are, that it will be worse before it is better.  For weeks now (it seems like a year or two) we have been without the Gospel.  I do not mean that literally the preaching of the Gospel has been dispensed with.  On the contrary, I have heard more sermons on the text, “I am determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,” than I ever heard before in my life.  We are hearing candidates, and every candidate seems to feel it necessary to declare himself, to propound a sort of religious platform.  The sermons seem to me to have about as much relation, as a general thing, to the spiritual condition of the hearers as Gov.  Hoffman’s last message to the real interests of the people of the State.  In fact, if the truth were told, it is not a sermon we want, but a platform.  We invite the candidate to preach, not that we may profit by the Gospel, but that he may show us his face.  It has become a psychological curiosity to see how many different sermons can be evolved from that one text.  I wonder sometimes if St. Paul would know himself in his modern attire.

I am very glad that Maurice Mapleson did not accept my invitation to come to Wheathedge, to preach as a candidate.  For listening to a candidate and listening to the Gospel are two very different things.  The candidate preaches to show us how he can do it.  We listen to hear how he can do it.  From the moment he enters the pulpit all eyes are fixed upon him.  His congregation is all attention.  Let him not flatter himself.  It is as critics, not as sinners, that we listen.  We turn round to see how he walks up the aisle.  Is his wife so unfortunate as to accompany him?  We analyze her bonnet, her dress, her features, her figure.  If not, he monopolizes all attention.  In five minutes we can, any of us-there are a few rare exceptions-tell you the cut of his coat, the character of his cravat, the shape of his collar, the way he wears his hair.  If he has any peculiar pulpit habit, woe betide him; he is odd.  If he has not, woe betide him; he