This was in fact the response of the shoemaker’s wife to my sermon.  If we look for responses after our fashion instead of after people’s own fashion, we ought to be disappointed.  Any recognition of truth, whatever form it may take, whether that of poetic delight, intellectual corroboration, practical commonplace; or even vulgar aphorism, must be welcomed by the husbandmen of the God of growth.  A response which jars against the peculiar pitch of our mental instrument, must not therefore be turned away from with dislike.  Our mood of the moment is not that by which the universe is tuned into its harmonies.  We must drop our instrument and listen to the other, and if we find that the player upon it is breathing after a higher expression, is, after his fashion, striving to embody something he sees of the same truth the utterance of which called forth this his answer, let us thank God and take courage.  God at least is pleased:  and if our refinement and education take away from our pleasure, it is because of something low, false, and selfish, not divine in a word, that is mingled with that refinement and that education.  If the shoemaker’s wife’s response to the prophet’s grand poem about the care of God over His creatures, took the form of acknowledgment for the rain that found out the holes in the people’s shoes, it was the more genuine and true, for in itself it afforded proof that it was not a mere reflex of the words of the prophet, but sprung from the experience and recognition of the shoemaker’s wife.  Nor was there anything necessarily selfish in it, for if there are holes in people’s shoes, the sooner they are found out the better.

While I was talking to Mrs Baird, Mr Stoddart, whose love for the old organ had been stronger than his dislike to the storm, had come down into the church, and now approached me.

“I never saw you in the church before, Mr Stoddart,” I said, “though I have heard you often enough.  You use your own private door always.”

“I thought to go that way now, but there came such a fierce burst of wind and rain in my face, that my courage failed me, and I turned back—­like the sparrow—­for refuge in the church.”

“A thought strikes me,” I said.  “Come home with me, and have some lunch, and then we will go together to see some of my poor people.  I have often wished to ask you.”

His face fell.

“It is such a day!” he answered, remonstratingly, but not positively refusing.  It was not his way ever to refuse anything positively.

“So it was when you set out this morning,” I returned; “but you would not deprive us of the aid of your music for the sake of a charge of wind, and a rattle of rain-drops.”

“But I shan’t be of any use.  You are going, and that is enough.”