Mr. Craik
said he should have such a much better congregation, he felt sure, if
the church was not in such an extremely inconvenient out-of-the-way
place; that aged saint, who was gone, had often regretted the
inconvenience for the people.
Valentine at last gave him the site. Mr. Craik remarked on what a
comfort it would have been to the aged saint if she could have known
what a good churchman her heir would prove himself.
But Valentine was not at all what Mr. Craik meant by a good churchman.
Such religious opinions and feelings as had influence over him, had come
from the evangelical school. His old father and uncle had been very
religious men, and of that type, almost as a matter of course. In their
early day evangelical religion had been as the river of God--the one
channel in which higher thought and fervent feeling ran.
Valentine had respected their religion, had seen that it was real, that
it made them contented, happy, able to face death with something more
than hope, able to acquiesce in the wonderful reservations of God with
men, the more able on account of them to look on this life as the
childhood of the next, and to wait for knowledge patiently.
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