They succeeded better while they could really
join in the hymns and the prayers than they did when it
came to the sermon. Good Dr. Gill, overruled by one of
those lesser demons, whose work is so apparent though so
inexplicable in this finite world, had selected for the
text of his sermon of gladness the words, "Search and
look." And so it happened--it was what did not often
happen with him--he must needs repeat those words often,
at the beginning and end, indeed, of every leading
paragraph of the sermon. Now this duty of searching and
looking had been just what all the elder members of
the Molyneux family had been solidly doing--each in his
way or hers, directly or by sympathy--in the last forty-
eight hours. To get such relief as they might from it,
they had come to church, to look rather higher if they
could. So that it was to them more a misfortune than a
matter of immediate spiritual relief that their dear old
friend, who loved each one of them with an intimate and
peculiar love, happened to enlarge on his text just as he
did.
If poor Mr. Molyneux, by dint of severe self-command,
had succeeded in abstracting his thoughts from disgrace
almost certain,--from thinking over, in horrible variety,
the several threads of inquiry and answer by which that
disgrace was to be avoided or precipitated,--how was it
possible to maintain such abstraction, while the worthy
preacher, wholly unconscious of the blood he drew with
every word, ground out his sentences in such words as
these:--
"Search and look, my brethren.
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