Upon the hard, open-backed, unpainted and unvarnished oak benches, which seemed devised to produce discomfort, sat the Sunday-school classes, and upon one of these, near the door, D'Entremont sat down. He looked at the bare walls, at the white pulpit, at the carpetless floors, at the general ugliness of things, the box stove, which stood in the only aisle, the tin chandeliers with their half-burned candles, the eight-by-ten lights of glass in the windows, and he was favorably impressed. With a quick conscience he had often felt the frivolous emptiness of a worldly life, and had turned toward the religion of his uncle the _abbé_ only to turn away again antagonized by what seemed to him frivolity in the religions pomp that he saw. But here was a religion not only without the attractions of sensuous surrounding, but a religion that maintained its vitality despite a repelling plainness, not to say a repulsive ugliness, in its external forms. For could he doubt the force of a religious principle that had divested every woman in the little church of every ornament? Doubtless he felt the narrowness that could read the scriptural injunction so literally, but none could doubt the strength of a religious conviction that submitted to such self-denial. And then there was Priscilla, with all her gifts, sitting in the midst of her boys, gathered from that part of the village known as "Slabtown." Yes, there must be something genuine in this religious life, and its entire contrast to all that the marquis had known and grown weary of attracted him.
As eleven o'clock drew on, the little church filled with people. The men sat on one side of the aisle and the women on the other. The old brethren and sisters, and generally those who prayed in prayer meeting and spoke in love feast, sat near the front, many of them on the cross seats near the pulpit, which were thence said by scoffers to be the "Amen corners." Any one other than a leader of the hosts of Israel would as soon have thought of taking a seat in the pulpit as on one of these chief seats in the synagogue. The marquis sat still and watched the audience gather, while one of the good brethren led the congregation in singing
which hymn was the usual voluntary at the opening of service. Then the old minister said, "Let us continue the worship of God by singing the hymn on page 554." He "lined" the hymn--that is, he read each couplet before it was sung. With the coming in of hymn books and other newfangled things the good old custom of "lining the hymn" has disappeared. But on that Sunday morning the Marquis d'Entremont thought he had never heard anything more delightful than these simple melodies sung thus lustily by earnest voices. The reading of each couplet by the minister before it was sung seemed to him a sort of recitative. He knew enough of English to find that the singing was hopeful and triumphant. Wearied with philosophy and _blasé_ with the pomp of the world, he wished that he had been a villager in New Geneva, and that he might have had the faith to sing of the