The Sergeant, however, enjoyed much inward peace though little happiness. For how different is peace from happiness! Happiness is the result of harmony between our wants as creatures and the world without: peace is the harmony between us as spiritual beings and the Father of our spirits. The one is as changeable as the objects or circumstances on which it for the moment relies; the other is as unchangeable as the God on whom it eternally rests. We may thus possess at once real happiness and real peace; yet either may exist without the other. Nay more, happiness may be destroyed by God in order that the higher blessing of peace may be possessed; but never will He take away peace to give happiness! Happiness without peace is temporal, but peace along with happiness is eternal.
Adam, as we have said, enjoyed little happiness in the conflict in which he was engaged, but he was kept in "perfect peace".
When another Sunday came round, the old sense of duty induced him to go, as usual, to church. His absence might be supposed to indicate that he feared the face of man, because fearing the face of God. Katie accompanied him. Her courage rose to the occasion. Let not the reader who, moving in a larger sphere of life, has learned to measure his annoyances by a larger standard, smile at these simple souls, or think it an exaggeration thus to picture their burden as having been so heavy.
Adam and Katie walked along the street, knowing all the time that they did so under the gaze of the cold and criticising eyes of some who were disposed to say to them, "Stand back, I am holier than thou!" Yet more persons than they themselves were aware of felt towards them kindness, pity, and respect, mingled with very opposite feelings to those of the minister and the members of Kirk Session who had made so much ado about so small an affair. Others forgot the sympathy due to a suffering, good man, apart from its immediate cause. Many of his worthy friends said afterwards that they "did not think of it!" Alas! this _not_ thinking is often the worst form of thought.
Adam and Katie passed Smellie, as he stood at "the plate", without the slightest recognition on either side. They occupied their accustomed seat, but sat alone. Those who ordinarily filled the pew suffered from cold or conscience, and so were either absent or seated elsewhere. One may guess what sort of sermon Mr. Porteous preached from the text, "Beware of evil doers". The personal reference to the Sergeant was like a theme pervading his overture; or as an idea not so much directly expressed as indirectly insinuated from first to last. The argument was a huge soap-bubble of what he called "principle" blown from his pipe until he could blow no longer, and which when fully developed he contemplated with admiration, as if it were a glorious globe of thought that must necessarily be heavenly because reflecting to his eyes the colours of the rainbow. His picture of the danger of the times in which he lived was very vivid, and his hopes of any improvement very small. The history of society seemed but a record of degeneracy since the first century of the Christian era. But whoever proved a traitor, he himself, he said, would still earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints; and _his_ trumpet, at least, should never give an uncertain sound; and _he_ would hold fast the form of sound words:--and so on he went until his forty-five minutes were ended.