"I will consider
this matter." Then he turned the conversation skillfully into other
channels.
When the overseers of the church were gone the young pastor walked the
floor of the room trying to grasp the true significance of the situation.
Gradually the real meaning of the Elders' visit grew upon him. Because
his own life was so big, so broad, because his ideals and ambitions were
so high, so true to the spirit of the Christ whose service he thought he
had entered, he could not believe his senses.
He might have found some shadow of reason, perhaps, for their fears
regarding his friendship for the girl with the bad reputation, had the
circumstances been other than they were, and had he not known who it was
gave Grace Conner her bad name. But that his friendship for Miss Farwell,
whose beautiful ministry was such an example of the spirit of the
Christian religion; and that her care for the poor girl should be so
quickly construed into something evil--his mind positively refused to
entertain the thought. He felt that the visit of his church fathers was
unreal. He was as one dazed by an unpleasant dream.
To come from the pure, wholesome atmosphere of his home and the inspiring
study of the history of the Christian religion, to such a twisted,
distorted, hideous corruption of the church policy and spirit, was, to
Dan, like coming from God's sunny hillside pastures to the gloom and
stench of the slaughter pens. He was stunned by the littleness, the
meanness that had prompted the "kindly warning" of these leaders of the
church.
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