That the Cornu-British bishops preached Christ while yet
Sussex, Wessex, Hampshire, Berks and other districts worshiped Woden,
Freya, the Queen of Heaven, the Thunder God, and other deities whose altars
were set up after the Conquest, did not interest Joan for one or Mr.
Chirgwin for another. But the girl woke up at the mention of Irish and
Welsh and Breton saints. Pleasant to hear was the utterance of names which
she had loved once but of late almost forgotten. They came back now, and,
the service having turned her heart to softness, she welcomed them gladly
as friends returned from afar. For the rest, the Litany it was which roused
Joan to deepest interest and opened her mind to new impressions. Here was a
prayer, gigantic in length, universal, all-embracing, catholic beyond the
compass of anything her thoughts had heretofore conceived. From the Queen
upon her throne to Joan herself, from the bishops, the princes and the
Lords of the Council to Uncle Chirgwin and his fruits of the earth, that
astounding petition ranged with equal vigor and earnestness. Nothing was
too high, nothing was too low for it; all the world was named, and the
people cried for a hearing or for mercy between each supplication and each
prayer. The overwhelming majesty of such praying impressed Joan much; as,
indeed, it impresses all who come adult thereto and do not associate it
with their childhood, with weary hours dragging interminably out, with
sleepy buzz of voices, with sore knees or a breaking back, with yearnings
stifled, with devices for passing time, with the longed-for sunshine
stealing inch by inch eastward on the church walls.
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