Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/517

 sounded. How sad that strife should come! And over him of all beings! He had often looked upon a congregation torn by dissensions concerning its pastor, and he had said that no church should ever undo itself over him. When his time came to go, he would go quietly.

Yet now he was not going quietly, but that was because he felt it was not himself that was involved; instead it was a principle. Either this congregation existed to mediate love, helpfulness, and a charitable spirit to the world, or it had no reason for existence at all. It had better be disrupted, this gallery fall, this altar crumble, these walls collapse, these people be scattered to the winds, than All People's become a society for the advancement of pharisaism.

He noted that the gallery was packed, but on the main floor empty spaces stared at him from the central tier of pews. Half of All People's members must have remained away. John realized with new emotion what this meant: that there were men and women in his congregation who could not see their pastor arraigned like this, who could not bear to witness the rising waves of bitterness, the charges and the counter-charges, the incriminations, the malicious spirit of partisanship which invariably breaks out in times like these. But it meant too that these same soft-hearted folk were also soft in the spine; unwilling to take a stand with him; unwilling to be recorded pro or con upon a great issue like this; people for whom he had done a service so great that they could not now turn down their thumbs against him, yet lacking in the strength of character either to sit as his judges or to cast a vote in his favor.

From this thought of jelly-fish the minister turned, almost with relief to where, stretching widely behind the Burbeck pew, was a mass of close-packed faces, with super-heated resolution depicted upon their features.