Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/132

 you, sir," while he steadily watched the young priest. "You'll allow me to tell you honestly, Pastor Hansted, that we have not exac'ly found in you what we so much hoped to find, and I daresay you've perceived that yourself. Now there are your sermons, for example—don't be angry," he broke off with feigned anxiety, when at his last words he saw a cloud pass over the curate's face. "At any rate you won't mind my saying that, although we are glad you do not, as certain others do, speak to us as if we were a flock of dumb animals; and although we see that your sermons are carefully thought out, well expressed, poetical, and what you would call well delivered, still they are only the same as we have so often heard before. And what is it our good priests are always telling us peasants? It is that we are to be obedient and virtuous, neither to steal nor to swear, but to turn to the Lord in our sorrows, and trust in the grace of God, and so on. But we know all that by heart, and we shall not be better men even if we were to hear the whole catechism every Sunday in first rate poetry! No, if a man like you, Pastor Hansted, would tell us something about yourself, instead of about ourselves, because you can't tell us anything on that subject that we don't know better than you do; no, what we want is something really about yourself, and how you, with your reading and education have arrived at your views of Christianity and the life of the people, then we should learn some-