To the evening assemblages, made up for the larger part of outsiders, he addressed broadly liberal sermons, literary in form, and full of respectful allusions to modern science and the philosophy of the day.
Thus he filled the church at both services, and put money in its treasury and his own fame before the world.
There was of course the obvious danger that the pious elders who in the forenoon heard infant damnation vigorously proclaimed, would revolt when they heard after supper that there was some doubt about even adults being damned at all.But either because the same people did not attend both services, or because the minister's perfect regularity in the morning was each week regarded as a retraction of his latest vagaries of an evening, no trouble ever came.
Theron had somewhat tentatively tried this on in Octavius.
It was no good.His parishioners were of the sort who would have come to church eight times a day on Sunday, instead of two, if occasion offered.The hope that even a portion of them would stop away, and that their places would be taken in the evening by less prejudiced strangers who wished for intellectual rather than theological food, fell by the wayside.The yearned-for strangers did not come; the familiar faces of the morning service all turned up in their accustomed places every evening.
They were faces which confused and disheartened Theron in the daytime.Under the gaslight they seemed even harder and more unsympathetic.He timorously experimented with them for an evening or two, then abandoned the effort.
Once there had seemed the beginning of a chance.The richest banker in Octavius--a fat, sensual, hog-faced old bachelor--surprised everybody one evening by entering the church and taking a seat.Theron happened to know who he was;even if he had not known, the suppressed excitement visible in the congregation, the way the sisters turned round to look, the way the more important brethren put their heads together and exchanged furtive whispers--would have warned him that big game was in view.
He recalled afterward with something like self-disgust the eager, almost tremulous pains he himself took to please this banker.There was a part of the sermon, as it had been written out, which might easily give offence to a single man of wealth and free notions of life.With the alertness of a mental gymnast, Theron ran ahead, excised this portion, and had ready when the gap was reached some very pretty general remarks, all the more effective and eloquent, he felt, for having been extemporized.People said it was a good sermon;and after the benediction and dispersion some of the officials and principal pew-holders remained to talk over the likelihood of a capture having been effected.
Theron did not get away without having this mentioned to him, and he was conscious of sharing deeply the hope of the brethren--with the added reflection that it would be a personal triumph for himself into the bargain.
He was ashamed of this feeling a little later, and of his trick with the sermon.But this chastening product of introspection was all the fruit which the incident bore.
The banker never came again.
