The next day was Sunday. Robert sat, after breakfast, by his
friend's bed.
'You haven't been to church for a long time, Robert: wouldn't you
like to go to-day?' said Ericson.
'I dinna want to lea' you, Mr. Ericson; I can bide wi' ye a' day the
day, an' that's better nor goin' to a' the kirks in Aberdeen.'
'I should like you to go to-day, though; and see if, after all,
there may not be a message for us. If the church be the house of
God, as they call it, there should be, now and then at least, some
sign of a pillar of fire about it, some indication of the presence
of God whose house it is. I wish you would go and see. I haven't
been to church for a long time, except to the college-chapel, and I
never saw anything more than a fog there.'
'Michtna the fog be the torn-edge like, o' the cloody pillar?'
suggested Robert.
'Very likely,' assented Ericson; 'for, whatever truth there may be
in Christianity, I'm pretty sure the mass of our clergy have never
got beyond Judaism. They hang on about the skirts of that cloud for
ever.'
'Ye see, they think as lang 's they see the fog, they hae a grup o'
something. But they canna get a grup o' the glory that excelleth,
for it's not to luik at, but to lat ye see a' thing.'
Ericson regarded him with some surprise. Robert hastened to be
honest.
'It's no that I ken onything aboot it, Mr. Ericson. I was only
bletherin' (talking nonsense)--rizzonin' frae the twa symbols o' the
cloud an' the fire--kennin' nothing aboot the thing itsel'.
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