So in due time the New Church was built and it towered above the
maple trees of Mariposa like a beacon on a hill. It stood so high
that from the open steeple of it, where the bells were, you could see
all the town lying at its feet, and the farmsteads to the south of
it, and the railway like a double pencil line, and Lake Wissanotti
spread out like a map. You could see and appreciate things from the
height of the new church,--such as the size and the growing wealth of
Mariposa,--that you never could have seen from the little stone
church at all.

Presently the church was opened and the Dean preached his first
sermon in it, and he called it a Greater Testimony, and he said that
it was an earnest, or first fruit of endeavour, and that it was a
token or pledge, and he named it also a covenant. He said, too, that
it was an anchorage and a harbour and a lighthouse as well as being a
city set upon a hill; and he ended by declaring it an Ark of Refuge
and notified them that the Bible Class would meet in the basement of
it on that and every other third Wednesday.

In the opening months of preaching about it the Dean had called the
church so often an earnest and a pledge and a guerdon and a
tabernacle, that I think he used to forget that it wasn't paid for.
It was only when the agent of the building society and a
representative of the Hosanna Pipe and Steam Organ Co. (Limited),
used to call for quarterly payments that he was suddenly reminded of
the fact. Always after these men came round the Dean used to preach a
special sermon on sin, in the course of which he would mention that
the ancient Hebrews used to put unjust traders to death,--a thing of