HIS MOTHER'S SERMON


He was an ingenuous lad, with the callow simplicity of a theological
college still untouched, and had arrived on the preceding Monday at
the Free Kirk manse with four cartloads of furniture and a maiden
aunt. For three days he roamed from room to room in the excitement
of householding, and made suggestions which were received with
hilarious contempt; then he shut himself up in his study to prepare
the great sermon, and his aunt went about on tiptoe. During meals on
Friday he explained casually that his own wish was to preach a
simple sermon, and that he would have done so had he been a private
individual, but as he had held the MacWhammel scholarship a
deliverance was expected by the country. He would be careful and say
nothing rash, but it was due to himself to state the present
position of theological thought, and he might have to quote once or
twice from Ewald.

His aunt was a saint, with that firm grasp of truth, and tender
mysticism, whose combination is the charm of Scottish piety, and her
face was troubled. While the minister was speaking in his boyish
complacency, her thoughts were in a room where they had both stood,
five years before, by the death-bed of his mother.

He was broken that day, and his sobs shook the bed, for he was his
mother's only son and fatherless, and his mother, brave and faithful
to the last, was bidding him farewell.