The walls were whitewashed, and were
recipients of the shadows of the beauty without; on their "white
plains" the tracery of the ivy might be seen, now still, now
stirred by the sudden flight of some little bird. The
congregation consisted of here and there a farmer with his
labourers, who came down from the uplands beyond the town to
worship where their fathers worshipped, and who loved the place
because they knew how much those fathers had suffered for it,
although they never troubled themselves with the reason why they
left the parish church; and of a few shopkeepers, far more
thoughtful and reasoning, who were Dissenters from conviction,
unmixed with old ancestral association; and of one or two
families of still higher worldly station. With many poor, who
were drawn there by love for Mr. Benson's character, and by a
feeling that the faith which made him what he was could not be
far wrong, for the base of the pyramid, and with Mr. Bradshaw for
its apex, the congregation stood complete.
The country people came in sleeking down their hair, and treading
with earnest attempts at noiseless lightness of step over the
floor of the aisle; and, by-and-by, when all were assembled, Mr.
Benson followed, unmarshalled and unattended. When he had closed
the pulpit-door, and knelt in prayer for an instant or two, he
gave out a psalm from the dear old Scottish paraphrase, with its
primitive inversion of the simple perfect Bible words; and a kind
of precentor stood up, and, having sounded the note on a
pitch-pipe, sang a couple of lines by way of indicating the tune;
then all the congregation stood up, and sang aloud, Mr.
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