The Rev. Mr. Stoker had, as was said, a somewhat remarkable gift in prayer,--an endowment by no means confined to profoundly spiritual persons,--in fact, not rarely owing much of its force to a strong animal nature underlying the higher attributes. The sweet singer of Israel would never have written such petitions and such hymns if his manhood had been less complete; the flavor of remembered frailties could not help giving a character to his most devout exercises, or they would not have come quite home to our common humanity. But there is no gift more dangerous to the humility and sincerity of a minister. While his spirit ought to be on its knees before the throne of grace, it is too apt to be on tiptoe, following with admiring look the flight of its own rhetoric. The essentially intellectual character of an extemporaneous composition spoken to the Creator with the consciousness that many of his creatures are listening to criticise or to admire, is the great argument for set forms of prayer.
The congregation on this particular Sunday was made up chiefly of women and old men. The young men were hunting after Myrtle Hazard.
Mr. Byles Gridley was in his place, wondering why the minister did not read his notice before the prayer. This prayer, was never reported, as is the questionable custom with regard to some of these performances, but it was wrought up with a good deal of rasping force and broad pathos. When he came to pray for "our youthful sister, missing from her pious home, perhaps nevermore to return to her afflicted relatives," and the women and old men began crying, Byles Gridley was on the very point of getting up and cutting short the whole matter by stating the simple fact that she had got back, all right, and suggesting that he had better pray for some of the older and tougher sinners before him. But on the whole it would be more decorous to wait, and perhaps he was willing to hear what the object of his favorite antipathy had to say about it. So he waited through the prayer. He waited through the hymn, "Life is the time"--He waited to hear the sermon.
The minister gave out his text from the Book of Esther, second chapter, seventh verse: "For she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful." It was to be expected that the reverend gentleman, who loved to produce a sensation, would avail himself of the excitable state of his audience to sweep the key-board of their emotions, while, as we may, say, all the stops were drawn out. His sermon was from notes; for, though absolutely extemporaneous composition may be acceptable to one's Maker, it is not considered quite the thing in speaking to one's fellow-mortals.
He discoursed for a time on the loss of parents, and on the dangers to which the unfortunate orphan is exposed. Then he spoke of the peculiar risks of the tender female child, left without its natural guardians. Warming with his subject, he dilated with wonderful unction on the temptations springing from personal attractions. He pictured the "fair and beautiful" women of Holy Writ, lingering over their names with lover-like devotion. He brought Esther before his audience, bathed and perfumed for the royal presence of Ahasuerus.
