Читать книгу The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife онлайн

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“I think I will preach my sermon on the fig-tree next Sabbath morning,” he said to his wife after tea. “I think that will stagger him, if anything can.”

“Well, Doctor,” Mrs. Burnside replied, “it will always be a pleasure to hear it; but I fear Robert Glen is one of those whose ears are made heavy, that they cannot hear.”

The Doctor shook his head again, out of respect to the Scriptures; but he was not so hopeless. Perhaps he believed in his sermon on the fig-tree more than his wife did, and he felt that to gain back the young man who had baffled him would be indeed a crown of glory. He spent an hour in his study that night looking up other sermons which specially suited the case. It gave him an interest in his sermons which he had not felt since Sir Claude gave up coming to the parish church, and seceded to the Episcopal chapel in St. Rule’s. That had been a distressing event to the good Doctor, but he had got over it, and now providence had been kind enough to send him a young unbeliever to convince. Perhaps the good folks of the Kirkton and the parish generally would have heard of this looking up of the old discourses with some apprehension; but the Doctor wrote a new introduction to the sermon on the fig-tree, and that was some little gain at least.