CHAPTER XXXIV

AGAIN IN THE PULPIT

Andy stood again in a pulpit in the woods. This time on only a fairly high stone that was entirely overgrown with a shimmering green-white moss.

‘The church people’ had come from all directions; some had had a long way to come. They had sought roundabout ways between the tree-trunks and around small bogs. Now they sat in a row on some old decayed moss-covered logs that had been there beside the road long before the dairy farm was built.

‘Begin the song, Angela,’ said Elsa. ‘Take “the forest birds.” The birds here in the woods have started it already.’

‘The forest birds are singing In a happy mood,’

sang Angela in a strong pure voice. All the children joined in. Andy and Maglena also, perfectly astonished that they knew the same song as these fine city children. They forgot that they did not really belong together, a feeling that had somewhat oppressed them before, but sang as they used to sing when they were all together in the little gray cottage when mother was alive.

‘The forest birds are singing In a happy mood, As on a branch they’re swinging, Chirping, God is good! God is good!’

The song ceased. Andy stood up on the stone as he had stood there before that day and preached to Maglena. Then it had been so easy for him to talk. Every little flower in the woods, the mountain stream, their own escape from the bear, all the dangers from which they had been so marvelously delivered--about all this he had preached so mightily that Maglena had wept and wiped her nose as grown people used to do in church, though this time she had no thought of imitating them, but was seriously impressed with Andy’s words. And now he stood there and twisted about and looked silly.

Maglena was actually ashamed of him. ‘The church people’ began to whisper and giggle.

‘Hurry up, Andy,’ snapped Maglena. ‘They’re sitting here waiting. You can make up something like you did before, I should think.’

Andy agonized and twisted. He half-closed his eyes to shut out the disturbing sight of the congregation. The audience sat like real church people waiting, with handkerchiefs ready for tears, in case Andy should preach as the minister did who was up in the Lapp mountains and preached when the chapel there was dedicated.

‘Oh, Andy, but you are silly!’

Andy opened anguished eyes. A spider that sat in the shimmering web it had spun between slender birch branches struck his eye. Andy stared at it. A thoughtful look came into his eyes. He began to preach.

‘In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Now I see a spider sitting in the middle of his web, full of food, and I just happened to think that he is like all Wrong. Because Wrong always has a net out to catch us. When we are mad at each other, he has caught us. And when we are lazy, and when we are discontented, then he has caught us.’

A loon flew with a heartrending, melancholy cry over the marsh toward the forest glade where the other ‘church’ was.

Andy noticed the plaintive sound.

‘Listen to the loon, how sad he sounds. That’s the way it sounds inside of us when we have been angry and wicked and discontented with what we have, and when we can’t stand having a muzzle on, but think that a muzzle is too hard to bear, and do not want to understand that it is God who must put it on us when He sees that we haven’t sense enough ourselves to know what we should have. We fly and fly like the loon to get to God and ask Him to like us, and to care for us again.’ Andy thought of finishing his sermon now, but the song came to his mind. ‘God wants us to like Him and see that He is good, and sing about it, the way the morning in the mountains sings about it, as “clear streams and brooks” sing and ripple, and as the forest birds chirp about it “in happy mood.” God is good to people whether they are big or little, and to animals.’

Andy, who had stood with his face turned up toward the sunbeams between the firs, thought, when he opened his eyes, that the group on the logs had increased. But the sun had blinded him so he could not really see. ‘We will sing now, “The whole world praises the Lord,”’ he announced from the pulpit. And what a singing! A singing as if you were in heaven, Andy thought. The psalm resounded at once in several parts, as did the songs on Christmas morning at Barren Moor.