For the
beautiful chapel in the piny glade was, somehow, false: or, at
any rate, false for him. The architect had made it a dainty poem
in stone and polished wood, but somehow God had evaded the neat
little trap. Moreover, the God his well-bred congregation
worshipped, the old traditionally imagined snow-white St. Bernard
with radiant jowls of tenderness, shining dewlaps of love;
paternal, omnipotent, calm--this deity, though sublime in its
way, was too plainly an extension of their own desires. His
prominent parishioners--Mr. Dobermann-Pinscher, Mrs. Griffon,
Mrs. Retriever; even the delightful Mr. Airedale himself--was it
not likely that they esteemed a deity everlastingly forgiving
because they themselves felt need of forgiveness? He had been
deeply shocked by the docility with which they followed the codes
of the service: even when he had committed his blunder of the
contradictory prayers, they had murmured the words automatically,
without protest. To the terrific solemnities of the Litany they
had made the responses with prompt gabbling precision, and with a
rapidity that frankly implied impatience to take the strain off
their knees.
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