This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...bloom of his popularity Mr. Dillingham could have done pretty much as he pleased, and he did. Among other innovations, he brought sunshine into the Old Brick Church. Parson Hawkins had been a good man, a saint, indeed; but his saintliness had been of the sombre sort; listening to some of his doctrinal sermons, one might have applied to him that epigram of Landor's--"' Fear God 1' says Percival; and when you hear Tones so lugubrious, you perforce must fear: If in such awful accents he should say, 'Fear lovely Innocence I' you'd run away!" That early Puritan taint which sometimes appeared in Parson Hawkins's theology, but never in his daily life, was an alien thing to Mr. Dillingham in or out of the pulpit. The spirit of his teaching was eminently a cheerful spirit. There was a new order of things.in the North Parish. The late parson had stood a great deal of browbeating first and last. A conservative man, leaning perhaps a little too heavily on the pillars of the church, he had ever consulted the inclination of the deacons. They had an independent minister now; a parson who settled questions for himself, and did not embarrass his mind by loading it with outside opinions. There was a spice of novelty in this surprisingly agreeable to the palate of a community long accustomed to domineer over its pastor. How long will it last? I used to wonder. I had seen so many idols set up reverently, and bowled over ruthlessly, that I was slightly sceptical as to the duration of Mr. Dillingham's popularity. If the townsfolk were image-worshippers, they were iconoclasts also, when the mood was on them. But Mr. Dillingham's popularity did not wane during my three months' stay in Rivermouth; it went on steadily increasing. The war-fever was at its...