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Adam Bede by George Eliot
Book, page 91 / 550


began to preach."

"It was one Sunday I walked with brother Marlowe, who was an aged
man, one of the local preachers, all the way to Hetton-Deeps--
that's a village where the people get their living by working in
the lead-mines, and where there's no church nor preacher, but they
live like sheep without a shepherd. It's better than twelve miles
from Snowfield, so we set out early in the morning, for it was
summertime; and I had a wonderful sense of the Divine love as we
walked over the hills, where there's no trees, you know, sir, as
there is here, to make the sky look smaller, but you see the
heavens stretched out like a tent, and you feel the everlasting
arms around you. But before we got to Hetton, brother Marlowe was
seized with a dizziness that made him afraid of falling, for he
overworked himself sadly, at his years, in watching and praying,
and walking so many miles to speak the Word, as well as carrying
on his trade of linen-weaving. And when we got to the village,
the people were expecting him, for he'd appointed the time and the
place when he was there before, and such of them as cared to hear
the Word of Life were assembled on a spot where the cottages was
thickest, so as others might be drawn to come. But he felt as he
couldn't stand up to preach, and he was forced to lie down in the
first of the cottages we came to. So I went to tell the people,
thinking we'd go into one of the houses, and I would read and pray
with them. But as I passed along by the cottages and saw the aged
and trembling women at the doors, and the hard looks of the men,
who seemed to have their eyes no more filled with the sight of the
Sabbath morning than if they had been dumb oxen that never looked
up to the sky, I felt a great movement in my soul, and I trembled
as if I was shaken by a strong spirit entering into my weak body.
And I went to where the little flock of people was gathered
together, and stepped on the low wall that was built against the
green hillside, and I spoke the words that were given to me
abundantly. And they all came round me out of all the cottages,
and many wept over their sins, and have since been joined to the
Lord. That was the beginning of my preaching, sir, and I've
preached ever since."

Dinah had let her work fall during this narrative, which she
uttered in her usual simple way, but with that sincere articulate,

 
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