CHAPTER III

A DISAPPOINTMENT

 

Originally Korah Brand had been a sailor--careless of religion, and content to live for the day without taking thought of the morrow. Born in England, trained as a weaver, he had really wandered to America and the South Seas at the dictation of a restless and inquiring spirit. In those unregenerate days he had been a law unto himself, and thereby sufficiently ill-governed. But the chance words of a missionary, met with in Samoa, had turned his thoughts towards religion, and, deserting his seafaring life, he henceforth worked as a labourer in the Lord's vineyard.

Yet this change hardened rather than softened his character. He held by the Mosaic law, and interpreted the precepts of Christ in a spirit of narrow bigotry. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth;" "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off." These were the fundamental articles of his creed. He spoke much of the punishment, little of the promise, and daunted the minds of his hearers with threats of eternal doom. In his own way he was a good man, but incapable of preaching on the text, "God is Love." He hardly understood that these three words form the true basis of Christianity.

In answer to Johnson's urgent letter. Brand presented himself next morning in the study. He had visited it several times before, yet on this occasion he again glanced critically round him as if in search of some indulgence deserving of rebuke. But the room and its contents were plain--even poor. The furniture was of stained deal, the floor was covered with coarse cocoa-nut matting brought by its owner from Koiau. There were savage weapons on the walls between the well-filled bookcases: shells of strange hue and form ranged on the mantelpiece, and bright-coloured chintz curtains, drawn back with red, white, and blue cords, draped the one window. On these last Brand's eyes rested with disapprobation.

"The lust of the eye is there, brother," he declared to the pensive Johnson; "why do you deck your dwelling with purple and fine linen?"

"Miss Arnott gave them to me," explained Johnson, lifting his heavy eyes; "she thought the room looked bare, and draped the window herself. The curtains are only of chintz, brother Brand, although the cords are of silk. They can scarcely do harm."

"Admit God's light into your tabernacle. Let not your heart be led astray by the 

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