He had just emerged from one of those crucial experiences of life,
which, more than the turning of the earth upon its axis, serve to age
a human being. For perhaps the first time in the brief span of his
remembrance, he had scrutinized himself in the pitiless light of an
intelligence higher than his own everyday consciousness; and the
sight of that meaner self, striving to run to cover, had not been
pleasant. Just why his late interview with Andrew Bolton should have
precipitated this event, he could not possibly have explained to any
one--and least of all to himself. He had begun, logically enough,
with an illuminating review of the motives which led him into the
ministry; they were a sorry lot, on the whole; but his subsequent
ambitions appeared even worse. For the first time, he perceived his
own consummate selfishness set over against the shining renunciations
of his mother. Then, step by step, he followed his career in
Brookville: his smug satisfaction in his own good looks; his shallow
pride and vanity over the vapid insincerities he had perpetrated
Sunday after Sunday in the shabby pulpit of the Brookville church;
his Pharisaical relations with his people; his utter misunderstanding
of their needs. All this proved poignant enough to force the big
drops to his forehead.... There were other aspects of himself at
which he scarcely dared look in his utter abasement of spirit; those
dark hieroglyphics of the beast-self which appear on the whitest
soul.
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