Unless Tim had taken him to the Cathedral once, twenty years ago, it was
the first time that Queed had ever been inside a church. He had read
Renan at fourteen, finally discarding all religious beliefs in the same
year. Approximately Spencer's First Cause satisfied his reason, though
he meant to buttress Spencer's contention in its weakest place and carry
it deeper than Spencer did. But in fact, the exact limits he should
assign to religious beliefs as an evolutionary function were still
indeterminate in his system. He, like all cosmic philosophers, found
this the most baffling and elusive of all his problems. Meantime, here
in this little country church, he was to witness the supreme rite of the
supreme religious belief. There was some compensation for his enforced
attendance in that thought. He looked about him with genuine and candid
interest. The hush, the dim light, the rows upon rows of sober-faced
people, seemed to him properly impressive. He was struck by the wealth
of flowers massed all over the chancel, and wondered if that was its
regular state. The pulpit and the lectern; the altar, which he easily
identified; the stained-glass windows with their obviously symbolic
pictures; the bronze pipes of the little organ; the unvested choir,
whose function he vaguely made out--over all these his intelligent eye
swept, curiously; and lastly it went out of the open window and lost
itself in the quiet sunny woods outside.
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