The man’s charm of manner was not to be resisted; he believed his office far above monarchs, but there was no personal pretension.  That gentle, pleasing manner, with the sense of intellectual power behind it, quite overcame the old folk.  They all spoke with complacent pride of ’our vicar’; and, what was more, opened their purses.  The interior of the church was restored, and a noble organ built.  When its beautiful notes rose and fell, when sweet voices swelled the wave of sound, then even the vicar’s restless spirit was soothed in the fulfilment of his hope.  A large proportion of the upper and middle class of the parish was, without a doubt, now gathered around him; and there was much sympathy manifested from adjacent parishes with his objects, sympathy which often took the form of subscriptions from distant people.

But what said Hodge to it all?  Hodge said nothing.  Some few young cottage people who had good voices, and liked to use them, naturally now went to church.  So did the old women and old men, who had an eye to charity.  But the strong, sturdy men, the carters and shepherds, stood aloof; the bulk and backbone of the agricultural labouring population were not in the least affected.  They viewed the movement with utter indifference.  They cleaned their boots on a Sunday morning while the bells were ringing, and walked down to their allotments, and came home and ate their cabbage, and were as oblivious of the vicar as the wind that blew.  They had no present quarrel with the Church; no complaint whatever; nor apparently any old memory or grudge; yet there was a something, a blank space as it were, between them and the Church.  If anything, the ‘movement’ rather set them against going.

Agricultural cottagers have a strong bias towards Dissent in one form or another; village chapels are always well filled.  Dissent, of course, would naturally rather dislike a movement of the kind.  But there was no active or even passive opposition.  The cottage folk just ignored the Church; nothing more and nothing less.  No efforts were spared to obtain their good-will and to draw them into the fold, but there was absolutely no response.  Not a labourer’s family in that wide district was left unvisited.  The cottages were scattered far apart, dotted here and there, one or two down in a narrow coombe surrounded on three sides by the green wall of the hills.  Others stood on the bleak plains, unsheltered by tree or hedge, exposed to the keen winds that swept across the level, yet elevated fields.  A new cottage built in modern style, with glaring red brick, was perched on the side of a hill, where it was visible miles away.  An old thatched one stood in a hollow quite alone, half a mile from the highway, and so hidden by the oaks that an army might have ravaged the country and never found it.  How many, many miles of weary walking such rounds as these required!