music when she should open her throat and sing like a glad bird, delighting in its song, however plaintive.  And then she had gone.  Had she thought of Him in all this?  Winifred’s honest soul said, No.  But church?  She had thought of “church,” with all that it stood for of building, and congregation, and set order of things, and there had been a sort of subconscious satisfaction in the fact that going to church was a religious thing to do, and that to sing in the choir (especially for no pay, as she did) was very meritorious.  But was it so?

The minister was saying: 

“If worship is not sincere, it becomes, spiritually, an abomination.  If, for instance, our singing, instead of being a true sacrifice of praise to God degenerates into the sensuous enjoyment of a ’concourse of sweet sounds,’ it is no longer worship, and it is not even an innocent employment.  However fine it may be as a musical entertainment, if offered as a substitute for worship it may be likened to the offering of ‘strange fire,’ which met such instant judgment in the time of Moses.”

Winifred winced under the clear, bold words.  There was a little well-bred stir in the congregation.  Doctor Schoolman’s disciplined countenance betrayed a startled moment and then relapsed into an expression of bland, but non-committal interest.  Winifred glanced about to see how her neighbors were taking it.  She looked first at George Frothingham, for he and she were unusually good friends.  His handsome face showed only abstraction, and she knew he had not heard a word that was said.  She glanced warily back toward the organ and saw the player in his chair, but he was indulging in a few winks of sleep.  His duties at the theater the night before had illy prepared him for very wakeful attention to the sermon, and other influences were telling upon him, too, for the man of music knew the taste of wines.  The leader of the choir was listening.  His penetrating eyes were fixed upon the calm-faced man in the pulpit, and an unconscious scowl bent his dark brows.  Yet it was not an angry frown, but simply intent.  He looked half defensive, half convicted.

The minister went on: 

“I fear that this is an unusual way of looking at it, and that we are all too accustomed to pass unchallenged our professed worship.  Vice may be so habitual and under such common sanction as to be mistaken for virtue.  But surely in the most vital matter of our intercourse with God we do well to let every act be tested by the truth.  It shall be so tested eventually, whether we will or no; and even now in the midst of the churches the Son of Man is walking, still with eyes of flame, and still He is saying:  ‘I know thy works.’”