When it rains, they all gather in the church, but as
soon as the sun pierces the clouds and the rain-spouts dry up, they
repair to the trees again. So that during the storm two frail creatures
often enter the blessed house of God together; man to pray and allay his
fears, and the bird to wait until the rain stops and to warm the naked
bodies of its frightened young.
A peculiar charm pervades these churches. It is not their poverty that
moves us, because even when they are empty, they appear to be inhabited.
Is it not, then, their modesty that appeals to us? For, with their
unpretentious steeples, and their low roofs hiding under the trees, they
seem to shrink and humiliate themselves in the sight of God. They have
not been upreared through a spirit of pride, nor through the pious fancy
of some mighty man on his death-bed. On the contrary, we feel that it is
the simple impression of a need, the ingenuous cry of an appetite, and,
like the shepherd's bed of dried leaves, it is the retreat the soul has
built for itself where it comes to rest when it is tired. These village
churches represent better than their city sisters the distinctive
features of the places where they are built, and they seem to
participate more directly in the life of the people who, from father to
son, come to kneel at the same place and on the same stone slab.
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