![Crying for the Light; Or, Fifty Years Ago. Vol. 1 [of 3] cover](/books/content/36808/OEBPS/6498621989836682417_36808-cover.png)
It was past twelve when the brougham stopped opposite the little passage in Fleet Street, by the side of St. Dunstan’s Church, leading to Clifford’s Inn. Of course the gate was locked—it always is after a certain hour—and the porter had to be roused from slumbers which, judging by the noise he made snoring, were deep indeed. At length he slowly emerged from his den, looked through the latch and opened the door.
‘Is Mr. Wentworth in?’ asked the actress.
‘I believe so, ma’am.’
‘Well, I will run up and see; but don’t go to sleep, there’s a good fellow. I shall be back directly.’
It was a lovely night, and the moon, at the full, lent an air of romance to the place. There was evidently a good deal of life and gaiety going on—perhaps far more than the authorities had any idea of—young men are fond of chambers, and young men at the time of which I write were fond of sowing wild oats in them, a remarkably unprofitable agricultural operation. By daylight no one could imagine anything of the kind went on, as one looks at the dull windows of the old building, or sees here and there a few lawyers’ clerks rushing along either on business or in pursuit of lunch. It is a handy residence for law students and pressmen, and in the daytime it looks as dull and respectable as anyone could desire.
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the noble family of De Clifford granted to students of law a little plot of ground at the back of St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, between Fetter Lane and Chancery Lane. ‘There are three things for notice in Clifford’s Inn,’ writes Leigh Hunt: ‘its little bit of turf and trees, its quiet, and its having been the residence of Robert Puttock, author of the curious narrative of “Peter Wilkins,” with its Flying Women. Who he was is not known’—probably a barrister without practice—‘but he wrote an amiable and interesting book.’ As to the sudden and pleasant quiet in the little inn, it is curious to consider what a small remove from the street produces it. But even in the back room of a shop in the main street the sound of the carts and carriages becomes wonderfully deadened to the ear, and a remove like Clifford’s Inn makes it remote or nothing. Charles Lamb’s friend, the absent-minded Dyer, lived in Clifford’s Inn. The garden, now also in danger of being built over, forms part of the area of the Rolls, so called from the records kept there in rolls of parchment. It is said to have been the house of an eminent Jew, forfeited to the Crown—that is to say, that it was most probably taken from him, with all it contained, by Henry III., who made it a house for converts from the owner’s religion. As it may be supposed that most of these converted Jews were of doubtful character, for high-minded men are not to be won from the faith of their fathers by offers of board and lodging, we may imagine there were at one time a good many queer characters knocking about Clifford’s Inn, and life was not a little unconventional. It was so when Wentworth lived there, especially after business hours, when the respectable solicitors having offices on the ground-floor had gone home to Clapham or Highgate to dinner, leaving a few young ne’er-do-wells who lodged about there to run wild on the streets of London, then more full of snares than now, and to return to bed at unhallowed hours. The Serjeants’ Dining Hall has been dismantled; a new street has been cut through the Liberty of the Rolls. There are now few booksellers’ shops in front of St. Dunstan’s Church, and the two wild men of the wood who struck the hour with their clubs on the old church have moved elsewhere. What are we to expect of Clifford’s Inn but that it will soon be a thing of the past?
Curious characters lived in Clifford’s Inn. Opposite Wentworth resided a City curate, of whom he knew nothing save that he had a very red nose, was dressed in shabby black, and came in at all hours. Overhead resided an old bachelor, originally intended for the medical profession, but he did not take to it kindly, and as he had a little property of his own he preferred to vegetate in a cheap and yet scholarly way. It is a sad thing for a young man to have a little money, just enough to live on, nothing more. Unless he be very ambitious, it at once stops his career and prevents his making any attempt at rising in the world. ‘Why should I fret and fume?’ said Buxton, for that was his name; ‘if I get on, I only take the place that might be filled by a better man, and so leave him all the poorer. There are plenty of pushing fellows in the world; why should I add to their number? Why should I not take life easily, and content myself with my books and my pipe and with the study of mankind? Is success in life worth having? Is the game worth the candle?’ To the questions he gave a negative reply, and in the freedom of his unconventional life he rejoiced, and greatly did rejoice.
He and Wentworth were great cronies. They had both original ideas, and loved to discuss them. Moreover, he had saved Wentworth’s life. They had met in the old city of Hamburg in one of the most old-fashioned houses, in which they had apartments.
It was winter, and there was a fire in the old-fashioned German stove which nearly filled the apartment. The girl who attended the lodgers had lit the stove and left the flue closed up, and consequently when Wentworth came to his morning coffee and butterbrod the air of the tightly-closed apartment—it was an unusually cold season that winter—was too much for him. The fumes of the charcoal fire filled the room. Wentworth in his ignorance took his usual seat at the table, but in a few minutes was aware that he had a very peculiar sensation in his head. As he rose from the table to look at himself in the glass he fell prone on the floor.
Buxton heard the fall, and rushed into the room just in time to open the door and window and call for help, and when Wentworth recovered his consciousness he found he had been carried by the combined help of his landlady and Buxton to his bed. Thus a tragedy was averted, and, like the man in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ he felt that his life had been mercifully preserved on account of the greater misfortunes yet to befall him. After that, he and Buxton remained great friends.
Passing into the square, if square the tiny enclosure may be called, at the back of St. Dunstan’s Church, the actress looked up to Wentworth’s window. It happened at that moment he was lolling out of the window, lazily smoking a cigar before he returned to rest.
‘Who goes there?’ he exclaimed as he caught sight of the well-known figure. ‘To what happy circumstance am I indebted for the honour of a visit at this unreasonable hour, or has Ariel any commands for the humblest and most devoted of her slaves!’
‘Of course she has,’ was the reply, ‘or she would not be dancing down here at a time when all respectable people are in bed.’
‘Your angelship has only to speak, and I am at your feet,’ said the smoker with a theatrical flourish, dimly seen, and scarcely appreciated.
‘Well, I am in a mess, and I want your help.’
‘Of course you do; come up and talk it over.’
‘No, I cannot stop a moment.’
‘Well, let me put on my hat, and I will be down in the twinkling of any eye,’ and Wentworth withdrawing himself for that purpose, in another moment he was by her side.
‘I want you to take charge of a boy I’ve brought from Sloville; he is waiting in the bougham outside. He is a little waif I’ve picked up, and I want to save him from going to the bad. Here he is,’ she exclaimed, as she walked hurriedly to the brougham, and then opened the door. Mr. Wentworth, or Ted, as his familiar friends termed him, was not a little astonished at what he saw. ‘What a jewel! Is he not?’
‘Rather a rough one, apparently,’ said the gentleman; ‘but I suppose I must take him. He can sleep on my coal-box, and, perhaps, when the laundress comes in the morning, she will be able to clean him up a bit, and I’ll see what can be done for him.’
‘There, I knew you would. It is so like you,’ said the lady fondly, as she bade him good-bye, telling the little forlorn lad to be a good boy, and drove to her little bijou residence in Mayfair.
As she went off to sleep that night, there came to her the words of the Master, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these My little ones, ye have done it unto Me.’ At any rate, her reflections were more pleasant than those of the Bishop’s wife next door, whose father was a City banker, and who, as she heard the brougham set its mistress down, said to herself: ‘What shocking hours these actresses keep! What shocking lives they must lead, to be sure! What a misfortune it is to have such a person for a neighbour!’ It is to be believed the Bishop himself had rather a different train of thought. As a curate he had often frequented the theatre, nor had he given up the habit when he became a country rector. It is true, ever since his elevation to the episcopal bench he had avoided the playhouse, not that he did not love it in his heart of hearts as much as ever, ‘But, you see,’ as he was wont to observe in his blandest manner, ‘the case is altered now. I have to consider my eminent position, and the decorum due to the cloth. I must think of the injurious influence I might exercise on the younger clergy, and on the laity as well.’ He coincided with Bishop Lonsdale when he said: ‘So long as the world thinks it safer for young ladies than for bishops to take their chance of being corrupted by the theatre, he would by no means offend the world.’
So completely had he managed to forget his former propensities, that when it was hinted to him that there was a time when he was often to be seen within a playhouse, he scarcely admitted it, adding, however, that he had occasionally gone there, not for the purpose of gratifying a worldly curiosity, but that he might qualify himself by a study of our great actors to become an effective preacher and orator. He would have recognised the actress, however, if his better-half had allowed him to do so. But, naturally, not a fascinating woman herself, she would save her lord and master from the snare of beauty, which is but skin-deep, after all, and passing as the smile of an April sun. Thus she was given to judge harshly of pretty women, especially such as had become connected with the theatrical profession. Yet what an actor she had for her husband! What were his apron and knee-breeches and shovel-hat but theatrical properties to impress and over-awe the vulgar? As an actor, indeed, few surpassed the Bishop. What a picture of devotion he was in church, as with bowed head and uplifted hands he pronounced the benediction! In gilded drawing-rooms, what an air he assumed of Christian grace! In talk, no one was saintlier in his way, and yet, as politician and Churchman, he had ever been on the side of the world, and the Minister of the day ever trusted him, as it was known that his vote was safe. His art was, Look much, and say little. ‘Habits of graceful movement,’ says a writer on Mental Philosophy, ‘should be early impressed on children, to prevent that gaucherie which the want of an early training leaves almost always behind. The mind and the will may henceforth banish all thought concerning them. Once laid up among the residua, ready for action, the motor mechanism will reproduce them whenever the association prompts, and thus good manners, as far as the outward expression be concerned, become a part of our unconscious spontaneity.’ In Shaftesbury’s ‘Characteristics,’ I recollect there is a passage somewhat similar. Well, all this was exemplified by the Bishop. How often do we see parsons of all sects, and bishops, thus display this unconscious spontaneity! A man is often assumed to be a saint simply because he looks like one; alas! not all who bow to the name of Jesus are Christians, nor a who look like saints—saintly.
The heart of our actress, at any rate, was right, and grateful were her slumbers after the fatigue of an exciting day.
CHAPTER IV
A YOUNG PREACHER.
In one of the hottest days of the summer of 184-, a young man of lofty bearing and aristocratic descent was riding on horseback carelessly along the highroad that leads from Great Yarmouth to Ipswich, and not many miles from the rising town of Lowestoft. He had a companion with him not very much older than himself, but with a face bronzed with foreign travel.
‘How hot it is!’ said the younger of the two, as he reined up his steed on the brow of a small hill, at the foot of which was a stretch of marshland draining slowly into the sea a mile off on his left, while on the other side of the marsh, given up to cattle and horses and sheep, the road led to a rising tableland, dotted with old red-brick farmhouses and stately oaks and dark firs. A painter such as Constable or Gainsborough would have soon transferred something of the peaceful rustic beauty all round to his canvas. Far off was the calm blue sea, dark with slow-sailing colliers on their way to or from the distant port of London; nearer the shore were the brown sails of the fishing boats; while among them were a few pleasure yachts, the proprietors of which were endeavouring to earn an honest penny by carrying holiday makers to the sands which mark the commencement of the Yarmouth Roads. Nowhere was the dark line of smoke which marks the modern steamer visible. England then trusted in her wooden walls and her sailors with their hearts of oak, and dreamt not of the time when all that craft should be replaced by big iron or steel built steamers, ready to sink to the bottom, with all their crew and cargo or passengers, in case of a collision, in the twinkling of an eye.
‘Hot, is it? You should have been with me in India.’
‘And got wounded as you have?’
‘Yes, if you like. A good pension heals many a nasty wound.’
‘But—’ And here the younger man gave a joyful exclamation, ‘Why, there is Uncle Dick!’
‘True enough,’ said that individual, who was urging on his steed at a furious pace, and had just joined them. He was hawk-eyed, square-built, very red-faced, with an eye anything but expressive of saintly life. ‘What the devil are you gay fellows up to? I thought you were far away yachting.’
‘Duty,’ was the reply; ‘the fact is, I am rather tired of dissipation, and am thinking of settling down quietly.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said the newcomer, who was the wealthy incumbent of a neighbouring parish. ‘But you had better tarry with me for the night, and have a carouse over some port that you can’t get hold of every day. I have done duty, and am quite at your service. This is Sunday night, and I propose a quiet rubber. The vicarage is close by. I am a bachelor, you know.’
‘Yes, we all know that. And a model priest and a pillar of the Church.’
‘Now, drop that,’ said the parson. ‘It is my misfortune that I have to wear a black coat rather than a red one. You, lucky dog! can do as you like.’
‘Well, uncle, we’ll test your hospitality,’ said the younger one of the horsemen, the elder accepting at the same time.
They had already reached the village, the main street of which consisted of a few houses and shops, with a lane which led to the village meeting—an old-fashioned building of red brick—towards which a crowd, at any rate, as much of a crowd as could be got together in the village, was making its way.
‘What are all these people up to?’
‘Going to meeting, I suppose,’ said the parson.
‘What, are meetings allowed on the estate?’
‘Unfortunately, they are. My brother’s grounds only come up to the village, and the people there do as they like. But it is getting late. Let us have a trot.’ Unfortunately, as the horsemen broke into a trot, they ran right into a group of poor people on their way to meeting. Unfortunately, a poor old woman was caught by one of the horses and thrown down.
‘Are you much hurt?’ said a young man, running to her rescue.
‘No, Mr. Wentworth,’ said one of the group. ‘Mother, I believe, is more frightened than hurt. We would have had her stop at home, but she said she must come and hear you preach. She said she was here when your father came to preach for the first time, and we could not keep her at home.’
‘And who are the men on horseback?’ who by this time were far away.
‘Why, one of ’em, the young one, is Sir Watkin Strahan, with his uncle, the parson of the next parish.’
‘Well, for a young man, he was by no means pleasant-looking. At any rate, he might have stopped to see if he had done any harm. But these rich men are all hard. Poor people have but one duty—to get out of their way, and to take their hats off to them when they meet!’
The expression of the young man was not to be taken literally. Farmer and peasant alike never took off the hat to anyone. The peasant simply made an obeisance and put up his hand to pull a lock of his front hair in proof of his deference to the ruling powers.
The crowd still clustered round the old woman, who was happily more frightened than hurt. She was one of a class rarely to be met with in our villages now, but at one time very common. She was a ‘meetinger.’ In some way she was a sufferer for the fact. When Christmas came there were coals and blankets at the Hall for such of the villagers as attended the parish church, but the ‘meetingers’ were left out in the cold; and yet they were the salt of the place—steady, orderly, industrious—content with their lot, however humble and hard. At the meeting they were all equals, brothers and sisters in Christ, believing that life was a scene of sorrow and difficulty, of darkness and poverty and death—believing also that that sorrow and pain would pass away, that that darkness would be turned into light, that the tear would be wiped from every eye, and the riches of heaven would be theirs in exchange for the poverty of earth, that death should be swallowed up in life. They studied one book, and that was the Bible. Their talk was in Scripture phrase, and it was not cant with them, but the utterance of a living faith. That faith exists no longer, but while it lasted it filled the peasant’s heart with a joy that the world could neither give nor take away, and there was peace and content in the home. There was no day like the Sunday, no treat like that of singing the songs of Zion, or of listening to the Gospel, as they held the sermon to be. Nowadays our villagers prefer to smoke a pipe and read the newspaper, and to talk of their rights. Then they were of the same way of thinking as the citizens of a small German duchy, who, when the year of revolution came across Europe, and the Grand-Duke gave them a representative government, were much annoyed at the trouble thus imposed on them, when he, the Grand-Duke, was born and endowed to do all the ruling himself.
But the old lady was better, and to her we must return, as she made her way to meeting.
The person most annoyed was the young preacher. He was shocked at the autocratic insolence of the party.
‘I shall know that young fellow on horseback,’ he said to himself, ‘if ever I meet him again, which is not very likely;’ and the young man continued his walk to the meeting, where he was to preach.
When he got there the place was crowded. Tremblingly he entered the vestry, and more tremblingly he climbed the pulpit stairs. Everybody whom he knew was there. For a village, it was a highly respectable congregation, consisting of well-to-do shopkeepers and farmers with their families, who sat in genteel old square pews lined with baize, while the labourers, in clean smock-frocks, filled the body of the place. On the floor, just under the pulpit, was the table-pew, crowded with all the musical talent of the place. Loud and long and wonderful was their performance. There are no such village choirs now, nor such congregations. The landlords have put down Dissent in that part. It is well understood that when there is a farm to let no Dissenter need apply.
The old meeting-house yard was pleasant to the eye, with its grand trees guarding the gates. It was a warm night, and the doors were wide open, and from the pulpit the eye could range over trim cottage gardens all ablaze with sweet flowers, whose scent floated pleasantly along the summer air. From afar one could hear also the echoes of the distant sea. There is a wonderful stillness and beauty in a country village on a Sunday night, that is if it be at a decent distance from town.
Even that dull red-brick meeting-house was rich in holy associations. It recalled memories of martyrs and saints, of men of whom the world was not worthy, who had given up all for Christ.
But let us turn to the present. In the pulpit is the lad whom we already know. He has been at a London college. This was his first sermon, and so still was the place that even the Sunday-school children—always the most troublesome part of the audience, and very naturally so—were silent. For a wonder, in no pew was a farmer asleep. The emotion of the dear old minister, as he sat in the family pew, was painful to witness. That lad up yonder was his only son, and had been set apart from his childhood for the service of the altar. Like another Timothy, from a child he had known the Scriptures. Like another Samuel, he had been early trained to wait upon the Lord. Had the prayers of pious parents been heard and answered? It seemed so. But who can tell what later years may do for the lad?
Let us look at him—tall, well-built, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. He was trembling and pale at first, but be was so no longer. The nervousness with which he read the Bible and offered up prayer has passed away. He has got accustomed to the sound of his own voice—a great thing for an orator of any kind.
The sermon was of the usual type—popular at that time in all Evangelical circles. It would have been deemed sinful to have preached in any other manner, and, after all, a raw lad can but preach the theology he had gone to college to learn, or which he had been taught on his mother’s knees. In religion, as in other things, you cannot put an old head upon young shoulders, but as far as he knows the preacher is emphatic and in earnest.
‘Men and brethren and sisters,’ he exclaimed towards the end of his discourse, ‘will you not accept the offered blessing? Dare you retire from this place rejecting the offer of Divine mercy and the invitations of Divine love? Will you continue in your sin and perish? Your souls that can never die are in danger. Now God waits to save you; to-morrow it may be too late. It may be that if you procrastinate now you may never again hear the offer of the Gospel. Turn your back on God now, and perhaps He may turn His back on you. From this house of prayer, from the sound of my voice, you may go home, to forget all I have said, or you may be hurried away by the rude hand of Death. I speak as to wise men. Judge ye what I say. Another throb of this heart, another beat of this pulse, another tick of that clock, and you may have gone to be alone with God. Life and death are set before you—a blessing and a curse—heaven and hell.’
As the young preacher, with eager eye and palpitating heart, sat down, it was with difficulty that the aged father could control his emotion so as to give out the hymn to be sung and to pronounce the benediction. More than one sob was heard—more than one face was bathed in tears. More than one in that crowd resolved from that day forth to lead a new and better life. It was some time before that sermon was forgotten. It was a village nine days’ wonder. A time was to come when that young preacher was to modify very considerably his theology and enlarge his creed. It is to be questioned whether, however, afterwards he ever preached with more fervour, or left a pulpit in a happier frame of mind. When a man feels what he says, what place is there in which he can feel more joyous than in the pulpit? To men in such a mood it is the very gate of heaven. Shame on the men who go into one without a Divine call and a living faith, who are preachers by training and by the acts of mistaken friends and relatives, who assume the priest’s office for a bit of bread, just as others become lawyers or medical men!
No wonder that the pulpit is a failure in our day; that men who feel themselves equal in education and spiritual life to the man in the pulpit stop away; that, in fact, men rarely darken church doors—especially the poor, the weary, and the heavy-laden, who need something more than a musical performance, or a religious ceremonial, or a sensational appeal. Yet are not these the men for whom a Saviour lived and prayed and died? When people were given to church and chapel going, something of the life and energy of the old Reformers—the Wesleys and the Whitfields, and their followers—had been left alive. The old traditions had still a force; the old habits had not died out. It had not become respectable to attend what were then really the means of grace, if I may use such an old-fashioned, conventional term. The world had not invaded the Church, and swindlers and adventurers had not discovered that if they would succeed in their schemes on the community, or get returned to Parliament, or stand well in society, they must identify themselves with one or other of the religious bodies, whose members would supply them with a decent proportion of dupes. It is a fine advertisement for a wealthy man to contribute largely to the funds of the religious body with which he is more or less connected. Such pecuniary generosity always has its reward. A working man candidate even who will get into a pulpit is also sure of success, even if he intimates that the parson does not know his business, or that the church and congregation are groping in the dark. If now and then he can get into a pulpit he is a made man.
CHAPTER V.
AFTER THE SERVICE.
The village to which the reader has already paid a visit was sleepy and healthy, but not without a certain rustic grace of its own. At one end, the gates of the neighbouring park gave almost an aristocratic air to the place. Far off among the trees was the parish church, as if it never could be of any use to anybody, while the old red-brick meeting-house was a formidable rival, inasmuch as it was nearer to the people, and therefore more convenient of access. It had quite a history, that old place. Norfolk and Suffolk have been the home of Nonconformists from the earliest times. One of the first victims of the writ De heretico comburendo was a Norfolk man. Dr. Grosteste, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, a divine of great learning and courage, who is said to have sympathised with Wycliffe, was born at Stradbrook, in Suffolk. The earliest martyr of the Reformation, according to Fox, was William Sawtree, parish priest of the church of St. Margaret in the town of Lynn, and here, as elsewhere, the blood of the martyrs was not shed in vain. Heresy continued to grow, and Mary, whom history calls the Bloody, owed her throne in no small degree to the loyalty of the old Nonconformists of Suffolk, who believed her to be the rightful heir to the Crown, and aided her effectually in asserting her rights, only stipulating that they should be unmolested in the exercise of their religion. But Mary had learnt of her Popish priests to keep no faith with heretics, and in Suffolk the race of martyrs never failed. Many Protestants fled from this fierce persecution, and some found an asylum in Frankfort.
When Elizabeth came to the throne the people still required a reformation in the Puritan sense, but Elizabeth, a Ritualist herself, had no sympathy with them. In 1592, when an Act was passed for the punishment of persons obstinately refusing to come to church, Sir Walter Raleigh declared his conviction that the Brownists at that time were not less than twenty thousand, chiefly in Norfolk and Suffolk. Their idea was that, in the language of their founder, ‘The Church planted or gathered is a company or number of Christians and believers, which, by a willing covenant made with their God, are under the government of God and Christ, and keep His laws in one communion. The Church government is the lordship of Christ in the communion of His offices, whereby His people obey His will, and have mutual use of their graces and callings to further their goodliness and welfare.’ Such was the teaching of old Browne. In the good old times he was persecuted for saying it, and people were sent to gaol for believing it. Nay, more, Barrow and Greenwood, for doing so, were hanged at Tyburn. In the village of which I write there had been many Nonconformists, and tradition told how the preacher was hidden in a tree while the people listened below. When fair times came, ejected ministers continued their services in a more open manner. Wealthy individuals befriended them, and chapels were built and endowed. In this way the meeting-house of which I speak had come into existence. On the evening of which I write it had been crowded. The one subject of conversation all that night was the sermon. At that time all the cottagers took a deep interest in theology. There was no end of theological disputations, especially among the women, and as usual among the most illiterate of the women. Some of them were hyper-Calvinists, and on a Sunday would walk miles to the nearest town in which the doctrines they loved to hear were preached. The old preacher at the Congregational chapel was not high enough for them. They were God’s elect, and they needed to be preached to as such. Then there were the Ranters, who loved to hear of a free salvation—of instantaneous conversion—of how the Ethiopian had changed his skin and the leopard his spots.
All had been to meeting that night, and all were delighted to find how the young preacher had given utterance to their peculiar and somewhat contradictory views. Then, there were the old steady friends, who feared that the young man would be led away by people’s applause. He was said to have talent, and that was not the one thing needful. He was said to be fond of human larnin’, and that was a mockery and a snare. The more narrow-minded preponderated, as they always do in religious circles, or, at any rate, as they did then. They believed that ‘Ignorance was the mother of devotion.’ They were a stumbling-block in many a promising career, ever ready to censure, ever ready to take offence, ever ready to find fault, ever ready to hint a doubt and hesitate dislike. How many have such kept away who might have been useful members of the Church! How many have they driven into doubt and scepticism and despair! How true is it that against stupidity the gods fight in vain!
It is a mistake to suppose a village life dull. It has its public opinion—its hopes, its fears, its joys. Its little life in its way is as intense as that of London or Paris. Our great men and oracles and dictators—many of our best men—come from our country villages. They are our national nurseries. We cannot breed men or women in the foul air of towns, where soul and body alike wither away. If England is to flourish, we must get back the people to the villages.
The other night Hodge paid me a visit, and to me, revolving these things in my mind, as Cicero was wont to say, the Lord Brougham after him, it seemed that it was worth putting in print Hodge’s opinions about things in general, and farming in particular. Hodge is a Liberal, and will vote for the Gladstonian candidate. Not that he takes much interest in Ireland, or has any particular acquaintance with Irish affairs. Hodge told me he did not read the newspapers, solely because he can’t read at all. He left school before he had mastered the elements, and the cause of his leaving was this: He had, as boys will do, played truant, and the next day the schoolmaster took him to the door of the school to give him a flogging. Unfortunately, the master had left his stick behind, and when he was gone, Hodge, who had his cap in his pocket, thought he might as well run away. He did so, and went to a farmer to give him a job. The farmer set him to scare the crows, and after that Hodge never went to school again. At a proper age he went to ploughing, and a ploughman he has been ever since. He married early, of course. I told him that was a pity; but, as he said, what was he to do? He had no father nor mother, and he wanted a home of his own, and, though his wife worked in a brickyard, she is as natty and tidy a little woman as you could wish to see anywhere, and the children are neat and orderly. He lives in a red-brick cottage with four rooms, for which he pays £4 a year, and has a nice little bit of garden, which produces most of the food consumed by the family—for he can’t afford butcher’s meat. Now and then, though, he buys a few bones of the butcher, or a few scraps such as a butcher has always to dispose of at the rate of sixpence a pound. He can’t eat fat pork, and he can’t smoke. He is tall, but not stout, and has a fine colour on his face, as if his occupation was healthy. His wages are 13s. 6d. a week—not a bad wage in Essex. His hours are long—from six in the morning till half-past five in the evening. On a Sunday morning he has to look after the horses; when he has done that he walks over to have a chat with his father-in-law.
He never goes to church, because he doesn’t like the goings-on in the church and the white gowns. When he goes anywhere, it is to a barn where a Primitive Methodist preaches; him he can understand, but not the Church parson; and the Methodist preaches well and does not take a sixpence. That is why he likes the Methodist preacher.
‘Why,’ said he, ‘the parson makes a poor-rate in the church.’
‘What do you mean?’ said I.
‘Why, I’ve seen the farmers go round with the plates and collect money.’
‘Oh no,’ I replied; ‘that is the offertory, and the parson gives the money to the poor.’
‘Does he?’ said Hodge. ‘I’ve never heard of his giving any money away, and he has never been near me, though I’ve lived five years in his parish.’
I explained that the late parson was old and infirm, but that the new parson would do better; and then Hodge admitted that he had heard as how he had called on a neighbour who was ill, and had left two half-crowns.
Hodge is not a teetotaler, but drinks a table-beer which his wife brews. As to public-house beer, he declares it is poison, and never touches a drop. He pays to the Foresters five-and-sixpence a quarter, and shilling for his wife, and that secures him in case of sickness ten shillings a week and medical attendance for his wife and family. He goes to bed at nine o’clock, and that means a good deal of saving in the matter of coals and candles. He frankly admitted that he had made, and could make, no provision for old age. He had one grievance. His master was a Liberal, but he had told him now that schooling was free he must pay two shillings more for his rent; ‘and that ain’t very liberal,’ he said.
Then we talked about the farmers. They were very hard on the men. When harvest time came, that was the miserablest time of the year, for the big farmer goes round to the small farmers and tells them what he is going to pay, and then the men stand out, and are idle and walking about, while a lot of foreigners—that is, people from parts adjacent—come, who are bad workers and get drunk, and are very disagreeable to have anything to do with. There ought to be no large farmers who cannot properly attend to the farms, and who keep hunters and go out hunting. He would have no hunting at all, as it destroyed the crops to have a lot of men galloping over them. Farmers could not make their farms pay, as they did not keep enough men to pull up the weeds, and he had seen fields where the thistles were as high again as the barley, and instead of carting barley the farmer had to cart weeds, and that could not pay. Again, he thought it was madness to send the manure of towns into the sea when it was wanted on the land. Farmers were very unreasonable, and that was a pity. How could a farmer expect his men to work well if they were paid starvation wages? They even starved the horses. Many a farmer on a Sunday, or when the horses were idle, took off a feed of corn from the horses. Why, did not a farmer want his dinner on a Sunday when he was not working, and was it not the same with the horses? He had seen some farmers hunting, and their horses were nothing but bags of bone.
‘Well, what do you think of allotments of two or three acres?’ said I. Hodge evidently had a poor opinion of them. If he had one, he would not have the time nor the strength to work on it, though his wife might help him, as she was used to outdoor work; and then there was the ploughing, how could that be done? Could not, I asked, a farm be cut up into allotments, and one person make a living by ploughing for the others? No, he did not think that could be done, as you could never get a lot of people to be all of one mind in that respect. It was not much use giving an agricultural labourer more than forty rods to attend to. He did not keep bees, as his master did not like them, but his father-in-law did, and he made a good deal of money by them. One thing he did by which he made a little money, and that was to breed canaries. Once upon a time he caught a blackbird and took it home. Then he sold it for five shillings, and when his wife missed the bird he put a shilling to it and bought a canary. His master’s brother gave him another; and as they laid eggs and hatched them he sold canaries, and thus made a little.
Hodge is an active politician, and attends all the Liberal gatherings of the district; but his politics are of the dimmest kind. He is attracted by the word Liberal—that is all. What he desires is to see a better understanding between the masters and men. He has got beyond the Church parson, evidently, but the farmer may yet win him back. I question whether the farmer will have sense enough to take the trouble to do that, easy though the task may be. In the majority of cases it is only a question of a shilling a week and a few kind words. Hodge has no wish to be driven off the land. He would rather remain where he is. He knows very little of the town, and is rather afraid of its wickedness and its filthy slums. All he requires is a little more consideration, a little more kindly treatment on the part of his employer. He is a good fellow, and he deserves it. But one sighs as one thinks
‘Of the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun.’
But this is a digression. I now return to the Hodge of half a century ago.
It was late that night before the villagers went to bed, everyone had so much to say. There had not been such an excitement there since old Campbell, missionary to Africa, had told the people all about the poor Hottentots.
Half-way down the High Street stood the Spread Eagle—as times went, a respectable public-house, licensed to let post-horses, and warranted to provide suitable accommodation for man or beast. It is true, on the outside was painted a fierce creature, intended for a bird, with an eye and a beak enough to frighten anyone, but all was peace and harmony within. The landlady had a way of serving up mulled porter at all hours which seemed particularly attractive to her customers, especially in winter, and as the coach to London changed horses there, a good many people were in the habit of dropping in ‘quite promiscuous,’ as some of us say. On the evening of the sermon, the bar-parlour was unusually full. The landlady’s niece had been to hear the young divine, and her verdict was favourable.
‘Here’s a pretty go,’ said the Rector, who had dropped in quite accidentally, as he joined the group: ‘that young Wentworth is going to drive the people crazy. As I came past I saw all the parish there. I am sure Sir Thomas’ (the owner of the next village) ‘will be very angry when he hears of it.’
‘Right you are!’ cried the surgeon; ‘but the young fellow won’t stop here long, you may depend upon it. He is far too good for the meetingers.’
‘I wish the whole pack of them would clear off,’ continued the Rector; ‘they give me no end of trouble. If I go into a cottage, I find they have been there before me. It is just the same with the schools; they get all the children. My predecessor did not mind it, but I do.’
‘Ah,’ said the landlady, ‘I’ve heard my mother speak of him. He and the clerk had always a hot supper here on a Sunday night. Ah, he was a gentleman, and behaved as such.’
‘Rare times, them was,’ said an old farmer, joining in the conversation. ‘I remember how we used to pelt them meetinger parsons with rotten eggs. It was rare fun to break their windows while they were preaching, and to frighten the women as they came out. One day we were going to burn the parson’s house down.’
‘And why did you not?’ asked the surgeon.
‘Because the Rector’s wife was ill,’ was the reply, ‘and the Rector asked us not to make a noise near the house. But I was sorry we did not then finish the job outright. They’d all have gone. Says I, if you want to get rid of the wasps, burn their nests. I’ve no patience with a lot of hypocrites, professing to be better than other people.’
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the landlady’s niece, a privileged person, as she was both young and good-looking, ‘all I can say is, young Mr. Wentworth preached a capital sermon to-night. A better sermon I never heard. There was no reading out of a book. It was all life-like. There was no drawling or hesitation. He spoke out like a man.’
The aunt looked solemn. This would never do. The Spread Eagle had always supported Church and State, and she was not going to change at her time of life. It was too bad to find heresy in her own flesh and blood.
‘Well,’ said she, ‘of course I don’t go to meetin’, and I’m very sorry to hear what I’ve heard to-night.’
‘Well, we will forgive the young lady,’ said the Rector condescendingly, with a familiar nod, ‘on condition that she does not do it again.’
‘Agreed,’ said the surgeon. ‘I go to church,’ he continued, ‘because it’s respectable; because my father went there before me; because, if I did not, I should never be asked to dine at the Hall; because, as it is, I find it hard to make both ends meet, and should lose all my practice if I went to meeting.’
‘Besides,’ added the Rector, ‘it is your duty to support the institutions of your country, and to set the people a good example. I am not much of a Churchman myself. I had rather have been a country squire, but my father said I must either take the family living or starve, so, as starving is not in my way, here I am.’
‘And a better parson we don’t want,’ said the old farmer enthusiastically.
‘Well, I try to do my duty in the situation in which Providence has placed me,’ said the Rector, with a truly edifying air.
‘We knows that,’ said the farmer, ‘You’ve allus a bottle for a friend, and you give us short sermons, and when we want to get up a race or a bit of sport, you are always ready to lend us a helping hand, and that is more than the meetingers ever do. I hates ’em like p’ison. All their talk is of eddication and religion—good things in their way, but not to be overdone. My best ploughman can’t read a bit, and what good will larnin’ do him, I should like to know.’
And here the farmer, red in the face, paused for a reply. In the meanwhile the Rector called for the Sunday paper, which had reached there that evening. The surgeon set off to attend a patient in labour—his principal employment in that healthy district, where the people kept good hours and breathed good air—and the bar-parlour of the Spread Eagle resumed its Sabbatic quiet. Only one should-be sleeper lay awake that night, and that was the village pastor’s son. He was to go on probation to Sloville. There was no minister there, and the people wanted one. Was he to succeed? Did he sufficiently realize the import of his message? Had he so mastered the truth that he could commend it in all its fulness and beauty to others? These were questions which gave him—as they do all in such a position—great searchings of heart. At college Wentworth had difficulties which were only to be put away, said his teachers, by Christian work. They, good people, had had doubts themselves, but they had lived them down, and so they went to their daily task quite satisfied, and they reaped the benefit of acquiescence as they became more and more celebrated for wisdom and piety, and as more and more they lost the meaning of Scriptural language in conventional and orthodox formula. Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles was not imposed on the young divine; but he was expected, nevertheless, to adopt a certain creed, and repeat it. Students at his college were not expected to study truth, but only as it appeared in a human, rather than a Divine, form. Any attempt at independent inquiry was rejected as heresy of the most odious kind. Happy were they who never had their minds darkened by doubt, who, according to their own ideas, were taught of the Spirit; who found every difficulty solved by prayer: to whom Deity revealed Himself, as He did to the Jews of old, as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night; who felt that their God was a jealous God, consuming with eternal fire the reprobate; who believed that God was angry with them if they took a walk in the fields on a Sunday, or kept studying secular affairs one moment after twelve (Greenwich time) on a Saturday night. To this class Wentworth did not belong. He was wont to regard the Creator of the world as a Father in heaven—as a God of love—who had filled all this wide earth with beauty for man to grasp and enjoy. Pious people said he lacked unction. But he was anxious for action, as all young men are, for real life and real work, and desirous ‘to settle,’ as the phrase is. His father was poor, and could not afford to keep him at home. He had finished his college career—with acceptance. No one had a word to say against him, and none doubted his ability. At Sloville the people were supposed to be profoundly orthodox. It was hard indeed to send such a young man there, yet it was agreed that Wentworth should go there on probation.
CHAPTER VI.
AT SLOVILLE AGAIN.
It was with rather a heavy heart young Wentworth found himself in the ancient town of Sloville, amongst some hard and elderly deacons, who had little sympathy with him or his ways. Everything in the Dissenting creed was dull and dreary. At that time there were no athletic sports—no outlet for that vigorous animal life which is common alike to saints and sinners, to the young preacher as well as to the young layman. Now, when even curates devote themselves to lawn tennis, a freer life is tolerated, and we do not find fault with even an ordained parson who can run, or play cricket, or display animal as well as intellectual or moral vigour. At the time this history refers to, this was not the case, and much did the Church suffer and the world gain in consequence. Young people must have amusements. It is unnatural to ask them to give them up. Amusements are not only lawful but necessary. But at Sloville this was denied, and our young minister was always in hot water. It is true that he did not dance—that was an outrage on the feelings of the Church too awful to contemplate—but it was known that he enjoyed a game of chess. It was whispered that he had confessed to a knowledge of whist, and had been heard to own to a little time wasted on billiards. If he had said bagatelle, people would not have so much minded. The senior deacon had a bagatelle-board himself in his own house; not that he played, he was far too serious for that, but his young people required amusement, and he was forced to give way. But billiards!—that was quite another matter. That was a game played by wicked men in public-houses and at London clubs. Men had been ruined at it, families had been beggared by it; even suicides had been the result. No, that was not a game on which you could pray for a blessing. Yet Mr. Wentworth had been heard to say that he knew something even of that atrocious game. They were very bilious, and therefore very pious, these good deacons. We have improved a little since then, but types of them are still to be found scattered all over the land.
Under this strict regime, as was to be expected, there was not a little restlessness at Bethesda, as the chapel was called. The young preacher was popular, but not, alas! with the soberer and elder portion of the congregation. The deacons were sorely puzzled how to act; some questioned whether the young student had the root of the matter in him, and many were their meetings. Let us go amongst them, as they are at tea, and in the house of one of them, the leading tradesman of the town, a dear old deacon, who from the time he had known the Lord, as he termed it, had never known a doubt, and to whom no sermon was tolerable that did not begin with ruin and end with regeneration and redemption. The house in which he resided was one of the most respectable in the High Street. It was entered by the side door, and not through the shop—that was of itself a sign of gentility. On the present occasion, all the company have come in by the private door, and, dressed in black, you might have taken them for a gathering of the brethren, so thoroughly clerical was their look and demeanour. Of course, they were all professors, as they were called, not of music or mathematics, but of religion. The head of the party, in whose parlour they were seated, and of whose hospitality they were partaking, was the senior deacon of the Independent Chapel. His parents were very poor, but they had sent him to school, and were specially careful that he should be a Sunday scholar. In a little while he became a Sunday-school teacher, and that was a feather in his cap, and helped him to pray and make speeches in public. One of the friends thus gained was a small shopkeeper, who in consequence took Ned Robins, as he was called, into his employ. The lad was steady, of a cold temperament, very selfish, and ambitious to rise in the world. He had no wish nor temptation to be otherwise. He was always at his post, never went to the public-house, never wanted to go to a race, or a fair, or a rowing match, never wished for a holiday, and, consequently, never took one. He had married his master’s daughter; he had courted her on a Sunday when they went to chapel together—that is, they sat in the same pew and sang out of the same hymn-book—and as everyone said they ought to make a match of it, they did so accordingly. By that match he became proprietor of the business, which grew as the town grew, so as to become really worth having. His boys were in the business; his daughters, with the exception of one of them, rather prettier than the rest, were all members of the church, and had married other tradesmen in the town. A good tea did he give his friends, in the best parlour, with the very best tea-things. Truly, he had much to be thankful for. He had never dishonoured a bill, and his good name was unquestioned. If he occasionally sold adulterated articles, that was the fault of the manufacturer, not his. His favourite verse was,
‘Not more than others I deserve,
Yet God has given me more.’
—apparently quite unaware that, in saying so, he cast a slur upon his Maker.
In the parlour itself there was every sign of comfort, in the way of easy-chairs, and sofas, and good mahogany. Over the fireplace was a good-sized looking-glass. Opposite to it was a bookcase, inside the glass shutters of which was a set of Evangelical Magazines, well bound, a Matthew Henry’s Commentary, an illustrated ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and a large folio copy of Fleetwood’s ‘Life of Christ.’ For the young people there were Cowper’s Poems, those of Jane Taylor, and Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ Perhaps the best-thumbed volume in the collection was the ‘Cookery Book,’ for neither the master nor his wife approved of starving the tabernacle or mortifying the flesh when their pleasure lay in an opposite direction. In the way of ornament the room boasted of portraits of a murdered missionary and a leading London divine, who had been popular in his denomination in his day, and oil-paintings of the master of the house and his missus, by no means flattering to either. The windows were lined with heavy curtains that kept out the cold. The fire burnt brightly on the hearth. The seductive tea-urn sent its rich aroma all round. Plum-cake and hot buttered toast, to say nothing of muffins, were plentiful, while a real Yorkshire ham tempted one to cut and come again.
The deacon and his wife loved to be happy in their way, and it was with pardonable pride they sat down to the feast, and gathered around them their chapel friends. They fell bravely to work, as soon as the compliment had been passed of asking the eldest of the visitors to say grace. The one selected was a chemist, the other who returned thanks was a farmer, who, if goodness was tested by a tendency to sleep all sermon-time, was a saint indeed. His drowsiness, he admitted, was an infirmity, but it was one against which he seemed to make no effort. He was wide-awake enough when he had a horse to buy or a bullock to sell. After the guests had satisfied the wants of their inner man, and discussed the state of the weather, and the corn-market and the crops, they began discoursing. Let us listen to them.
‘Well,’ said Jones, the farmer, ‘I don’t think that young man who preached on Sunday was the sort of man we want for Bethesda. It was all very fine, and, if I had not been a Christian, I should have enjoyed it myself.’
‘Mere morality,’ said Stephens, the chemist and druggist, ‘not a word for the poor sinner.’
‘Yet the chapel was crammed full at night, and I hear we shall have a larger congregation next Sunday.’
‘And a deal of good that will do us. Larnin’ and eloquence will never save a soul. If the root of the matter an’t there, what’s the use of them? We don’t want a lot of giddy creatures coming along and crowdin’ up the place. I’ll be bound to say that young man is a Neologist.’
‘A what?’ all asked with horror.
‘A Neologist; and if you want to know what that is, read the British Beacon. Lor’ bless you! the editor makes fine work of the Neologists.’
‘Well, of course we don’t want a Neologist down here.’
‘I never heard such a sermon. Nothing about being born in sin and shapen in iniquity. Not a word about hell; not a word of the saints being preordained for glory. He had the impudence to tell me, to my own face, that “a God of love would never consign sinners to an everlasting torment.” I’d quite an argument with him. I called him all the names I could think of. I really don’t think I can bring myself to go and hear him again. If you have him, I’m off to the Baptists.’
‘Well, look ’ee, you must not leave us, at any rate. How the people would talk if you were to give up Bethesda and join the Baptists!’
‘We want the elect to be preached to,’ said the chemist, ‘not the world. Now, this young man has no idea of that. It’s all labour in vain preaching to the world. The Lord knows them that are His. They are the flock, and we want a shepherd for them. What are the men of the world but a generation of vipers?’
‘Well,’ said the other deacon, ‘it seems to me that he has no idea of saying a word in season. For instance, as you know, last week old Brown, the milkman, died very suddenly. I said to him, “Mr. Wentworth, you might improve the occasion. You might preach about the shortness of life.” “How old was old Brown?” says he. “Eighty-five,” says I, and then he laughed.’
‘Laughed?’ repeated all the party.
‘Yes; and said he had “better wait for some better opportunity to talk of the shortness of life.” He said old Brown had had “rather a long innings.”’
A shudder ran round the room.
‘Just what I expected myself. Last week old Mrs. Grey broke her leg. She would not go to our new surgeon, because he ain’t a professor. “Quite right,” said I to her. “How can you expect the blessing?” Our new minister replied that “the woman was silly”; that “she should have gone to a clever, rather than to a godly, doctor”; that “it was merely a question of professional skill,” and that “religion had nothing to do with it.” Says I, “We think too much of mere human talent.” Said he, “he did not think we did. It was so rare that when we found it we ought to encourage it,” said he. I said to him, “Our old minister never preached in that way;” and he said he was “sorry to hear it.”’
Again all groaned.
‘Just what I expected,’ observed the chemist and druggist. ‘The other morning, as I called, he was reading Shakespeare. “Not much there for the immortal soul,” says I. “Upon my word,” says he, “I don’t agree with you there at all. I hold Shakespeare to be next to the Bible.” I said as how I had never read a line of Shakespeare, or any other play-acting, fellow. Said he, he was “sorry to hear it.” I had “missed a great treat. There was no one like Shakespeare to display the workings of the human heart.”’
‘And what did you say to that?’
‘Why, that my Bible told me that the heart was “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” and that was enough for me.’
‘Ah, you had him there,’ said the others.
‘Yes, I think I had,’ replied the chemist, with a grim smile of satisfaction.
It is told of the Aristotelians, when Galileo offered to show them that the world moved round the sun, that they refused even to use his telescope, as they would not see what they could not find in Aristotle. These poor men would have done the same. Science offered them a telescope, but they preferred darkness, like the old bigoted Roman Catholics who persecuted Galileo.
‘You know my boy Tom,’ continued Mr. Robins. ‘He thinks he knows a lot more than his father, because I sent him to the grammar-school. He always is telling me he don’t see this, and he don’t see that. Now, according to my way of thinking, he has no right to talk so. It’s really sinful. He has got to believe. The Bible says, “Whoso believeth shall be saved.” I says to the lad, “If I had talked in that wicked way to my father, he would soon have beaten it all out of me, and I had a great mind to do the same with him.” I said as much to the minister. He begged I would “do nothing of the kind. The lad could not help his doubts.” He believed he was “sincere. Thomas was one of the Apostles, and had not he his doubts? Doubts,” said he, “often lead to faith.” Did you ever hear such a doctrine? I saw the Lord in a minute when I was converted, and I’ve never had a doubt since, blessed be His Holy Name!’
‘You’re right, brother,’ said the senior deacon. ‘It is the devil who makes us doubt, and it is only by prayer you can defy him. You know—
‘“Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.”
All that we have got to do is to believe what is in the Bible, and I do every blessed word of it, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last Book of Revelation. Don’t talk to me of carnal reason sitting in judgment on the Word of God. It makes me sick to hear such talk. It is downright wickedness. Human larnin’ will never save the soul. Scripture is plain, so that the wayfaring man, though a fool, may not err therein. The sooner we get an old experienced divine to come and preach to us the better. We shall have all the gay and giddy people at meetin’ if this young fellow preaches here much longer’—a sentiment which met with the hearty approval of all present. He continued: ‘It was only last night I asked him to come to supper, and he declined, “because,” he said, he had “promised to sup with” that new lawyer, who has come to our town, and who, I believe, never goes anywhere of a Sunday. “That ain’t right,” says I. “Why not?” says he. “Because,” says I, “the Church has nothing to do with the world. We are to be separate from sinners.” He said he did “not take that view of the case.” I said he “ought to,” and left him.’
The deacons were rather hard on the young parson, assuredly, and yet they were very good Christians in their way—ready to pay for an improvement in the chapel, for books for the Sunday-school, or to subscribe money to circulate the Bible or to send forth the missionary. What they lacked was the rarest of Christian virtues—charity; that charity which ‘suffereth long, and is kind; which envieth not; which vaunteth not itself; which is not puffed up; which beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.’ As our young friend set people thinking, refused to repeat old sentences and phrases like a parrot, and avoided religious clap-trap, he was regarded by the deacons with alarm and suspicion.
Just then the shop-bell rang, and the senior deacon left the company of his brother deacons to look after business. In a few minutes he returned, looking a little annoyed.
‘What’s the matter, brother?’ said they all.
‘Who do you think,’ said he, ‘was in the shop just now?’
‘We can’t guess. Pray tell us. The new parson?’
‘Oh no! Rose Wilcox—that poor silly girl the young men here make a fuss about.’
‘What, the girl that used to teach in the Sunday-school, and would have upset us all, had she not taken herself off? A girl who’ll come to no good end,’ said the chemist and druggist, shaking his head.
Perhaps the deacon is right. It is a terrible world, this of ours, for a girl in lowly life who has more than her fair share of feminine beauty. A thousand dangers lurk on every side of her—from the enmity of woman, from the selfish cruelty of man. It is rarely that she does come to a good end.
‘What do you think she said?’ continued the senior deacon. ‘Why, that she came to hear Mr. Wentworth, and that she hopes we are going to have him for the new parson.’
Poor Rose had unwittingly filled up the measure of the new preacher’s guilt. She was the prettiest girl in the town, and, consequently, was supposed to be far, very far from the kingdom. If Mr. Wentworth had preached so as to gain the attention and excite the admiration of a young giddy girl like that, he was not the man for Bethesda; and it must be owned, I frankly admit, that he was not. He lacked what the deacons called unction in the pulpit.
To be popular, to be attractive, to retain a hold on the light and careless and the worldly, was the surest way to alarm the deacons, who guarded jealously the sanctity of the pulpit—a sanctity which had repelled from the chapel the very people whom, now-a-days, the religious world wish to get there. They were not of the world. That was their boast and privilege. They were a chosen people—a peculiar generation.
Outside were the wicked, for whom there was no mercy—nothing but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation of the wrath of God. They looked for empty benches in chapel, for it was only the few that could be saved. If a young person wanted to join the church, the deacons were alarmed and surprised. It was almost a breach of conventional etiquette. Hence the unattractive character of their church life, the bitterness of their profession, the unloveliness of their spirit, the feebleness and failure of their efforts. It was a sin in their eyes to make religion palatable to the worldly. Rarely did the sons of these good men follow in their fathers’ steps, too many of them fell into evil courses, and those of them who did become church members were by no means the salt of the earth. Wentworth, as was to be expected, with his open, manly nature, disliked not a little the spirit of the people—their petty quarrels, their miserable ignorance, their attachment to the letter, their forgetfulness of the spirit of the Gospel.
At Bethesda, as the meeting-house was called, there had been a venerable and godly man in the pulpit for nearly fifty years. Never had the grace of Christian humility been more strikingly displayed than by him. He had ever been thankful for small mercies—for the leg of pork, the ton of coals, the load of wood, the old clothes for his children, the new hat for himself—the casual gifts of sundry of his flock who were not quite so stingy as the rest. The wear and tear of a long life had taken all the fight out of him. Even the parson of the parish held him to be a harmless man, and was sorry to note how the race of such godly men was gradually becoming extinct, as Dissent claimed not kindly patronage, not condescending toleration, but civil and religious equality. A wonderful art had that old man for making things pleasant all round. He was truly all things to all men. The young people rather looked down on him, but he did not mind that. To his deacons he was always respectful, and never did he offend in any way their wives. Indeed, they had been known to take his part when some stray guest, some pert young miss from London town, had endeavoured to make fun of his old battered hat, his rusty black clothes, his patched-up shoes, his grotesque figure, his ancient air, his monotonous delivery, his high doctrine. But the fact was, few young persons did go to meeting, and, as the old people died off, the display of empty benches and empty pews was a sorry spectacle.