THE PREACHER.
The sermon Mr Graham heard at the chapel that Sunday morning in
Kentish Town was not of an elevating, therefore not of a strengthening
description. The pulpit was at that time in offer to the highest
bidder--in orthodoxy, that is, combined with popular talent. The first
object of the chapel’s existence--I do not say in the minds of those
who built it, for it was an old place, but certainly in the minds
of those who now directed its affairs--was not to save its present
congregation, but to gather a larger--ultimately that they might be
saved, let us hope, but primarily that the drain upon the purses of
those who were responsible for its rent and other outlays, might be
lessened. Mr Masquar, therefore, to whom the post was a desirable
one, had been mainly anxious that morning to prove his orthodoxy, and
so commend his services. Not that in those days one heard so much of
the dangers of heterodoxy: that monster was as yet but growling far
off in the jungles of Germany; but certain whispers had been abroad
concerning the preacher which he thought desirable to hush, especially
as they were founded in truth. He had tested the power of heterodoxy to
attract attention, but having found that the attention it did attract
was not of a kind favourable to his wishes, had so skilfully remodelled
his theories that, although to his former friends he declared them in
substance unaltered, it was impossible any longer to distinguish them
from the most uncompromising orthodoxy; and his sermon of that morning
had tended neither to the love of God, the love of man, nor a hungering
after righteousness--its aim being to disprove the reported heterodoxy
of Jacob Masquar.
As they walked home, Mrs Marshal, addressing her husband in a tone of
conjugal disapproval, said, with more force than delicacy,
“The pulpit is not the place to give a man to wash his dirty linen in.”
“Well, you see, my love,” answered her husband in a tone of apology,
“people won’t submit to be told their duty by mere students, and just
at present there seems nobody else to be had. There’s none in the
market but old stagers and young colts--eh, Fred? But Mr Masquar is at
least a man of experience.”
“Of more than enough, perhaps,” suggested his wife. “And the young ones
must have their chance, else how are they to learn? You should have
given the principal a hint. It is a most desirable thing that Frederick
should preach a little oftener.”
“They have it in turn, and it wouldn’t do to favour one more than
another.”
“He could hand his guinea, or whatever they gave him, to the one whose
turn it ought to have been, and that would set it all right.”
At this point the silk-mercer, fearing that the dominie, as he called
him, was silently disapproving, and willing therefore to change the
subject, turned to him and said,
“Why shouldn’t _you_ give us a sermon, Graham?”
The schoolmaster laughed.
“Did you never hear,” he said, “how I fell like Dagon on the threshold
of the church, and have lain there ever since.”
“What has that to do with it?” returned his friend, sorry that his
forgetfulness should have caused a painful recollection. “That is
ages ago, when you were little more than a boy. Seriously,” he added,
chiefly to cover his little indiscretion, “will you preach for us the
Sunday after next?”
Deacons generally ask a man to preach _for_ them.
“No,” said Mr Graham.
But even as he said it, a something began to move in his heart--
a something half of jealousy for God, half of pity for poor souls
buffeted by such winds as had that morning been roaring, chaff-laden,
about the church, while the grain fell all to the bottom of the pulpit.
Something burned in him: was it the word that was as a fire in his
bones, or was it a mere lust of talk? He thought for a moment.
“Have you any gatherings between Sundays?” he asked.
“Yes; every Wednesday evening,” replied Mr Marshal. “And if you won’t
preach on Sunday, we shall announce to-night that next Wednesday a
clergyman of the Church of Scotland will address the prayer meeting.”
He was glad to get out of it so, for he was uneasy about his friend,
both as to his nerve, which might fail him, and his Scotch oddities,
which would not.
“That would be hardly true,” said Mr Graham, “seeing I never got beyond
a licence.”
“Nobody here knows the difference between a licentiate and a placed
minister; and if they did they would not care a straw. So we’ll just
say _clergyman_.”
“But I won’t have it announced in any terms. Leave that alone, and I
will try to speak at the prayer meeting.”
“It won’t be in the least worth your while except we announce it. You
won’t have a soul to hear you but the pew-openers, the woman that
cleans the chapel, Mrs Marshal’s washerwoman, and the old greengrocer
we buy our vegetables from. We must really announce it.”
“Then I won’t do it. Just tell me--what would our Lord have said to
Peter or John if they had told Him that they had been to synagogue
and had been asked to speak, but had declined because there were only
the pew-openers, the chapel-cleaner, a washerwoman, and a greengrocer
present?”
“I said it only for your sake, Graham; you needn’t take me up so
sharply.”
“And ra-a-ther irreverently--don’t you think--excuse me, sir?” said Mrs
Marshal very softly. But the very softness had a kind of jelly-fish
sting in it.
“I think,” rejoined the schoolmaster, indirectly replying, “we must be
careful to show our reverence in a manner pleasing to our Lord. Now I
cannot discover that he cares for any reverences but the shaping of our
ways after his; and if you will show me a single instance of respect of
persons in our Lord, I will press my petition no farther to be allowed
to speak a word to your pew-openers, washerwoman, and greengrocer.”
His entertainers were silent--the gentleman in the consciousness of
deserved rebuke, the lady in offence.
Just then the latter bethought herself that their guest, belonging to
the Scotch Church, was, if no Episcopalian, yet no dissenter, and that
seemed to clear up to her the spirit of his disapproval.
“By all means, Mr Marshal,” she said, “let your friend speak on the
Wednesday evening. It would not be to his advantage to have it said
that he occupied a dissenting pulpit. It will not be nearly such
an exertion either; and if he is unaccustomed to speak to large
congregations, he will find himself more comfortable with our usual
week-evening one.”
“I have never attempted to speak in public but once,” rejoined Mr
Graham, “and then I failed.”
“Ah! that accounts for it,” said his friend’s wife, and the simplicity
of his confession, while it proved him a simpleton, mollified her.
Thus it came that he spent the days between Sunday and Thursday in
their house, and so made the acquaintance of young Marshal.
When his mother perceived their growing intimacy, she warned her son
that their visitor belonged to an unscriptural and worldly community,
and that notwithstanding his apparent guilelessness-- deficiency
indeed--he might yet use cunning arguments to draw him aside from the
faith of his fathers. But the youth replied that, although in the
firmness of his own position as a Congregationalist, he had tried to
get the Scotchman into a conversation upon church government, he had
failed; the man smiled queerly and said nothing. But when a question of
New Testament criticism arose, he came awake at once, and his little
blue eyes gleamed like glow-worms.
“Take care, Frederick,” said his mother. “The Scriptures are not to be
treated like common books and subjected to human criticism.”
“We must find out what they mean, I suppose, mother,” said the youth.
“You’re to take just the plain meaning that he that runneth may
read,” answered his mother.--“More than that no one has any business
with. You’ve got to save your own soul first, and then the souls of
your neighbours if they will let you; and for that reason you must
cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract
people to the hearing of the Word. You have got a fine voice, and it
will improve with judicious use. Your father is now on the outlook for
a teacher of elocution to instruct you how to make the best of it, and
speak with power on God’s behalf.”
When the afternoon of Wednesday began to draw towards the evening,
there came on a mist, not a London fog, but a low wet cloud, which
kept slowly condensing into rain; and as the hour of meeting drew nigh
with the darkness, it grew worse. Mrs Marshal had forgotten all about
the meeting and the schoolmaster: her husband was late, and she wanted
her dinner. At twenty minutes past six, she came upon her guest in the
hall, kneeling on the door-mat, first on one knee, then on the other,
turning up the feet of his trousers.
“Why, Mr Graham,” she said kindly, as he rose and proceeded to look for
his cotton umbrella, easily discernible in the stand among the silk
ones of the house, “you’re never going out on a night like this?”
“I am going to the prayer-meeting, ma’am,” he said.
“Nonsense! You’ll be wet to the skin before you get half way.”
“I promised, you may remember, ma’am, to talk a little to them.”
“You only said so to my husband. You may be very glad, seeing it has
turned out so wet, that I would not allow him to have it announced
from the pulpit. There is not the slightest occasion for your going.
Besides, you have not had your dinner.”
“That’s not of the slightest consequence, ma’am. A bit of bread and
cheese before I go to bed is all I need to sustain nature, and fit me
for understanding my proposition in Euclid. I have been in the habit,
for the last few years, of reading one every night before I go to bed.”
“We dissenters consider a chapter of the Bible the best thing to read
before going to bed,” said the lady, with a sustained voice.
“I keep that for the noontide of my perceptions--for mental high
water,” said the schoolmaster. “Euclid is good enough after supper. Not
that I deny myself a small portion of the Word,” he added with a smile,
as he proceeded to open the door--“when I feel very hungry for it.”
“There is no one expecting you,” persisted the lady, who could ill
endure not to have her own way, even when she did not care for the
matter concerned. “Who will be the wiser or the worse if you stay at
home?”
“My dear lady,” returned the schoolmaster, “when I have on good grounds
made up my mind to a thing, I always feel as if I had promised God to
do it; and indeed it amounts to the same thing very nearly. Such a
resolve then is not to be unmade except on equally good grounds with
those upon which it was made. Having resolved to try whether I could
not draw a little water of refreshment for souls which if not thirsting
are but fainting the more, shall I allow a few drops of rain to prevent
me?”
“Pray don’t let me persuade you against your will,” said his hostess,
with a stately bend of her neck over her shoulder, as she turned into
the drawing-room.
Her guest went out into the rain, asking himself by what theory of the
will his hostess could justify such a phrase---too simple to see that
she had only thrown it out, as the cuttlefish its ink, to cover her
retreat.
But the weather had got a little into his brain: into his soul it was
seldom allowed to intrude. He felt depressed and feeble and dull. But
at the first corner he turned, he met a little breath of wind. It blew
the rain in his face, and revived him a little, reminding him at the
same time that he had not yet opened his umbrella. As he put it up he
laughed.
“Here I am,” he said to himself, “lance in hand, spurring to meet my
dragon!”
Once when he used a similar expression, Malcolm had asked him what he
meant by his dragon; “I mean,” replied the schoolmaster, “that huge
slug, _The Commonplace_. It is the wearifulest dragon to fight in the
whole miscreation. Wound it as you may, the jelly-mass of the monster
closes, and the dull one is himself again--feeding all the time so
cunningly that scarce one of the victims whom he has swallowed suspects
that he is but pabulum slowly digesting in the belly of the monster.”
If the schoolmaster’s dragon, spread abroad as he lies, a vague
dilution, everywhere throughout human haunts, has yet any
_head_-quarters, where else can they be than in such places as that to
which he was now making his way to fight him? What can be fuller of the
wearisome, depressing, beauty-blasting commonplace than a dissenting
chapel in London, on the night of the weekly prayer meeting, and
that night a drizzly one? The few lights fill the lower part with a
dull, yellow, steamy glare, while the vast galleries, possessed by an
ugly twilight, yawn above like the dreary openings of a disconsolate
eternity. The pulpit rises into the dim damp air, covered with brown
holland, reminding one of desertion and charwomen, if not of a chamber
of death and spiritual undertakers, who have shrouded and coffined the
truth. Gaping, empty, unsightly, the place is the very skull of the
monster himself--the fittest place of all wherein to encounter the
great slug, and deal him one of those death blows which every sunrise,
every repentance, every child-birth, every true love deals him. Every
hour he receives the blow that kills, but he takes long to die, for
every hour he is right carefully fed and cherished by a whole army of
purveyors, including every trade and profession, but officered chiefly
by divines and men of science.
When the dominie entered, all was still, and every light had a nimbus
of illuminated vapour. There were hardly more than three present beyond
the number Mr Marshal had given him to expect; and their faces, some
grim, some grimy, most of them troubled, and none blissful, seemed
the nervous ganglions of the monster whose faintly gelatinous bulk
filled the place. He seated himself in a pew near the pulpit, communed
with his own heart and was still. Presently the ministering deacon,
a humbler one in the worldly sense than Mr Marshal, for he kept a
small ironmongery shop in the next street to the chapel, entered,
twirling the wet from his umbrella as he came along one of the passages
intersecting the pews. Stepping up into the desk which cowered humbly
at the foot of the pulpit, he stood erect, and cast his eyes around the
small assembly. Discovering there no one that could lead in singing, he
chose out and read one of the monster’s favourite hymns, in which never
a sparkle of thought or a glow of worship gave reason wherefore the
holy words should have been carpentered together. Then he prayed aloud,
and then first the monster found tongue, voice, articulation. If this
was worship, surely it was the monster’s own worship of itself! No God
were better than one to whom such were fitting words of prayer. What
passed in the man’s soul, God forbid I should judge: I speak but of the
words that reached the ears of men.
And over all the vast of London lay the monster, filling it like the
night--not in churches and chapels only--in almost all theatres, and
most houses--most of all in rich houses: everywhere he had a foot, a
tail, a tentacle or two--everywhere suckers that drew the life-blood
from the sickening and somnolent soul.
When the deacon, a little brown man, about five-and-thirty, had ended
his prayer, he read another hymn of the same sort--one of such as form
the bulk of most collections, and then looked meaningly at Mr Graham,
whom he had seen in the chapel on Sunday with his brother deacon,
and therefore judged one of consequence, who had come to the meeting
with an object, and ought to be propitiated: he had intended speaking
himself. After having thus for a moment regarded him,
“Would you favour us with a word of exhortation, sir?” he said, in a
stage-like whisper.
Now the monster had by this time insinuated a hair-like sucker into
the heart of the schoolmaster, and was busy. But at the word, as the
Red-Cross Knight when he heard Orgoglio in the wood staggered to meet
him, he rose at once, and although his umbrella slipped and fell with
a loud discomposing clatter, calmly approached the reading desk. To
look at his outer man, this knight of the truth might have been the
very high priest of the monster which, while he was sitting there, had
been twisting his slimy, semi-electric, benumbing tendrils around his
heart. His business was nevertheless to fight him, though to fight him
in his own heart and that of other people at one and the same moment,
he might well find hard work. And the loathly worm had this advantage
over the knight, that it was the first time he had stood up to speak in
public since his failure thirty years ago. That hour again for a moment
overshadowed his spirit. It was a wavy harvest morning in a village of
the north. A golden wind was blowing, and little white clouds flying
aloft in the sunny blue. The church was full of well-known faces,
upturned, listening, expectant, critical. The hour vanished in a slow
mist of abject misery and shame. But had he not learned to rejoice over
all dead hopes, and write _Te Deums_ on their coffin-lids? And now he
stood in dim light, in the vapour from damp garments, in dinginess and
ugliness, with a sense of spiritual squalor and destitution in his very
soul. He had tried to pray his own prayer while the deacon prayed his;
but there had come to him no reviving--no message for this handful of
dull souls--there were nine of them in all --and his own soul crouched
hard and dull within his bosom. How to give them one deeper breath? How
to make them know they were alive? Whence was his aid to come?
His aid was nearer than he knew. There were no hills to which he could
lift his eyes, but help may hide in the valley as well as come down
from the mountain, and he found his under the coal-scuttle bonnet of
the woman that swept out and dusted the chapel. She was no interesting
young widow. A life of labour and vanished children lay behind as well
as before her. She was sixty years of age, seamed with the small-pox,
and in every seam the dust and smoke of London had left a stain. She
had a troubled eye, and a gaze that seemed to ask of the universe
why it had given birth to her. But it was only her face that asked
the question; her mind was too busy with the ever recurring enigma,
which, answered this week, was still an enigma for the next--how she
was to pay her rent--too busy to have any other question to ask. Or
would she not rather have gone to sleep altogether, under the dreary
fascination of the slug monster, had she not had a severe landlady,
who _would_ be paid punctually, or turn her out? Anyhow, every time
and all the time she sat in the chapel, she was brooding over ways
and means, calculating pence and shillings--the day’s charing she had
promised her, and the chances of more--mingling faint regrets over past
indulgences --the extra half-pint of beer she drank on Saturday--the
bit of cheese she bought on Monday. Of this face of care, revealing a
spirit which Satan had bound, the schoolmaster caught sight,-- caught
from its commonness, its grimness, its defeature, inspiration and
uplifting, for there he beheld the oppressed, down-trodden, mire-fouled
humanity which the man in whom he believed had loved because it was
his father’s humanity divided into brothers, and had died straining to
lift back to the bosom of that Father. Oh tale of horror and dreary
monstrosity, if it be such indeed as the bulk of its priests on the one
hand, and its enemies on the other represent it! Oh story of splendrous
fate, of infinite resurrection and uplifting, of sun and breeze, of
organ-blasts and exultation, for the heart of every man and woman,
whatsoever the bitterness of its care or the weight of its care, if it
be such as the Book itself has held it from age to age!
It was the mere humanity of the woman, I say, and nothing in her
individuality of what is commonly called the interesting, that
ministered to the breaking of the schoolmaster’s trance. “_Oh ye of
little faith!_” were the first words that flew from his lips--he knew
not whether uttered concerning himself or the charwoman the more; and
at once he fell to speaking of him who said the words, and of the
people that came to him and heard him gladly;--how this one, whom he
described, must have felt, _Oh, if that be true!_ how that one, whom
also he described, must have said, _Now he means me!_ and so laid bare
the secrets of many hearts, until he had concluded all in the misery of
being without a helper in the world, a prey to fear and selfishness and
dismay. Then he told them how the Lord pledged himself for all their
needs--meat and drink and clothes for the body, and God and love and
truth for the soul, if only they would put them in the right order and
seek the best first.
Next he spoke a parable to them--of a house and a father and his
children. The children would not do what their father told them, and
therefore began to keep out of his sight. After a while they began to
say to each other that he must have gone out, it was so long since they
had seen him--only they never went to look. And again after a time some
of them began to say to each other that they did not believe they had
ever had any father. But there were some who dared not say that--who
thought they had a father somewhere in the house, and yet crept about
in misery, sometimes hungry and often cold, fancying he was not
friendly to them, when all the time it was they who were not friendly
to him, and said to themselves he would not give them anything. They
never went to knock at his door, or call to know if he were inside and
would speak to them. And all the time there he was sitting sorrowful,
listening and listening for some little hand to come knocking, and some
little voice to come gently calling through the key-hole; for sorely
did he long to take them to his bosom and give them everything. Only
if he did that without their coming to him, they would not care for
his love or him, would only care for the things he gave them, and soon
would come to hate their brothers and sisters, and turn their own souls
into hells, and the earth into a charnel of murder.
Ere he ended he was pleading with the charwoman to seek her father in
his own room, tell him her troubles, do what he told her, and fear
nothing. And while he spoke, lo! the dragon-slug had vanished; the
ugly chapel was no longer the den of the hideous monster; it was but
the dusky bottom of a glory shaft, adown which gazed the stars of the
coming resurrection.
“The whole trouble is that we won’t let God help us,” said the
preacher, and sat down.
A prayer from the greengrocer followed, in which he did seem to be
feeling after God a little; and then the ironmonger pronounced the
benediction, and all went--among the rest, Frederick Marshal, who
had followed the schoolmaster, and now walked back with him to his
father’s, where he was to spend one night more.