TRUTH WITH FAITHFULNESS.
To possess pure truth--_and to know it_--is a thing which affects people
in two ways, both of them uncomfortable to their fellow-creatures. It
impels some to go pointing out the purity of truth to the world at
large, insisting upon it, dragging unwilling people along the road which
leads to it, and dwelling upon the dangers which attend the neglect of
so great a chance. Others it affects with a calm and comfortable sense
of superiority. The latter was Rebekah's state of mind. To be a Seventh
Day Independent was only one degree removed from belonging to the Chosen
People, to begin with: and that there is but one chapel in all England
where the truth reposes for a space as the Ark of the Covenant reposed
in Shiloh, "in curtains," is, if you please, a thing to be proud of! It
brings with it elevation of soul.
There is at present, whatever there may once have been, no proselytizing
zeal about the Seventh Day Independents; they are, in fact, a torpid
body; they are contented with the conviction--a very comforting one,
and possessed by other creeds besides their own--that, sooner or later,
the whole world will embrace their faith. Perhaps the Jews look forward
to a day when, in addition to the Restoration, which they profess to
desire, all mankind will become proselytes in the court of the Gentiles:
it is something little short of this that the congregation of Seventh
Day Independents expect in the dim future. What a splendid, what a
magnificent field for glory--call it not vain-glory!--does this
conviction present to the humble believer! There are, again, so very few
of them, that each one may feel himself a visible pillar of the Catholic
Church, bearing on his shoulders a perceptible and measurable quantity
of weight. Each is an Atlas. It is, moreover, pleasing to read the Holy
Scriptures, especially the books of the Prophets, as written especially
for a Connection which numbers just one chapel in Great Britain and
seven in the United States. How grand is the name of Catholic applied to
just one church! Catholicity is as yet all to come, and exists only as a
germ or seedling! The early Christians may have experienced the same
delight.
Rebekah, best and most careful of shopwomen and accountants, showed her
religious superiority more by the silence of contempt than by zeal for
conversion. When Captain Tom Coppin, for instance, was preaching to the
girls, she went on with her figures, casting up, ruling in red ink,
carrying forward in methodical fashion, as if his words could not
possibly have any concern with her; and when a church bell rang, or any
words were spoken about other forms of worship, she became suddenly deaf
and blind and cold. But she entreated Angela to attend their services.
"We want everybody to come," she said; "we only ask for a single
hearing; come and hear my father preach."
She believed in the faith of the Seventh Day. As for her father--when a
man is paid to advocate the cause of an eccentric or a ridiculous form
of belief; when he has to plead that cause week by week to the same
slender following, to prop up the limp, and to keep together his small
body of believers: when he has to maintain a show of hopefulness, to
strengthen the wavering, to confirm the strong, to encourage his sheep
in confidence; when he gets too old for anything else, and his daily
bread depends upon this creed and no other--who shall say what, after a
while, that man believes or does not believe? Red-hot words fall from
his lips, but they fall equally red-hot each week; his arguments are
conclusive, but they were equally conclusive last week; his logic is
irresistible; his encouragement is warm and glowing; but logic and
encouragement alike are those of last week and many weeks ago. Surely,
surely there is no worse fate possible for any man than to preach, week
by week, any form whatever of dogmatic belief, and to live by it;
surely, nothing can be more deadly than to simulate zeal, to suppress
doubt, to pretend certainty. But this is dangerous ground, because
others besides Seventh Day Independents may feel that they are upon it,
and that beneath them are quagmires.
"Come," said Rebekah. "We want nothing but a fair hearing."
Their chapel was endowed, which doubtless helped the flock to keep
together. It had a hundred and ten pounds a year belonging to it, and a
little house for the minister, and there were scanty pew rents, which
almost paid for the maintenance of the fabric and the old woman who
cleaned the windows and dusted the pews. If the Reverend Percival
Hermitage gave up that chapel he would have no means of subsistence at
all. Let us not impute motives. No doubt he firmly believed what he
taught: but his words, like his creed, were stereotyped; they had long
ceased to be persuasive; they now served only to preserve.
If Angela had accepted that invitation for any given day there would
have been, she knew very well, a sermon for the occasion, conceived,
written, and argued out expressly for herself. And this she did not
want. Therefore, she said nothing at all of her intentions, but chose
one Saturday when there was little doing and she could spare a forenoon
for her visit.
The chapel of the Seventh Day Independents stands at Redman's Lane,
close to the Advanced Club House. It is a structure extremely plain and
modest in design. It was built by an architect who entertained humble
views--perhaps he was a Churchman--concerning the possible extension of
the Connection, because the whole chapel if quite filled would not hold
more than two hundred people. The front, or façade, is flat, consisting
of a surface of gray brick wall, with a door in the middle and two
circular windows, one on each side. Over the door there are two
dates--one of erection, the other of restoration. The chapel within is a
well-proportioned room, with a neat gallery running round three sides,
resting on low pillars, and painted a warm and cheerful drab; the pews
are painted of the same color. At the back are two windows with
semi-circular arches, and between the windows stands a small railed
platform with a reading-desk upon it for the minister. Beside it are
high seats with cushions for elders, or other ministers if there should
be any. But these seats have never been occupied in the memory of man.
The pews are ranged in front of the platform, and they are of the old
and high-backed kind. It is a wonderful--a truly wonderful--thing that
clergymen, priests, ministers, padres, rabbis, and church architects,
with church-wardens, sidesmen, vergers, bishops, and chapel-keepers of
all persuasions, are agreed, whatever their other differences, in the
unalterable conviction that it is impossible to be religious, that is,
to attend services in a proper frame of mind, unless one is
uncomfortable. Therefore we are offered a choice. We may sit in
high-backed, narrow-seated pews, or we may sit on low-backed,
narrow-seated benches: but sit in comfort we may not. The Seventh Day
people have got the high-backed pew (which catches you on the
shoulder-blade and tries the backbone, and affects the brain, causing
softening in the long run) and the narrow seat (which drags the muscles
and brings on premature paralysis of the lower limbs). The equally
narrow, low-backed bench produces injurious effects of a different kind,
but similarly pernicious. How would it be to furnish one aisle, at
least, of a church with broad, low, and comfortable chairs having arms?
They should be reserved for the poor who have so few easy-chairs of
their own. Rightly managed and properly advertised, they might help
toward a revival of religion among the working classes.
Above the reading platform in the little chapel they have caused to be
painted on the wall the Ten Commandments--the fourth emphasized in
red--with a text or two, bearing on their distinctive doctrine; and in
the corner is a little door leading to a little vestry; but, as there
are no vestments, its use is not apparent.
As for the position taken by these people it is perfectly logical, and,
in fact, impregnable. There is no answer to it. They say, "Here is the
Fourth Commandment. All the rest you continue to observe. Why not this?
When was it repealed? And by whom?" If you put these questions to Bishop
or Presbyter, he has no reply. Because that law has never been repealed.
Yet as the people of the Connection complain, though they have reason
and logic on their side, the outside world will not listen, and go on
breaking the commandment with a light and unthinking heart. It is a
dreadful responsibility--albeit a grand thing--to be in possession of so
simple a truth of such vast importance; and yet to get nobody ever to
listen. The case is worse even than that of Daniel Fagg.
Angela noted all these things as she entered the little chapel a short
time after the service had commenced. It was bewildering to step out of
the noisy streets, where the current of Saturday morning was at flood,
into this quiet room with its strange service and its strange flock of
Nonconformists. The thing, at first, felt like a dream: the people
seemed like the ghosts of an unquiet mind.
There were very few worshippers; she counted them all: four elderly men,
two elderly women, three young men, two girls, one of whom was Rebekah,
and five boys. Sixteen in all. And standing on the platform was their
leader.
Rebekah's father, the Rev. Percival Hermitage, was a shepherd who from
choice led his flock gently, along peaceful meadows and in shady, quiet
places; he had no prophetic fire; he had evidently long since acquiesced
in a certain fact that under him, at least, whatever it might do under
others, the Connection would not greatly increase. Perhaps he did not
himself desire an increase, which would give him more work. Perhaps he
never had much enthusiasm. By the simple accident of birth he was a
Seventh Day Christian; being of a bookish and unambitious turn, and of
an indolent habit of body, mentally and physically unfitted for the life
of a shop, he entered the ministry; in course of time he got this
chapel, where he remained, tolerably satisfied with his lot in life, a
simple, self-educated, mildly pious person, equipped with the phrases of
his craft, and comforted with the consciousness of superiority and
separation. He looked up from his book in gentle surprise when Angela
entered the chapel. It was seldom that a stranger was seen there--once,
not long ago, there was a boy who had put his head in at the door and
shouted "Hoo!" and ran away again; once there was a drunken sailor who
thought it was a public-house, and sat down and began to sing and
wouldn't go, and had to be shoved out by the united efforts of the whole
small congregation. When he was gone they sang an extra hymn to restore
a religious calm--but never a young lady before. Angela took her seat
amid the wondering looks of the people, and the minister went on in a
perfunctory way with his prayers and his hymns and his exposition. There
certainly did seem to an outsider a want of heart about the service, but
that might have been due to the emptiness of the pews. When it came to
the sermon, Angela thought the preacher spoke and looked as if the limit
of endurance had at last almost arrived, and he would not much longer
endure the inexpressible dreariness of the conventicle. It was not so;
he was always mildly sad; he seemed always a little bored; it was no use
pretending to be eloquent any more; fireworks were thrown away; and as
for what he had to say, the congregation always had the same thing,
looked for the same thing, and would have risen in revolt at the
suggestion of a new thing. His sermon was neither better nor worse than
may be heard any day in church or chapel; nor was there anything in it
to distinguish it from the sermons of any other body of Christians. The
outsider left off listening and began to think of the congregation. In
the pew with her was a man of sixty or so, with long black hair streaked
with gray, brushed back behind his ears. He was devout and followed the
prayers audibly, and sang the hymns out of a manuscript music-book, and
read the text critically. His face was the face of a bulldog for
resolution. The man, she thought, would enjoy going to the stake for his
opinions, and if the Seventh Day Independents were to be made the
National Established Church he would secede the week after and make a
new sect, if only by himself. Such men are not happy under authority;
their freedom of thought is as the breath of their nostrils, and they
cannot think like other people. He was not well dressed, and was
probably a shoemaker or some such craftsman. In front of her sat a
family of three. The wife was attired in a sealskin rich and valuable,
and the son, a young man of one or two and twenty, had the dress and
appearance of a gentleman--that is to say, of what passes for such in
common city parlance. What did these people do in such a place? Yet they
were evidently of the religion. Then she noticed a widow and her boy.
The widow was not young; probably, Angela thought, she had married late
in life. Her lips were thin and her face was stern. "The boy," thought
Angela, "will have the doctrine administered with faithfulness." Only
sixteen altogether; yet all, except the pastor, seemed to be grimly in
earnest and inordinately proud of their sect. It was as if the emptiness
of their benches and their forsaken condition called upon them to put on
a greater show of zeal and to persuade themselves that the cause was
worth fighting for. The preacher alone seemed to have lost heart. But
his people, who were accustomed to him, did not notice this despondency.
Then Angela, while the sermon went slowly on, began to speculate on the
conditions belonging to such a sect. First of all, with the apparent
exception of the lady in sealskin and her husband and son, the whole
sixteen--perhaps another two or three were prevented from
attending--were of quite the lower middle class; they belonged to the
great stratum of society whose ignorance is as profound as their
arguments are loud. But the uncomfortableness of it! They can do no work
on the Saturday--"neither their man-servant nor their
maid-servant"--their shops are closed and their tools put aside. They
lose a sixth part of the working time. The followers of this creed are
as much separated from their fellows as the Jews. On the Sunday they may
work if they please, but on that day all the world is at church or at
play. Angela looked round again. Yes; the whole sixteen had upon their
faces the look of pride; they were proud of being separated; it was a
distinction, just as it is to be a Samaritan. Who would not be one of
the recipients, however few they be in number, of Truth? And what a
grand thing, what an inspiriting thing, it is to feel that some day or
other, perhaps not to-day nor to-morrow, nor in one's lifetime at all,
the whole world will rally round the poor little obscure banner, and
shout all together, with voice of thunder, the battle-cry which now
sounds no louder than a puny whistle-pipe! Yet, on the whole, Angela
felt it must be an uncomfortable creed; better be one of the
undistinguished crowd which flocks to the parish church and yearns not
for any distinction at all. Then the sermon ended and they sang another
hymn--the collection in use was a volume printed in New York, and
compiled by the committee of the Connection, so that there were
manifestly congregations on the other side of the Atlantic living in the
same discomfort of separation.
At the departure of the people Rebekah hurried out first, and waited in
the doorway to greet Angela.
"I knew you would come some day," she said, "but oh! I wish you had told
me when you were coming, so that father might have given one of his
doctrine sermons. What we had to-day was one of the comfortable
discourses to the professed members of the church which we all love so
much. I am so sorry. Oh, he would convince you in ten minutes!"
"But, Rebekah," said Angela, "I should be sorry to have seen your
service otherwise than usual. Tell me, does the congregation to-day
represent all your strength?"
Rebekah colored. She could not deny that they were, numerically, a
feeble folk.
"We rely," she said, "on the strength of our cause--and some day--oh!
some day--the world will rally round us. See, Miss Kennedy, here is
father; when he has said good-by to the people"--he was talking to a
lady in sealskin--"he will come and speak to us."
"I suppose," said Angela, "that this lady is a member of your chapel?"
"Yes," Rebekah whispered. "Oh, they are quite rich people--the only
rich people we have. They live at Leytonstone; they made their money in
the book-binding, and are consistent Christians. Father,"--for at this
moment Mr. Hermitage left his rich followers in the porch--"this is Miss
Kennedy, of whom you have heard so much."
Mr. Hermitage took her hand with a weary smile, and asked Rebekah if
Miss Kennedy would come home with her.
They lived in a small house next door to the chapel. It was so small
that there was but one sitting-room, and this was filled with books.
"Father likes to sit here," said Rebekah, "by himself all day. He is
quite happy if he is let alone. Sometimes, however, he has to go to
Leytonstone."
"To the rich people?"
"Yes," Rebekah looked troubled. "A minister must visit his flock, you
know: and if they were to leave us it would be bad for us, because the
endowment is only a hundred and ten pounds a year, and out of that the
church and the house have got to be kept in repair. However, a clergyman
must not be dictated to, and I tell father he should go his own way and
preach his own sermons. Whatever people say, truth must not be hidden
away as if we were ashamed of it! Hush! Here he is."
The good man welcomed Angela, and said some simple words of gratitude
about her reception of his daughter. He had a good face, but he wore an
anxious expression as if something was always on his mind; and he sighed
when he sat down at his table.
Angela stayed for half an hour, but the minister said nothing more to
her; only when she rose to go he murmured with another heavy sigh,
"There's an afternoon service at three."
It is quite impossible to say whether he intended this announcement as
an invitation to Angela, or whether it was a complaint, wrung from a
heavy heart, of a trouble almost intolerable.