A PRAYER FOR DIVINE GRACE
Mariona had not, when the Twentieth Century dawned, quite broken with
all its traditions. It was still considered bad form to display wealth
if you had it; and honest poverty still had sincere admirers among the
first citizens. It was better to have had a grandfather who “settled”
in the thirties than to be possessed of much money. There had been a
time when it was not respectable to stay away from church,--when only
here and there some persons, usually called “queer,” habitually refused
the offices of religion. But the old churches had begun to follow their
congregations up-town on the very sensible theory that the individual
church is much like any other institution that depends on public
support,--it must make itself easy for the public to find.
So, many people continued to go to church in Mariona,--the old
element of the community from force of habit and later comers because
their neighbors did, which is not to say that all were not moved by
religious impulses of the sincerest sort. Though we may not love our
neighbors as ourselves in the strictest sense of the commandment we
nevertheless like to appear well in their eyes. The sight of Wiggins
and Mrs. Wiggins going to church in their best clothes and of the
Wiggins children, equally splendid, going to Sunday-school, is well
calculated to awaken in the Morgansons over the way a worthy ambition
to be equally virtuous and splendid. Copeland, the lawyer who never
practised, had announced the dictum that in Mariona, to be respectable,
a man must pay pew rent and own a lot in Beech Hill cemetery; and
Copeland’s dicta were entitled to the respectful attention of all men.
Ezra Dameron was of the old order. He still attended all the services
of the Central Presbyterian Church, of which he had been a member for
forty years. He had held nearly all the offices in the giving of the
congregation at one time or another, beginning in his young manhood as
secretary of the Sunday-school and gradually rising to be an elder,
a position of dignity and honor in the communion, which he held for
twenty years. He had lately refused further election, on the plea of
advancing years; but he continued a most faithful member of the Central
Church, where his pew was under the very shadow of the pulpit.
The hypocrite is not a lovable character; and yet we may sometimes
condemn him with an excess of zeal. It is something gained when a bad
man realizes, no matter how ignobly, that he must deceive the outer
world in order to be countenanced; the only weakness of his position
being that he can not wholly deceive himself, though he may go far
toward doing so. Ezra Dameron had begun to deteriorate in his young
manhood and his pettiness and sordidness had grown steadily. Through
many years he had submitted the other cheek and worn a grieved and
wounded air, as though the world were using him harshly. His wife’s
family had not understood him; they had taken his daughter away from
him; and now that they had educated her according to their own ideas,
they had flung her back upon him, with an injunction to take good care
of her lest fierce penalties be visited upon him. He was a martyr,
he told himself; and his vision was marred by that form of spiritual
myopia which cuts man off from honest self-examination.
Ezra Dameron leaned upon his church--not in a spiritual so much as
a social sense. It afforded him the only opportunity he cared for
of appearing before his fellows clothed in his old broadcloth coat,
that was a veritable garment of righteousness. He was a man of little
imagination, but to walk down the long aisle to his pew during the
playing of the voluntary, and to hear the hymns and the more ambitious
efforts of the choir, and then to settle back for the sermon--these
simple experiences touched him, much as a summer breeze plays upon the
leafy crest of a rough old tree without communicating any motion to the
trunk.
“I usually go to prayer meeting,” said Ezra Dameron to Zelda, one
Thursday evening shortly after her home-coming.
“Yes, father.”
She hesitated a moment. She had gone to church with him on Sunday as
a matter of course, and she debated now whether to offer to go to the
prayer meeting. Her decision was formed suddenly.
“Your mother usually went with me,” her father said.
“I don’t remember. But I should like to go. I shall be ready whenever
you are.”
“I shall be glad to have you go when you like. Of course a young woman
often has conflicting engagements. Don’t feel bound to go when more
tempting things present themselves. I find a certain rest in a mid-week
hour of praise and meditation.”
He bowed his head a trifle, as was his way in saying something he
wished to make impressive.
“Yes; I should think that would be so,” said Zelda.
They walked together to the church, where the prayer meeting was held
in the Sunday-school room. There were not more than twenty people
present, most of them elderly persons. A few young people came, but
Zelda did not know them. One was the president of the Christian
Endeavor Society; the others were teachers in the Sunday-school.
The pastor, the Reverend Arthur Martin, was a young man, without
perceptible phylactery of his calling. He wore a gray sack-coat and
a blue four-in-hand tie, and was very good-looking. He read from
the Bible and prayed. A hymn followed, and everybody sang, except
Zelda. An old gentleman--one of the elders--commented on the passage
of Scripture; then prayer was offered by another member of the
congregation. The services were simple and unpretentious and had the
interest of novelty for Zelda.
It had not occurred to her that her father would participate; he sat
deep in meditation during an interval of silence in the room. Presently
the minister said:
“Mr. Dameron, please lead in prayer.”
The old man rose slowly in his place and after a moment began to
speak, his head lifted, his eyes open and gazing at a spot on the wall
beyond the minister’s head. Zelda’s heart beat fast. The experience
was wholly new and dismaying. She felt oppressed, suffocated, as she
bowed her head and clasped her hands in her lap. Her father’s voice
struck strange upon her ears as he made his petition. He seemed in a
way transformed and uplifted: the words of his prayer were singularly
well chosen as he expressed thanks to God for many blessings. He asked
the divine mercy for the sick and for all who walked in the valley of
the shadow of death. He prayed that they might be safely restored to
health, or, if God willed it, received into the heavenly kingdom. Help
was invoked for the church and all other agencies of mercy; for the
pastor in his labors, and the Sunday-school, the very foundation and
hope of the church.
“Now we especially beg Thy heavenly light upon the parents of this
congregation. We thank Thee for the priceless gift of our children.
Guide us in Thy infinite wisdom that we may lead them aright. Make us
gentle, make us merciful, make us patient, that in all our labors for
them we may fall into no error. For the little children, for the young
men and women of this household of faith, we beg Thy tenderest care,
O merciful Father, for through them Thou wilt lead us to Thy heavenly
kingdom at last.”
His participation through many years in these services had given Ezra
Dameron an easy facility in speaking of divine things. The phraseology
of prayer came naturally to his lips; in public devotions a mood of
exaltation fell on him; there was a kind of intoxication in this hour
in which he found an opportunity for the expression of his faith. These
weekly experiences touched his vanity; he knew that his prayers and
his testimonies of personal experience were a feature of the Thursday
night meetings; a long line of pastors had spoken to him of his
beautiful gift in prayer.
Zelda heard her father’s voice with a kind of awe. Prayer still held
for her a mystery; she had been taught to pray by her mother, and she
had carried through the years a feeling of trust and faith in a power
not her own, but it was unrelated to sects or creeds. She had gone to
countless churches while abroad,--but chiefly in the tourist’s spirit
of adventure. The Merriams had been Presbyterians originally, but as a
family they no longer had any unity of religious faith. Mrs. Forrest
had married an Episcopalian, and when in Mariona she went at Easter
and Christmas to the ivy-clad, stone Gothic church that stood in the
shadow of the monument. Rodney Merriam attended no church. When asked
as to his religion he always said he was a Roman Catholic, and as he
and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Mariona dined together now and then,
there were people in town who really believed that Merriam was a Roman
communicant.
After another hymn and a benediction the meeting closed. The minister
shook hands with Zelda and expressed his pleasure at seeing her; a
number of others spoke to her. Some of them looked at her curiously,
seeing on their own ground a young woman who was much talked about, and
whom they might not have an opportunity of meeting in any other way.
The minister’s wife, a bright-faced young woman, introduced herself to
Zelda.
“It’s a joy to see a new face at prayer meeting,” she said. “It seems
to be an institution for the tried and faithful. I admit that I never
went until I was married.”
“I think I shall come often,” Zelda replied passively.
The pastor’s wife was very pretty. She had just come to town from
another city, and her fall street-gown was of a fresh and bride-like
quality.
“You are the one that sings?” said Mrs. Martin. “I’m just beginning to
get acquainted here; but I’ve heard that about you.”
“I’m one of a million amateurs--that’s all,” replied Zelda.
She walked home with her father, who talked chiefly of the church and
its work and the fine promise of the young minister. Zelda said little.
Her father was inexplicable to her; but he had begun to fascinate
her curiously. She had always accepted the relationships of life as
a matter of course. Decency, order, fidelity, were all essential to
the ordinary trend of life. “Honor thy father and thy mother” was
a commonplace; but to-night she challenged it, as she walked home
from prayer meeting by the side of Ezra Dameron. And after she had
gone to her room, she wondered about him and saw and heard him again
petitioning Heaven. If it had not been for her mother’s testimony she
could have believed in him.