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.