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.