PREPARING FOR CONFIRMATION.
With the autumn began for the pastor the most pleasing duty of the
year--the instruction of his class for confirmation. He announced in
church one Sunday that after the service he would be in the sacristy to
take the names of any of the young people who wished to join the
proposed class. He was sitting in the sacristy at the appointed time,
with a group of young rustics standing about him, when Johanson came
quietly in.
"I can attend to you first," said the pastor, turning kindly towards the
dark-bearded man.
"I can wait; I am in no hurry," was the reply.
The waiting was long, as had been expected. When the boys and girls had
all gone out, Johanson stepped to the pastor's side and said, "Please
put down my name."
"For what?" asked the pastor, in astonishment.
"For the confirmation class," was the calm reply. "I have never been
confirmed."
The pastor had noticed, naturally, that Johanson had not been forward to
the Lord's Supper even when the cellar-master had been helped up the
aisle from the poorhouse seat near the door, and Gull and the half-mad
poet had decorously followed. At this he had hardly been surprised, for
there were other members of the congregation who did not communicate
more than once a year. The good man felt a sudden repulsion towards the
stranger still without the Christian pale.
"You wish then to be confirmed?" said the pastor, looking Johanson
directly in the eye.
"I wish to receive the instruction, and it will be your duty to judge of
my fitness afterwards," was the reply.
"Perhaps I could find time to teach you privately, though it is a busy
season, with all the certificates of removal and that kind of thing,"
said the pastor doubtfully.
"I would rather be taught as you teach these young people," said
Johanson. "Please try to forget that I am not a boy."
That was a hard duty to impose on the pastor, who looked into the
browned face and the troubled dark eyes. He did not promise, but simply
said, "The class, as you heard, will meet in the dining-room at the
parsonage on Wednesday afternoon. I hope the instructions may be blessed
to you," and they parted.
Wednesday came. The available chairs in the pastor's simple home had
been ranged in long rows on each side of the dining-room.
"May I sit here, dear, with my work?" said the pastor's wife, coming in
with a basket of stockings in one hand, her needle and yarn for darning
in the other.
She did not expect to be refused, nor was she, though a little girl of
five years old, her only child, held pertinaciously on to her dress. "I
may come too, papa; I am sure I may," said a sweet, cheery voice, and
only a pleasant smile was the reply. The mother sat down in one of the
chairs still at the table, and the little girl took joyously a place at
her side.
"I always like to hear your confirmation instructions, for many
reasons," said the wife. "I seem to take a fresh start in the right
direction with the children."
The pastor seated himself at the head of the table, with his books
before him, laying near them the list of the names of the class.
The pastor was a stout, sensible-looking man, with a plain, quiet face,
and a modest, shy air. Indeed, he was hardly at ease anywhere, except in
his home, or in the pulpit or chancel, where the sense of the sacredness
of his official duties made him unmindful of earthly witnesses.
Now he thought it a stay to have his wife with him; for the informal
nature of the meeting, and the beginning of something new, made the
whole at first an effort for him.
Perhaps the pastor, in the presence of persons of high standing, found
it impossible to forget his humble birth, and suspected that in some way
there was always a lack of gentility about him; while with companions of
more modest pretensions he must maintain the distant dignity which he
fancied appertained to his profession.
He was a straightforward, matter-of-fact man, who intended in all
things, temporal and spiritual, to do his duty. He believed fully in the
inspiration of the Bible from cover to cover, and was possibly convinced
that every word, and almost every letter, in the then authorized
Swedish version had a sanction not to be disputed. In his view the
sacraments, properly administered, were direct, undoubted channels of
grace. The organization of his church was perfect, he was sure, to the
least particular, and would have the approval of the apostles were they
now on earth, though during their lives the circumstances of their
surroundings might have made it impossible for them to have their
ministrations conducted according to the admirable order so long
established in Sweden. Martin Luther he looked upon as having a kind of
supplemental apostleship, almost as incontestable as that of Peter
himself. Luther's catechism was for him the best medium for imparting
religious instruction to children, and for strengthening the Christian
life of young people approaching maturity. With this sound, hearty
belief in what he was called on to teach, and with the rules for his
ministrations, his work was simple and most agreeable.
The pastor was not an emotional man. He had never been deeply stirred by
religious feelings of any kind. He had had no agonies of penitence, no
distressing doubts, no strong struggles with temper, no vivid thought of
the possibility of his being excluded from eternal blessedness. His
heavenly Father was to him rather a theological abstraction than a near
and ever-loving friend. The Saviour was to him more an element in a
perfect creed than the Deliverer--the hand stretched out to the drowning
man--the one hope of poor tempted humanity.
The pastor was, in his way, a good man, a kind man, an unselfish, true,
sincere man. Peaceful he lived, peaceful he ministered, and yet heart to
heart he came with no human brother. With no human brother, we say; but
there was one woman whose life interpenetrated his, if they did not in
all things come heart to heart. Her presence gave him a sense of
sunshine and quiet happiness that was the greatest joy of which his
nature was capable.
Merry, impulsive, devoted, self-sacrificing by nature, the whole
existence of the pastor's wife was pervaded by a Christian life that
exalted her naturally lovely traits, and made her shortcomings the
source of a sweet, childlike penitence that was almost as lovely and
attractive as her virtues. She had soon found that the deep language of
her inner soul was to her husband an unknown tongue. Of her spiritual
struggles and joys and exaltations she did not speak to him or to any
other human being. They were her secret with her God and Saviour. Yet
her husband stood to her on a pinnacle, as rounded in character,
blameless in life, and perfect in his ministrations. Almost angelic he
seemed to her when he stood in the chancel, and in his deep, melodious
voice sang all the parts of the service that the church rules allowed to
be so given.
The pastor's sermons were excellent compositions. Compositions they were
in the strictest sense of the word. The epistles and gospels for the
ecclesiastical year were the authorized and usual subjects for the
sermons, being called even in common parlance "the text for the day."
These texts had been so elaborated and expounded by wise divines whose
works were to be had in print, that when a sermon was to be written, our
pastor but got out his books of sermons, studied, compared, compiled,
extracted, transformed, and rewrote, until on Friday his sermon for the
coming Sunday was always ready. He had made it his own by hard,
conscientious work, and not without a deep sense that he was, in his
way, to deliver a divine message as an authorized ambassador of the King
of kings, accredited and appointed in an unimpeachable manner.
With his confirmation class the pastor was different. He was fond of
young people. He had been young himself, and had not forgotten the
circumstance.
He was getting a little impatient to see the fresh faces he was
expecting at the first meeting of the class, when Johanson made his
appearance, bowed distantly, and took the seat nearest the door. He had
passed through a knot of young people without, who were, with some
cuffing and shoving, contending who should go in first on this to them
august occasion. Johanson had left the door slightly ajar, and little
Elsa, the pastor's child, having caught a glimpse of a familiar face,
ran out, to come back immediately leading triumphantly a rosy-cheeked
girl, who was all blushes as she was brought into the dining-room, made
to her for the time sacred ground. Of course, the whole troop from
without, boys and girls, followed, taking opposite sides of the room.
It proved that Johanson had taken his seat on the girls' side, and
carefully away from him the skirts of those nearest to him were drawn;
for it had been whispered around the parish that the queer man at the
poorhouse had never been confirmed. An outcast of the outcasts he must
be, was the common conviction.
A hymn was to be sung, all sitting, to open the meeting. Little Elsa
went round with the "psalm-books" in a basket, and began with Johanson,
who took one as he was requested. The pastor began, and the young voices
joined him. There was a hush for a second, when a wonderful tenor came
in, and seemed to fill the room with a strange melody.
But one verse was sung; then followed a short prayer from the church
liturgy, after which the lesson began.
Johanson sat alone in his corner, when Elsa tripped away from her
mother, and giving a gleeful little hop, she seated herself beside him,
laid her small hand lightly on his knee, and looked up at him lovingly
and protectingly as she did so. Now she felt she really owned him. He
was _her_ poor man, a kind of friend and relation to her.
Through all those long preparatory lessons Elsa kept her place by the
side of the dark man, without word or comment from her parents.
The time for the confirmation was drawing near. "I do not know what I
shall do about Johanson," said the pastor to his wife. "I get nothing
from him in the class except plain, direct, and most correct answers to
my questions. I suppose it must be all right, but we don't seem to come
near to each other at all. He is a wild, strange man. Perhaps you could
somehow get on better with him."
"Maybe Elsa could," said the wife. "_She_ loves him. Perhaps that is
what he feels the need of among us who call ourselves Christians."
"Call ourselves Christians!" repeated the pastor, in as severe a tone of
reproach as he had ever addressed to his wife.
She did not seem to notice his manner, but went on: "Elsa might reach
him. You know it says, 'A little child shall lead them.' I'll send her
to the poorhouse this afternoon with a message to Johanson from me, and
the book she likes so much. I know which is her favourite picture, and
she will be sure to tell him about it."
"Send her to the poorhouse!" exclaimed the pastor.
"She's been there often with me when I've been there to wind up Gull's
clock, which she is sure to get out of order if Gull touches it herself.
Elsa is not afraid of any of them, even of the cellar-master. He really
likes her."
The pastor was called away suddenly, and he was glad, for that was one
of the occasions when he did not quite understand his wife.