COW-LANE-CHAPEL.
By degrees Mr. Drake's mind grew quiet, and accommodated itself to the
condition of the new atmosphere in which at first it was so hard for him
to draw spiritual breath. He found himself again able to pray, and while
he bowed his head lower before God, he lifted up his heart higher toward
him. His uncle's bequest presenting no appropriative difficulties, he at
once set himself to be a faithful and wise steward of the grace of God,
to which holy activity the return of his peace was mainly owing. Now and
then the fear would return that God had sent him the money in
displeasure, that He had handed him over all his principal, and refused
to be his banker any more; and the light-winged, haunting dread took
from him a little even of the blameless pleasure that naturally
belonged to the paying of his debts. Also he now became plainly aware of
a sore fact which he had all his life dimly suspected--namely, that
there was in his nature a spot of the leprosy of avarice, the desire to
accumulate. Hence he grew almost afraid of his money, and his anxiety to
spend it freely and right, to keep it flowing lest it should pile up its
waves and drown his heart, went on steadily increasing. That he could
hoard now if he pleased gave him just the opportunity of burning the
very possibility out of his soul. It is those who are unaware of their
proclivities, and never pray against them, that must be led into
temptation, lest they should forever continue capable of evil. When a
man could do a thing, then first can he abstain from doing it. Now, with
his experience of both poverty and riches, the minister knew that he
must make them both follow like hounds at his heel. If he were not to
love money, if, even in the free use of it, he were to regard it with
honor, fear its loss, forget that it came from God, and must return to
God through holy channels, he must sink into a purely contemptible
slave. Where would be the room for any further repentance? He would have
had every chance, and failed in every trial the most opposed! He must be
lord of his wealth; Mammon must be the slave, not Walter Drake. Mammon
must be more than his brownie, more than his Robin Goodfellow; he must
be the subject Djin of a holy spell--holier than Solomon's wisdom, more
potent than the stamp of his seal. At present he almost feared him as a
Caliban to whom he might not be able to play Prospero, an Ufreet
half-escaped from his jar, a demon he had raised, for whom he must find
work, or be torn by him into fragments. The slave must have drudgery,
and the master must take heed that he never send him alone to do love's
dear service.
"I am sixty," he said, to himself, "and I have learned to begin to
learn." Behind him his public life looked a mere tale that is told; his
faith in the things he had taught had been little better than that which
hangs about an ancient legend. He had been in a measure truthful; he had
endeavored to act upon what he taught; but alas! the accidents of faith
had so often been uppermost with him, instead of its eternal fundamental
truths! How unlike the affairs of the kingdom did all that
church-business look to him now!--the rich men ruling--the poor men
grumbling! In the whole assembly including himself, could he honestly
say he knew more than one man that sought the kingdom of Heaven
_first_? And yet he had been tolerably content, until they began to turn
against himself!--What better could they have done than get rid of him?
The whole history of their relation appeared now as a mess of untruth
shot through with threads of light. Now, now, he would strive to enter
in at the strait gate: the question was not of pushing others in. He
would mortify the spirit of worldly judgments and ambitions: he would be
humble as the servant of Christ.
Dorothy's heart was relieved a little. She could read her father's
feelings better than most wives those of their husbands, and she knew he
was happier. But she was not herself happier. She would gladly have
parted with all the money for a word from any quarter that could have
assured her there was a God in Heaven who _loved_. But the teaching of
the curate had begun to tell upon her. She had begun to have a faint
perception that if the story of Jesus Christ was true, there might be a
Father to be loved, and being might be a bliss. The poorest glimmer of
His loveliness gives a dawn to our belief in a God; and a small amount
indeed of a genuine knowledge of Him will serve to neutralize the most
confident declaration that science is against the idea of a God--an
utterance absolutely false. Scientific men may be unbelievers, but it is
not from the teaching of science. Science teaches that a man must not
say he knows what he does not know; not that what a man does not know he
may say does not exist. I will grant, however, and willingly, that true
science is against Faber's idea of other people's idea of a God. I will
grant also that the tendency of one who exclusively studies science is
certainly to deny what no one has proved, and he is uninterested in
proving; but that is the fault of the man and his lack of science, not
of the science he has. If people understood better the arrogance of
which they are themselves guilty, they would be less ready to imagine
that a strong assertion necessarily implies knowledge. Nothing can be
known except what is true. A negative may be _fact_, but can not be
_known_ except by the knowledge of its opposite. I believe also that
nothing can be really _believed_, except it be true. But people think
they believe many things which they do not and can not in the real
sense.
When, however, Dorothy came to concern herself about the will of God, in
trying to help her father to do the best with their money, she began to
reap a little genuine comfort, for then she found things begin to
explain themselves a little. The more a man occupies himself in doing
the works of the Father--the sort of thing the Father does, the easier
will he find it to believe that such a Father is at work in the world.
In the curate Mr. Drake had found not only a man he could trust, but one
to whom, young as he was, he could look up; and it was a trait in the
minister nothing short of noble, that he did look up to the
curate--perhaps without knowing it. He had by this time all but lost
sight of the fact, once so monstrous, so unchristian in his eyes, that
he was the paid agent of a government-church; the sight of the man's own
house, built on a rock in which was a well of the water of life, had
made him nearly forget it. In his turn he could give the curate much;
the latter soon discovered that he knew a great deal more about Old
Testament criticism, church-history, and theology--understanding by the
last the records of what men had believed and argued about God--than he
did. They often disagreed and not seldom disputed; but while each held
the will and law of Christ as the very foundation of the world, and
obedience to Him as the way to possess it after its idea, how could they
fail to know that they were brothers? They were gentle with each other
for the love of Him whom in eager obedience they called Lord.
The moment his property was his availably, the minister betook himself
to the curate.
"Now," he said--he too had the gift of going pretty straight, though not
quite so straight as the curate--"Now, Mr. Wingfold, tell me plainly
what you think the first thing I ought to do with this money toward
making it a true gift of God. I mean, what can I do with it for somebody
else--some person or persons to whom money in my hands, not in theirs,
may become a small saviour?"
"You want, in respect of your money," rejoined the curate, "to be in the
world as Christ was in the world, setting right what is wrong in ways
possible to you, and not counteracting His? You want to do the gospel as
well as preach it?"
"That is what I mean--or rather what I wish to mean. You have said
it.--What do you count the first thing I should try to set right?"
"I should say _injustice_. My very soul revolts against the talk about
kindness to the poor, when such a great part of their misery comes from
the injustice and greed of the rich."
"I well understand," returned Mr. Drake, "that a man's first business is
to be just to his neighbor, but I do not so clearly see when he is to
interfere to make others just. Our Lord would not settle the division of
the inheritance between the two brothers."
"No, but he gave them a lesson concerning avarice, and left that to
work. I don't suppose any body is unjust for love of injustice. I don't
understand the pure devilish very well--though I have glimpses into it.
Your way must be different from our Lord's in form, that it may be the
same in spirit: you have to work with money; His father had given Him
none. In His mission He was not to use all means--only the best. But
even He did not attack individuals to _make_ them do right; and if you
employ your money in doing justice to the oppressed and afflicted, to
those shorn of the commonest rights of humanity, it will be the most
powerful influence of all to wake the sleeping justice in the dull
hearts of other men. It is the business of any body who can, to set
right what any body has set wrong. I will give you a special instance,
which has been in my mind all the time. Last spring--and it was the same
the spring before, my first in Glaston--the floods brought misery upon
every family in what they call the Pottery here. How some of them get
through any wet season I can not think; but Faber will tell you what a
multitude of sore throats, cases of croup, scarlet-fever, and
diphtheria, he has to attend in those houses every spring and autumn.
They are crowded with laborers and their families, who, since the
railway came, have no choice but live there, and pay a much heavier rent
in proportion to their accommodation than you or I do--in proportion to
the value of the property, immensely heavier. Is it not hard? Men are
their brothers' keepers indeed--but it is in chains of wretchedness they
keep them. Then again--I am told that the owner of these cottages, who
draws a large yearly sum from them, and to the entreaties of his tenants
for really needful repairs, gives nothing but promises, is one of the
most influential attendants of a chapel you know, where, Sunday after
Sunday, the gospel is preached. If this be true, here again is a sad
wrong: what can those people think of religion so represented?"
"I am a sinful man," exclaimed the pastor. "That Barwood is one of the
deacons. He is the owner of the chapel as well as the cottages. I ought
to have spoken to him years ago.--But," he cried, starting to his feet,
"the property is for sale! I saw it in the paper this very morning!
Thank God!"--He caught up his hat.--"I shall have no choice but buy the
chapel too," he added, with a queer, humorous smile; "--it is part of
the property.--Come with me, my dear sir. We must see to it directly.
You will speak: I would rather not appear in the affair until the
property is my own; but I will buy those houses, please God, and make
them such as His poor sons and daughters may live in without fear or
shame."
The curate was not one to give a cold bath to enthusiasm. They went out
together, got all needful information, and within a month the
title-deeds were in Mr. Drake's possession.
When the rumor reached the members of his late congregation that he had
come in for a large property, many called to congratulate him, and such
congratulations are pretty sure to be sincere. But he was both annoyed
and amused when--it was in the morning during business hours--Dorothy
came and told him, not without some show of disgust, that a deputation
from the church in Cow-lane was below.
"We've taken the liberty of calling, in the name of the church, to
congratulate you, Mr. Drake," said their leader, rising with the rest as
the minister entered the dining-room.
"Thank you," returned the minister quietly.
"I fancy," said the other, who was Barwood himself, with a smile such as
heralds the facetious, "you will hardly condescend to receive our little
gratuity now?"
"I shall not require it, gentlemen."
"Of course we should never have offered you such a small sum, if we
hadn't known you were independent of us."
"Why then did you offer it at all?" asked the minister.
"As a token of our regard."
"The regard could not be very lively that made no inquiry as to our
circumstances. My daughter had twenty pounds a year; I had nothing. We
were in no small peril of simple starvation."
"Bless my soul! we hadn't an idea of such a thing, sir! Why didn't you
tell us?"
Mr. Drake smiled, and made no other reply.
"Well, sir," resumed Barwood, after a very brief pause, for he was a
man of magnificent assurance, "as it's all turned out so well, you'll
let bygones be bygones, and give us a hand?"
"I am obliged to you for calling," said Mr. Drake, "--especially to you,
Mr. Barwood, because it gives me an opportunity of confessing a fault of
omission on my part toward you."
Here the pastor was wrong. Not having done his duty when he ought, he
should have said nothing now it was needless for the wronged, and likely
only to irritate the wrong-doer.
"Don't mention it, pray," said Mr. Barwood. "This is a time to forget
every thing."
"I ought to have pointed out to you, Mr. Barwood," pursued the minister,
"both for your own sake and that of those poor families, your tenants,
that your property in this lower part of the town was quite unfit for
the habitation of human beings."
"Don't let your conscience trouble you on the score of that neglect,"
answered the deacon, his face flushing with anger, while he tried to
force a smile: "I shouldn't have paid the least attention to it if you
had. My firm opinion has always been that a minister's duty is to preach
the gospel, not meddle in the private affairs of the members of his
church; and if you knew all, Mr. Drake, you would not have gone out of
your way to make the remark. But that's neither here nor there, for it's
not the business as we've come upon.--Mr. Drake, it's a clear thing to
every one as looks into it, that the cause will never prosper so long as
that's the chapel we've got. We did think as perhaps a younger man might
do something to counteract church-influences; but there don't seem any
sign of betterment yet. In fact, thinks looks worse. No, sir! it's the
chapel as is the stumbling-block. What has religion got to do with
what's ugly and dirty! A place that any lady or gentleman, let he or she
be so much of a Christian, might turn up the nose and refrain the foot
from! No! I say; what we want is a new place of worship. Cow-lane is
behind the age--and _that_ musty! uw!"
"With the words of truth left sticking on the walls?" suggested Mr.
Drake.
"Ha! ha! ha!--Good that!" exclaimed several.
But the pastor's face looked stern, and the voices dropped into rebuked
silence.
"At least you'll allow, sir," persisted Barwood, "that the house of God
ought to be as good as the houses of his people. It stands to reason.
Depend upon it, He won't give us no success till we give Him a decent
house. What! are we to dwell in houses of cedar, and the ark of the Lord
in a tent? That's what it comes to, sir!"
The pastor's spiritual gorge rose at this paganism in Jew clothing.
"You think God loves newness and finery better than the old walls where
generations have worshiped?" he said.
"I make no doubt of it, sir," answered Barwood. "What's generations to
him! He wants the people drawn to His house; and what there is in
Cow-lane to draw is more than I know."
"I understand you wish to sell the chapel," said Mr. Drake. "Is it not
rather imprudent to bring down the value of your property before you
have got rid of it?"
Barwood smiled a superior smile. He considered the bargain safe, and
thought the purchaser a man who was certain to pull the chapel down.
"I know who the intending purchaser is," said Mr. Drake, "and----"
Barwood's countenance changed: he bethought himself that the conveyance
was not completed, and half started from his chair.
"You would never go to do such an unneighborly act," he cried, "as----"
"--As conspire to bring down the value of a property the moment it had
passed out of my hands?--I would not, Mr. Barwood; and this very day the
intending purchaser shall know of your project."
Barwood locked his teeth together, and grinned with rage. He jumped from
his seat, knocked it over in getting his hat from under it, and rushed
out of the house. Mr. Drake smiled, and looking calmly round on the rest
of the deacons, held his peace. It was a very awkward moment for them.
At length one of them, a small tradesman, ventured to speak. He dared
make no allusion to the catastrophe that had occurred. It would take
much reflection to get hold of the true weight and bearing of what they
had just heard and seen, for Barwood was a mighty man among them.
"What we were thinking, sir," he said, "--and you will please to
remember, Mr. Drake, that I was always on your side, and it's better to
come to the point; there's a strong party of us in the church, sir,
that would like to have you back, and we was thinking if you would
condescend to help us, now as you're so well able to, sir, toward a new
chapel, now as you have the means, as well as the will, to do God
service, sir, what with the chapel-building society, and every man-jack
of us setting our shoulder to the wheel, and we should all do our very
best, we should get a nice, new, I won't say showy, but
attractive--that's the word, attractive place--not gaudy, you know, I
never would give in to that, but ornamental too--and in a word,
attractive--that's it--a place to which the people would be drawn by the
look of it outside, and kep' by the look of it inside--a place as would
make the people of Glaston say, 'Come, and let us go up to the house of
the Lord,'--if, with your help, sir, we had such a place, then perhaps
you would condescend to take the reins again, sir, and we should then
pay Mr. Rudd as your assistant, leaving the whole management in your
hands--to preach when you pleased, and leave it alone when you
didn't.--There, sir! I think that's much the whole thing in a
nut-shell."
"And now will you tell me what result you would look for under such an
arrangement?"
"We should look for the blessing of a little success; it's a many years
since we was favored with any."
"And by success you mean----?"
"A large attendance of regular hearers in the morning--not a seat to
let!--and the people of Glaston crowding to hear the word in the
evening, and going away because they can't get a foot inside the place!
That's the success _I_ should like to see."
"What! would you have all Glaston such as yourselves!" exclaimed the
pastor indignantly. "Gentlemen, this is the crowning humiliation of my
life! Yet I am glad of it, because I deserve it, and it will help to
make and keep me humble. I see in you the wood and hay and stubble with
which, alas! I have been building all these years! I have been preaching
dissent instead of Christ, and there you are!--dissenters indeed--but
can I--can I call you Christians? Assuredly do I believe the form of
your church that ordained by the apostles, but woe is me for the
material whereof it is built! Were I to aid your plans with a single
penny in the hope of withdrawing one inhabitant of Glaston from the
preaching of Mr. Wingfold, a man who speaks the truth and fears nobody,
as I, alas! have feared you, because of your dullness of heart and
slowness of understanding, I should be doing the body of Christ a
grievous wrong. I have been as one beating the air in talking to you
against episcopacy when I ought to have been preaching against
dishonesty; eulogizing congregationalism, when I ought to have been
training you in the three abiding graces, and chiefly in the greatest of
them, charity. I have taken to pieces and put together for you the plan
of salvation, when I ought to have spoken only of Him who is the way and
the life. I have been losing my life, and helping you to lose yours. But
go to the abbey church, and there a man will stir you up to lay hold
upon God, will teach you to know Christ, each man for himself and not
for another. Shut up your chapel, put off your scheme for a new one, go
to the abbey church, and be filled with the finest of the wheat. Then
should this man depart, and one of the common episcopal train, whose God
is the church, and whose neighbor is the order of the priesthood, come
to take his place, and preach against dissent as I have so foolishly
preached against the church--then, and not until then, will the time be
to gather together your savings and build yourselves a house to pray in.
Then, if I am alive, as I hope I shall not be, come, and I will aid your
purpose liberally. Do not mistake me; I believe as strongly as ever I
did that the constitution of the Church of England is all wrong; that
the arrogance and assumption of her priesthood is essentially opposed to
the very idea of the kingdom of Heaven; that the Athanasian creed is
unintelligible, and where intelligible, cruel; but where I find my Lord
preached as only one who understands Him can preach Him, and as I never
could preach Him, and never heard Him preached before, even faults great
as those shall be to me as merest accidents. Gentlemen, every thing is
pure loss--chapels and creeds and churches--all is loss that comes
between us and Christ--individually, masterfully. And of unchristian
things one of the most unchristian is to dispute and separate in the
name of Him whose one object was, and whose one victory will be
unity.--Gentlemen, if you should ever ask me to preach to you, I will do
so with pleasure."
They rose as one man, bade him an embarrassed good morning, and walked
from the room, some with their heads thrown back, other hanging them
forward in worshipful shame. The former spread the rumor that the old
minister had gone crazy, the latter began to go now and then to church.
I may here mention, as I shall have no other opportunity, that a new
chapel was not built; that the young pastor soon left the old one; that
the deacons declared themselves unable to pay the rent; that Mr. Drake
took the place into his own hands, and preached there every Sunday
evening, but went always in the morning to hear Mr. Wingfold. There was
kindly human work of many sorts done by them in concert, and each felt
the other a true support. When the pastor and the parson chanced to meet
in some lowly cottage, it was never with embarrassment or apology, as if
they served two masters, but always with hearty and glad greeting, and
they always went away together. I doubt if wickedness does half as much
harm as sectarianism, whether it be the sectarianism of the church or of
dissent, the sectarianism whose virtue is condescension, or the
sectarianism whose vice is pride. Division has done more to hide Christ
from the view of men, than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.
It is the half-Christian clergy of every denomination that are the main
cause of the so-called failure of the Church of Christ. Thank God, it
has not failed so miserably as to succeed in the estimation or to the
satisfaction of any party in it.
But it was not merely in relation to forms of church government that the
heart of the pastor now in his old age began to widen. It is foolish to
say that after a certain age a man can not alter. That some men can
not--or will not, (God only can draw the line between those two _nots_)
I allow; but the cause is not age, and it is not universal. The man who
does not care and ceases to grow, becomes torpid, stiffens, is in a
sense dead; but he who has been growing all the time need never stop;
and where growth is, there is always capability of change: growth itself
is a succession of slow, melodious, ascending changes.
The very next Sunday after the visit of their deputation to him, the
church in Cow-lane asked their old minister to preach to them. Dorothy,
as a matter of course, went with her father, although, dearly as she
loved him, she would have much preferred hearing what the curate had to
say. The pastor's text was, _Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin,
and have omitted the weightier matters of the law--judgment, mercy, and
faith_. In his sermon he enforced certain of the dogmas of a theology
which once expressed more truth "than falsehood, but now at least
_conveys_ more falsehood than truth, because of the changed conditions
of those who teach and those who hear it; for, even where his faith had
been vital enough to burst the verbally rigid, formal, and indeed
spiritually vulgar theology he had been taught, his intellect had not
been strong enough to cast off the husks. His expressions, assertions,
and arguments, tying up a bundle of mighty truth with cords taken from
the lumber-room and the ash-pit, grazed severely the tenderer nature of
his daughter. When they reached the house, and she found herself alone
with her father in his study, she broke suddenly into passionate
complaint--not that he should so represent God, seeing, for what she
knew, He might indeed be such, but that, so representing God, he should
expect men to love Him. It was not often that her sea, however troubled
in its depths, rose into such visible storm. She threw herself upon the
floor with a loud cry, and lay sobbing and weeping. Her father was
terribly startled, and stood for a moment as if stunned; then a faint
slow light began to break in upon him, and he stood silent, sad, and
thoughtful. He knew that he loved God, yet in what he said concerning
Him, in the impression he gave of Him, there was that which prevented
the best daughter in the world from loving her Father in Heaven! He
began to see that he had never really thought about these things; he had
been taught them but had never turned them over in the light, never
perceived the fact, that, however much truth might be there, there also
was what at least looked like a fearful lie against God. For a moment he
gazed with keen compassion on his daughter as she lay, actually writhing
in her agony, then kneeled beside her, and laying his hand upon her,
said gently:
"Well, my dear, if those things are not true, my saying them will not
make them so."
She sprung to her feet, threw her arms about his neck, kissed him, and
left the room. The minister remained upon his knees.