_PAUL._
"I DO think it, and I will say it!" cried Paul Harley, with impatience.
"Of all days in the week, a Sunday is the worst for New Year's Eve.
It stops all fun, all larking, all hope of adventure. The New Year
steals in like a thief when one is fast asleep in bed; unless, like
that stupid fellow James Barton, one goes to some midnight service in
church, to pray in the New Year, as he says. As if one had not had
enough of that sort of thing all the Sunday!"
"My dear boy—" began his grandfather, Silas Harley, an aged man, who
sat with his arm leaning on the table, and his Bible before him.
What Harley was going to say I cannot tell, for his grandson cut him
short. Paul had been to school, and had learned many things there, of
the knowledge of which he was not a little vain. But one thing, worth
more than mere book-lore, he had not learned, which was to honour his
father and his mother, which includes grandparents also. Paul was
puffed up with pride, as a balloon is puffed out with gas.
[Illustration]
He stood erect by the table, grasping the back of a chair, and looking
down on the venerable man before him, whose white hair Paul should have
honoured, with a saucy look, which seemed to say, "I don't want advice
from you!"
"I wish that I could do this year what I did on last New Year's Eve,"
cried Paul. "A lot of us young fellows got on the top of a coach, and
were off to Enfield for a spree at a farm. How the horses plunged
through the snow; we were upset as nearly as could be!"
"No great fun in that," observed Harley.
"We had no end of snow-balling each other at Gale's farm, as long as
daylight lasted," continued Paul; "and when night came on, we had
dancing 'under the misletoe bough.' Ah! That night, what a merry one
it was! We were just in the midst of a dance, hands round and down the
middle, when the clock struck twelve, and in came the New Year!"
"And Sunday too," observed old Mrs. Harley, who was seated by her
husband. "I hope, Paul, that you left off your dancing?"
Paul only, in reply, gave a saucy laugh, which pained his good
grandparents. They had brought up the orphan boy ever since he had been
a helpless baby, and had now, in return for their loving care, but
disrespect and disobedience.
On the year of which I am writing, the thirty-first of December fell
on a Sunday, and it was on the evening of this Sunday that Paul stood
talking to his grandparents in the little parlour of their home, in one
of the suburbs of London.
"We were sorry not to have you with us at church this morning, Paul,"
observed Harley. The old man and his feeble wife had with no small
difficulty made their way to the house of prayer, to praise their Maker
for mercies received through the closing year, and to ask for His
blessing on the year so soon to open. The New Year to one or both of
them, as they thought, was likely to be the last, but neither of them
feared to "go home" to the rest prepared for the people of God.
"I don't care to go to morning service," replied Paul, bluntly; "I take
my ease, and lie late in bed on Sundays, at least in such freezing
weather as this. But I mean to go to-night to seven o'clock service;
for I like to see the church all lit up, with the gas-lights flaring on
the evergreens and the wreaths with which it is decked. I like, too,
the hymn which is to be sung, it has such a pretty tune." And without
the least reverence of manner, Paul rather bawled out than sang the
first lines of a well-known hymn—
"'A few more years shall roll,
A few more seasons come,
And we shall be with those who sleep
At rest within the tomb.'"
"Hush, my dear child, hush!" cried Mrs. Harley, with a shocked look.
"You don't seem to think of the meaning of the words which you are
singing."
Paul took no notice of the gentle reproof. "It's time for me to be off
to church," said he; "it must be just on seven; I think the bells have
stopped their ringing. Don't stay supper for me; I'm going to Uncle
Sam's after I've been at church; he's to have lobster salad for supper
on New Year's Eve, and I like that a deal better than your porridge. I
mean to stop the night at Uncle Sam's, and get some fun with his boys
on New Year's morning."
"Take your comforter!" cried the grandmother. "You're not the lad to
stand sharp cold; remember that you nearly died of rheumatic fever last
March!"
"I'm not going to coddle myself like an old woman!" exclaimed the boy.
"Cold only catches those who have to creep like snails!" Paul took down
his cap from its peg as he spoke, and went off to church, certainly not
in a mood either to praise or to pray.
The church was not full on New Year's Eve, for the weather was so
extremely cold that some persons who would otherwise have come, dared
not brave the piercing night air. Paul took his usual place in a dark
part of the church, where he could see without being much seen. He sat
during the prayers, and stared about him. Paul looked at the wreaths
and the gas-lights, noticed the fashion of the ladies' bonnets, and
amused himself with his own thoughts. There was no reverence either in
the posture or in the spirit of Paul. He behaved himself in the house
set apart for the worship of the Almighty as he would not have dared to
behave in the Queen's palace; nay, as he would not have dared to behave
in any gentleman's private dwelling.
[Illustration]
Paul's body was in church, but his heart was not there. Now he thought
of to-morrow's sports, now of his lobster supper. Then the lad's
thoughts took a more evil course. Malice and spite were shown in such
reflections as these:—
"I wonder how that James Barton can bear to stay up till midnight in a
church! 'Pray in the New Year,' to be sure! That may be well enough for
old folk, who are not likely to live many more years, but young chaps
like James and me have fifty or sixty before us, and I can't see the
use of all that praying. James wants to be thought better than any one
else. He has given up playing skittles on Sundays, and has taken, I
hear, to keeping a missionary-box. Catch me following his example! I've
something better to do with my pennies.
"I don't like James Barton at all. I have owed him a grudge ever since
our quarrel in a field three years ago, when he got me into a scrape
with a farmer's wife by saying I'd stolen her apples. I've been on the
watch ever since to pay him off for that bit of mischievous meddling.
If I did take the dame's apples, that was no business of his. Fine fun
I had last summer, when I crept up unseen to the neat model of a ship
which James had taken weeks to rig out, and tore her sails, and knocked
a hole in her keel, while he was wandering about in the brushwood
gathering flowers and ferns! I made off as soon as I had done the job,
but I'd have liked to have seen the lad's face, when he came to the
place where he had left his pretty ship, and found her lying broken
and spoiled in the mud! I wonder if he guessed who had played him the
trick? He did not see me, I'm sure of that, for I stole away like a
fox. I suppose that James has now grown so mighty good that, had I
smashed him instead of his ship, he'd have taken it as meek as a lamb.
The next time that we meet, I'll try how he likes a box on the ear."
But I will put down no more of the worse than idle thoughts which,
even in church, passed through the mind of the boy. I have said quite
enough to show that Paul did not for one moment reflect that he was
in the presence of his Maker; that the eye of God was upon him; that
his secret malice was laid bare unto Him who hath declared in His holy
Word, "The thought of foolishness is sin," Prov. xxiv. 9.
Paul only gave over making plans for teasing James when the clergyman
gave out the hymn. We have seen that Paul was vain; and of nothing was
he more vain than what he considered to be a very fine voice. A loud
one it was, without doubt, and Paul took care that it should be heard
all over the church.
A lady, speaking of church music, once said to me, "It makes me tremble
to hear the children sing." My readers may think these very strange
words, but to my mind there was cause for the lady's feeling of fear.
Oh, my young friends, have you ever thought how you may displease the
Lord, even whilst singing a hymn! "Thou shalt not take the name of the
Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who
taketh His name in vain." Is it a light matter to sing of the glory
of the Almighty, or the agonies of His dear Son, as carelessly as if
you were but shouting out some idle ballad? A dark stain of sin was
spreading over the soul of Paul as he boldly sang out, at the top of
his voice, even words so solemn as these:—
"''Tis but a little time,
And Christ the Lord shall come
To take His ransomed people up
To their eternal home.
Then, oh, my Lord, prepare
My soul for that great day;
Oh, wash me in thy precious blood,
And take my sin away!'"
Paul's hymn-singing was a mockery; his very prayer was "turned into
sin!" What thought he of the great Day of Judgment? What thought he of
the "precious blood," of which he dared so loudly to sing?