The Man Who Preached in Noah's Ark, and
Some of His Hearers.
Noah's Ark was a big, bare building, frigid in its lack of adornment
or grace. Two things only made it fit for a place of worship--one
who preached and those who listened. The woollen workers of Liddon
with their drab-gowned, prim-bonneted women, filled the hard benches,
women and young children on one side of the house, and men and boys
on the other. Percy and Vere were seated with Ned and the doctor,
with Betty and Bee just across the broad aisle. They were
fashionably late, and the whole congregation were singing, without a
touch of instrumental music to lead the hard strength of their
voices--
"Let the house of the Lord be filled with glory, Hallilujah."
Three times they sang the line, their voices swelling in a harsh
exaltation that was almost menacing.
"Let the preacher be filled with Thy love,
Hallilujah.
"Let the members be filled with Thy love,
Hallilujah".
Ten verses in all they sang, each consisting of the triple repeating
of one line. Betty listened with the distaste of an educated music
lover, yet she was oddly fascinated by the strength that showed in
every note of the shouted hymn. These Methodists hurled their joy
and confidence in God like a gauntlet of defiance at some unseen foe,
and Percy's blood tingled. He recalled a morning on the hills of
Spain, before the battle of Vimiero, when he had been with
Wellington's army. There was the same intense sense of many men held
together for one thing, and swayed absolutely by one man's words; but
here, both the Commander and Enemy of these Methodists were of the
other world, and according to Percy's arid philosophy, probably did
not exist. He had fed his mind on Rousseau and Tom Paine, till he
believed the miraculous and supernatural were scientifically
impossible, and he felt irritated at the very tangible faith of these
people in intangible possibilities.
The congregation were seated again, and George Ferguson in his
regimentals, a splash of scarlet in that hall of grays and drabs,
stood at the preacher's desk. He was a slightly built man, about
twenty-four, and in no sense an orator, but he had a good voice and
delivery, and believed so intensely in what he said that his simple
words had a certain power.
He was telling his own story--"I was born August 1, 1786, in Derry,
Ireland. My parents were respectable and in comfortable
circumstances, but though members of the Church of England, had no
knowledge of spiritual things. I was allowed to follow my own
inclination and became very wicked and profane. The one exception to
the godlessness round me was an aunt--a Methodist--who grieved at the
way I was growing up, and would talk to me of my soul. So I became
anxious, fearing to lie down to sleep lest I should wake in hell. I
would lie awake groaning and sobbing, 'Oh, God, have mercy on me.' I
went whenever I could with my aunt to class meetings and preachings,
and at one I wept openly, saying when spoken to--'I am so wicked. I
am not washed in the Blood, and I am afraid I shall be lost. May God
have mercy on me.' The preacher and class prayed with me, and then
he said, laying his hand on my head, 'George, you will yet go to
preach the Gospel to sinners.' So I obtained grace, and resolved to
turn from my sinful manner of life, being then seven."
The last words came as a shock to Percy, who wondered what kind of
sinful life could be lived by a boy under seven in a respectable
home. But the congregation saw nothing incongruous in it; they
shouted "Amens" and "Hallilujah" as the speaker paused, then
listened, many groaning aloud as he went on to tell of his "fall from
grace". His parents moved from Derry into the country where there
were no Methodists, and he drifted with other boys into attending
cock-fights, and horse races on Sundays. At sixteen he was bound out
for three years to learn his trade at a muslin factory. The hours
there were long, and the work and confinement very hard to a boy
accustomed to the indulgence of home. "I felt like Israel in Egypt
in bondage under taskmasters," he said quaintly, "but in my dungeon I
saw the Cloud, the Pillar, the Rock, the quails and the manna that I
had rejected, and I hungered for them. I joined the Methodist
Society as a probationer, I read the Bible daily on my knees, I
retired for prayer seven times a day, I fasted entirely every Friday,
and kept close watch over my words and conduct, hoping to find peace
with God. The persecutions of my shopmates were hot and heavy, but I
was convinced I must be singular, I felt it was life or death--death
to live after the flesh. Mental distress and severe fasting reduced
me to a skeleton, and my master kindly sent me home on a visit, but
it was my soul that was suffering, I felt I had sinned beyond the
mercy of God. I was tempted to give up. If God could not pardon me
I had better know the worst of my case at once, by putting an end to
my miserable life. I took a rope to an old warehouse one night,
fixed it to a beam, and made a noose."
He paused dramatically, and his audience leaned forward with excited
faces. All the colour and passion that raised their lives from
grayness was in the unseen world. The excitement that outsiders
sought in theatre and lurid novel, in war and gambling for high
stakes, the early Methodist found in these soul-conflicts with the
Enemy.
In a wonderfully soft voice Ferguson continued, "As clear as if
spoken I heard the words, 'Pray first'. I instantly fell on my face,
crying to God for Christ's sake to have mercy on me--on vile and
wretched me. In a moment the rock was smitten, and I rested on
Christ. I threw myself in the Blood of the Atonement crying--'Wash
me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.' In a
moment hope took the place of despair. I had peace with God. I
loved God above all things. Christ was the altogether lovely."
Ferguson's voice had risen to a shout, he stamped his feet and
clapped his hands in an ecstasy, as his words rang above the tumult
of the congregation, who were now jumping up and down in their seats,
weeping, singing, shouting "Hallilujah", clapping their hands, while
some fell on the floor where they lay rigid as if in a trance. Betty
half rose, then sat very still. Bee was rather too astonished to be
able to think, and Percy was studying Ferguson's face. Its features
showed the Scotch blood that is the backbone of Ulster, and a
stainless life with much fasting and prayer, had given it an intense
refinement. There was as little sign of mental as of moral weakness
in it. Percy told himself the man was self-deluded; but in his heart
he was not quite sure of it.
The congregation quieted enough to hear the preacher again, and
Ferguson resumed, "I returned to work a new creature. I thought I
was out of Babylon--that the Enemy had done with me; I expected this
'time of singing birds' to last the whole year. But the Enemy said
to me, 'You are young, if you tell of this wonderful change people
will not believe you. Keep it to yourself till you see if you can
hold out. If you don't you may hurt the cause of God'. So--
'I was brought into thrall, I was stript of
my all,
I was banished from Jesu's face.'"
The audience intent on every phase of this soul-drama, groaned deeply
as they swayed to and fro in their seats, and Ferguson lingered over
the details of his next three months of mental agony. "But on June
11, 1805, I secured peace at last. Though I was in the shop I began
at once to praise God aloud, and my shop mates said, 'The matter is
decided at last, George is quite crazy.'"
Again the joyful tumult rose, and Percy felt irritated. He lived
above the low moral standards of his day, and he thought it
preposterous to preach that nothing saved a man but this converting.
How could Ferguson with his intelligence believe that without
salvation he was as low in the sight of God, as the vilest man on
earth? Then he looked at the boys by him. Ferguson and the elders
were shouting Bible promises above the "blessed disorder", and urging
penitents to come forward. Ned, white-faced, and trembling with
excitement, but with determination in his eyes, rose and held out his
hand to Vere. Percy saw in his cousin's face a reflection of the
whirl of feeling round him, and had a vision of himself breaking the
news to Sir John that the heir of the Haslems had knelt at a
Methodist penitent bench. Then he wondered if this mad religion
might not give Vere the moral strength he knew he needed. On the
spur of that thought, he whispered to the wavering boy, "Ferguson's a
straight man, if you believe what he says, go forward."
But Ned went up alone. All that was good in Vere clung to Ned, and
whatever sense of peace and strength he knew, he had met only in Dr.
Brown's home, but he felt he could not face his grandfather's anger,
nor give up in a moment his habits of idleness, and his drifting into
doubtful pleasures rather than seeking them.
After the meeting the boys stood together, Ned quivering with the
thought that he had pledged every fibre of his strong young body
forever to the service of the Lord who had died for him. Vere said
eagerly, "I feel as you do, Ned, but I can't go forward. If you were
in my place--if my grandfather were yours, you would keep your
religion to yourself for a little while."
And Ned, as was his habit, excused Vere and believed him. So the
boys parted, Ned joining his grandfather who pressed five guineas
into Ferguson's hand, as he bade him good-bye, saying, "If ever thee
passes this way again, George, remember my house is also the home of
all weary pilgrims on the road to Canaan, no matter what the colour
of their coats may be."
The young soldier listened with bowed head, until he went off, and it
was six months later that a messenger brought Dr. Brown and Ned a
thick letter from Battle Barracks, Sussex, where Ferguson's regiment
was quartered. Ned's letter was mainly advice to young Christians,
mixed with bits of the writer's experiences. "In a crowded, noisy
room," Ferguson wrote, "I have learnt the secret of lying on my cot
so shut away in spirit from my surroundings, that I can hear the
voices that speak to my soul as distinct as if I was in a solitude."
Ned was walking just outside the town as he read the letter, and then
he met Vere, who exclaimed excitedly, "Glorious news, Ned! Sir
John's going to get me a commission as soon as I'm sixteen--next
month, and I'll be off to see life in his Majesty's service."
In spite of his up-bringing in a Quaker home Ned felt half-envious of
his friend's future, and Vere went on impulsively. "What are you
going to be, Ned? You don't want to spend your life taking pills to
old women. Of course you couldn't expect your grandfather to help
you to be a soldier, yet it's the only life for a gentleman. Why
don't you write to your father and tell him you want to enter the
army like me? That little cat, Bee, talks as if he was quite well
off--almost a gentleman."
Ned did not answer, he really knew nothing of his father. Certainly
very interesting and valuable presents came to him every year on his
birthday, from far-off York, where Mr. Edgar lived with the second
wife he had married and her three little boys; but he seemed to have
given his eldest son entirely up to his grandfather.
So Vere went away, but Ned was far too loyal to his grandfather to
ever think of appealing to an unknown father against him.
Nevertheless, now that Vere's departure had broken off all his
connection with Haslem Towers, he began to feel that life at Liddon
was very dull. He saw Bee sometimes when she rode out with Betty;
she was growing up into a tall girl, but she still smiled at him with
a child's frank friendship. Betty decidedly refused to forbid this
very slight intercourse, when Sir John grumbled at it, so he said no
more, for Bee had grown very dear to him. He was content to give her
her own way in calling herself by her father's name, but he was
resolved that some day she should marry her cousin, Vere, and be
mistress of Haslem Towers. Her refinement of spirit and high
courage, he thought, might save the unhappy boy, who in the
temptations of an idle garrison life was showing many signs of moral
and mental weakness; Sir John refused to believe the worst. "Boys
will be boys," he said impatiently to Betty. "Of course I'll pay his
debts again, and ask no questions; if he sows all his wild oats now,
he'll make all the better husband for our little maid later. She'll
steady him fast enough, never fear--Bee Goode, as the minx insists on
calling herself, not bad, eh! She shall be his wife on the day he is
twenty-one, and she will be seventeen."
Betty felt a womanly reluctance to think of Bee thus sacrificed, yet
she went on helping to train Bee in the ignorance of life that should
make her unable to resist when those she loved and trusted pushed her
skilfully into marriage. Betty, though a good woman, was warped by
the artificial world in which she lived; she knew that Bee's parents
had left her nothing; her brother, Eli, five years older, was with
relatives in Boston, but Bee, when seven, had been adopted by the
Edgars, who had given her up unwillingly to Sir John. Betty could
not imagine any lot for a girl but marriage; and surely, she honestly
believed, luxury in England, even with the lowest of husbands, was
better than exile in some howling wilderness.
Bee had not forgotten her American brother, or her Canadian friends,
but she never heard from either, and she believed Sir John when he
blamed French privateers for the destruction of the Atlantic mail.
She still wrote sometimes, but as none of her letters went overseas,
her friends there naturally thought she had forgotten them in English
luxury. Vere, who knew his grandfather's plan, hated Bee with all
his mean little soul, but never dreamed of refusing to obey; and Bee,
who had not the faintest idea that she was destined by her kin to be
her cousin's wife, still despised him. Conditions of thought round
her, however, were gradually bringing her to feel that it was the
bounden duty of the relatives of the heir of Haslem Towers to make
any sacrifice to save him.
In the big world outside Liddon much was happening. England, with
her industries crippled, her commerce half-strangled, and seeing the
carrying trade slipping into American hands, passed the unfortunate
Orders-in-Council proclaiming any ship that did not touch an English
port the lawful prey of her men-of-war. The answer of the United
States was an immediate threat of war, should the order not be
rescinded. England, fearing to lose Canada, whom she could not then
defend--she did not imagine that Canada could defend
herself--rescinded the orders, all of which did not prevent the
States from declaring war on June 18, 1812.
The post that brought the news to Liddon also brought a letter for
Ned from his father--"Upper Canada will be invaded before this
reaches you," Edgar wrote. "We have a population of 70,000--both the
Canadas have only 225,000, against the eight millions of the States,
but we mean to keep the old flag flying. We have 1,500 miles of
frontier to defend, and only 4,000 English regulars to help us do it.
We have appointed our Governor, General Isaac Brock, as Commander,
and are calling out every man between eighteen and forty-five. I am
going, and I began this letter meaning to command you, as my son, to
start for Canada at once, and add one more man to our little army.
My friend, Surgeon Tam, at the Isle of Wight, would arrange for your
passage out. You may refuse to obey me; I know you belong to a
religion that teaches a man that he can enjoy the protection of the
laws of a country, and grow rich there, but he must not fight in its
battles. It is a 'sin' for him to go to war, but quite right to
accept the safe living that other men are dying to defend. I cannot
compel you to obey me, but, oh my son, won't you give up your
religion and come to be my comrade? I have a wife, whom you would
love if you knew her, and three little boys; won't you be near to
give them a protection if I fall? No one can doubt the righteousness
of our cause. I don't deny England has often sinned and blundered,
but no land on earth has sinned and blundered so seldom as she, and
her flag is the only one that shall ever wave over Canada--so help
us, God! The American people have been excited by exaggerated
stories of England's claiming the right to search their ships for
deserters from her navy, but the President and Congress wish to take
our country--our Canada. Will you come to be a soldier, to help me,
your father?; or is your honour less to you than this Methodist
salvation?"
Silently Ned laid the letter before his grandfather; the Quaker
doctor read it, looked at the boy keenly, and said quietly--"Thee
means to go, I see, but what of giving up thy faith?"
"Grandfather, I am a Methodist, not a Friend. I know some of our
people think with you about war, but others are like Ferguson, whom
you call a good man. I must go, to show my father that I can; I must
keep my religion, yet fight bravely beside him. Don't you think I
ought to go? Don't you think Canada is in the right?"
The Quaker looked at him wistfully. Ned was nineteen, and careful
rearing, and the habits of self-discipline that his rigid faith
taught him, had given both his body and mind the strength of tempered
steel. Dr. Brown had planned he should be a healer of wounds and a
saver of life, like himself, and now all this splendid young manhood
must be offered to the Moloch of war. But he said--"In many ways I
admire thy father, but he is over-hasty in judgment; yet I am free to
think he does right in fighting in this war, and certainly thee must
go as he says. I know thee will never forsake the rules of thy
faith."
* * *
Ned, wandering off by himself to say good-bye to his old life, was
amazed, in his loneliness, to find Bee. She also was alone; sitting
on a stone, in tears.
"Miss Bee," exclaimed Ned, "Are you hurt? What is the matter?"
[Illustration: "Miss Bee," exclaimed Ned, "are you hurt? What is the
matter?"]
She stood up; a tall slender girl in a purple serge riding habit and
a plumed hat; not a beauty, but fast developing into a woman who
would have the elusive flaire of charm. "I came out here by
myself--ran away in fact," she said impulsively. "I could not bear
servants or friends or anyone near me--I had to cry alone. You are a
Friend; why isn't everybody like you? Why do they make these awful
wars? Do you know that Sir John has got the War Office to take him
off the retired list and he is going to Canada, and Vere with him?
And we think Cousin Percy is going too, and he will take Betty and
me. They are going to fight, and Eli, my brother, I know, will fight
too, on the other side; it is the most miserable war that ever was."
"Perhaps your brother won't want to fight," said Ned trying to
comfort her. "I should think many Americans would see they were in
the wrong--."
"You know nothing about it," she interrupted with flashing eyes. "We
only hear one side here, but I know there is another. Sir John and
Cousin Betty would be so angry if I said such a thing at home, and I
love them--and I love Eli too." Under her breath she added, "and I
am an American."
She stopped, suddenly realizing her impulsiveness in confiding in a
young man who was almost a stranger. "But he is one of those odd
people," she thought, "who think women should preach, and rule, just
like men; and that a man mustn't do anything that a woman shouldn't."
So much Bee had heard, and she thought Ned's ideas must be foolish,
and rather improper, but interesting. Ned said nothing, but caught
her horse, which was grazing near.
"Thank you," she said, rather shyly as she mounted, "for listening to
me. I feel better now."
She galloped off, and Ned looked after her--"What an odd girl," he
thought. "But she is rather interesting."