BRINGING HOME THE SHEEP.
Speaking after the manner of the flesh, the Reverend Timotheus Brown
had found only plain sailing on the river; spiritually, he had a very
different experience. “As stubborn as a mule” was the most common
of the current estimates of Pastor Brown’s character; and if the
conscientious old preacher had ever personally heard this opinion of
himself, the verbal expression thereof would have given him but slight
annoyance, compared with that which he experienced from his own inner
man as he paddled down the stream. To forcibly resist something so
satisfied the strongest demand of his nature that neither shortening
breath nor blistering hands caused him to slacken the speed with which
he forced his paddle against the water. But another contest was going
on, and in this the consistent theologian was not so triumphant as he
liked always to be. Harry Wainright was one of the ungodly; that he
owned (and frequently occupied) a high-priced pew in Mr. Brown’s own
church was only another reason why the preacher should quote concerning
him, “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck----”--what if
the conclusion of the same passage--“shall suddenly be destroyed, and
that without remedy,” should apply? What could prevent its doing so,
if Wainright had fulfilled the description in the first half? Had not
the same God inspired the whole passage? If so, what right had any
man, least of all a minister of the Gospel, to try to set at naught
the Divine will? Harry Wainright was, according to the decrees of an
unchangeable God, one of the lost--as much so as if he were already in
the bottomless pit. And still the old man’s paddle flew; once on the
trip he had felt as if the weakness of the arm of flesh would decide
the case for him, and in favor of the Word whose expounder he was;
he found himself wishing that it might, so that he could feel that
although God had overruled him, he might have comfort in the assurance
that he had not proved indifferent to his sudden emotion of yearning
for his fellow man. But that mysterious physical readjustment, known in
animals as “second breath,” came to the rescue of his fainting frame,
and then it seemed as if no watery torrent could prevail against the
force of his arm. Oh! if he might but talk to some one of the fathers
of the church; that he might be, even for ten minutes, back in his own
library! But no father of the church resided along the Reverend Brown’s
nautical course, nor was there a theological library nearer than his
own, and there he was, actually bent upon saving one whom the Eternal
pronounced lost! Lost? Hold! “For the Son of Man is come into the
world to save them that are lost.” If Christ had a right to save the
lost, had not an ambassador of Christ the same privilege? was not an
ambassador one who stood in the place--who fulfilled the duties--of an
absent king? “Glory be to God on high!” shouted the Reverend Timotheus,
and the dense woods echoed back “God on high!” as the old man, forty
years a conscientious pastor, but only that instant converted to
Christianity, drove his paddle into the water with a force that nearly
threw the canoe into the air.
As for Parson Wedgewell, whom we left arising from his knees after
asking information from his Divine guide, he found himself upon the
right road. The river was nearer than he had dared to hope; a run
of half a mile brought him into a clearing, in which stood Brown’s
warehouse, near the river. The _Excellence_ had just put her nose
against the bank, and the clerk at the warehouse was tired of wondering
why Fred Macdonald, on the opposite bank, was shouting so impatiently
to the ferryman, and why an old man in a canoe should be coming down
the river at the rate of fifty-paddle strokes per minute, when he saw
Parson Wedgewell, coatless, hatless, with open shirt, disordered hair,
and face covered with dirt deposited just after an unlucky stumble,
come flying along the road, closely followed by Tom Adams, who was
lashing his horses furiously. A happy inspiration struck the clerk; he
shouted “Horse thief!” and seized the parson, and instantly received a
blow under the chin which rendered him inactive and despondent for the
space of half an hour. The parson saw the gang-plank shoved out; he saw
Harry Wainright step aboard; he saw the Rev. Timotheus jump from his
canoe into water knee deep, dash up the plank, and throw his arm over
Harry Wainright’s shoulder; but only a second or two elapsed before
Parson Wedgewell monopolized the runaway’s other side, and then, as
the three men stared at each other, neither one speaking a word, and
the two pastors bursting into tears, Tom Adams hurried aboard, and
exclaimed,
“Mr. Wainright, Mrs. Wainright is particular anxious to see you this
evenin’, for somethin’, I don’t know what, an’ I hadn’t time to get any
sort of a carriage for fear I’d lose the boat; but there’s good springs
to the seat of the brick-yard wagon, an’ a new sheep-skin besides.” No
other words coming to Tom’s mind, he abruptly walked forward muttering,
“That’s the cock-an’-bullest yarn I ever _did_ tell; I _knew_ I
wouldn’t know what to say.” As Tom meditated, he heard one “roustabout”
say to another,
“I say, Bill, you know that feller that used to sell such bully
whiskey in Barton? Well, he’s around there on the guards, dancin’ like
a lunatic. I shouldn’t wonder if that’s what come of swearin’ off
drinkin’.”
“Mighty unsafe perceedin’,” replied Bill, eyeing Crupp suspiciously.
Harry Wainright made not the slightest objection to going back home,
and he acted very much like a man who was glad of the company in which
he found himself. The divine of the canoe looked at his blistered
hands, and paid the resuscitated clerk to send the boat back by the
first steamer. While Fred Macdonald was crossing the river, Tom Adams
kindly drove back the road and recovered Parson Wedgewell’s coat and
hat, and the parson accepted the hospitalities of the boat to the
extent of water, soap, and towel. He attempted to make his peace with
the injured clerk; but that functionary, having already interviewed
Tom Adams, insisted that no apology was necessary, and asked the old
gentleman in what church he preached.
As the party started back, they saw, coming through a cross-road,
a buggy violently driven, and containing two men--who proved to be
Squire Tomple and Father Baguss--in a vehicle belonging to the latter;
their air of having merely happened there deceived no one, least of
all Harry Wainright himself. Father Baguss did not live in town, nor
within four miles of it; but when Squire Tomple suggested that he
would beg a ride back in Tom Adams’s wagon, Father Baguss objected,
and remarked that he guessed he had business in town himself; so the
Squire retained his seat, and Father Baguss fell in behind the wagon
as decorously as if he was taking part in a funeral procession. Behind
them came Fred Macdonald, who had good excuse to gallop back to the
peculiar attraction that awaited him in Barton, but preferred to remain
in his present company. As the party approached the town, Tom Adams
considerately drove through the darkest and most unfrequented streets,
and stopped as near as possible to Wainright’s house. Wainright,
politely declining any escort, walked quietly home. Father Baguss stood
up in his buggy, with his hand to his ear, in the original position of
attention: suddenly he exclaimed,
“There! I heard his door shut: _now_, brethren.” And Father Baguss
started the doxology. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” and
the glorious harmonies of the old choral were proof even against
the tremendous but discordant notes which Tom Adams, with the most
honorable intentions, interjected in rapid succession. Then the party
broke up. The two pastors escorted each other home alternately and
several times in succession, during which apparently meaningless
proceeding they learned, each from the other, how much of good intent
had been stifled in both of them for lack of prompt application. Crupp
and Tomple talked but little, and no “Imaginary Conversation” would
be at all likely to reproduce what they said. Father Baguss made the
whole air between Barton and his own farm redolent of camp-meeting
airs, and Fred Macdonald heard in Parson Wedgewell’s parlor something
sweeter than all the music ever written. As for Tom Adams, he jogged
slowly toward his employer’s stables, repeating to himself,
“The bulliest spree I ever went on--the _very_ bulliest!”