RABBI SAUNDERSON, minister of Kilbogie, had been the preacher on the
fast day before Carmichaele's first sacrament in the Glen, and, under the
full conviction that he had only been searching out his own sins, the
old man had gone through the hearts of the congregation as with the
candle of the Lord, till Donald Menzies, who had all along suspected
that he was little better than a hypocrite, was now fully persuaded that
for him to take the sacrament would be to eat and drink condemnation
to himself, and Lauchlan Campbell was amazed to discover that a mere
Lowland Scot like the rabbi was as mighty a preacher of the law as the
chief of the Highland host. The rabbi had been very tender withal, so
that the people were not only humbled, but also moved with the honest
desire after better things.
Although it was a bitter day, and the snow was deep upon the ground, the
rabbi would not remain over-night with Carmichael. Down in Kilbogie an
old man near fourscore years of age was dying, and was not assured of
the way everlasting, and the rabbi must needs go back through the snow
that he might sit by his bedside and guide his feet into the paths of
peace. All that night the rabbi wrestled with God that it might be His
good pleasure to save this man even at the eleventh hour; and it was one
of the few joys that visited the rabbi in his anxious ministry, that,
before the grey light of a winter morning came into that lowly room,
this aged sinner of Kilbogie had placed himself within the covenant of
grace.
While he was ministering the promises in that cottage, and fighting a
strong battle for an immortal soul, Carmichael had sent away his dogs,
and was sitting alone in the low-roofed study of the Free Kirk manse,
with the curtains drawn and the wood fire lighting up the room--for he
had put out the lamp--but leaving shadows in the corners where there
were no books, and where occasionally the red paper loomed forth like
blood.
As the rabbi preached that day, the buoyancy and self-confidence of
youth had been severely chastened, and sitting in the manse pew,
curtained off from the congregation, the conscience of the young
minister had grown tender. It was a fearful charge to lay on any man,
and he only four-and-twenty years of age, the care of human souls; and
what manner of man must he be who should minister unto them after a
spiritual sort the body and blood of Jesus Christ? How true must be his
soul, and how clean his hands! For surely, if any man would be damned
in this world, and in that which is to come, it would be the man who
dispensed the sacrament unworthily.
As he sat in the firelight the room seemed to turn into a place of
judgment. Round the walls were the saints of the Church Catholic, and
St. Augustine questioned him closely regarding the evil imagination
of youthful days, and Thomas à Kempis reproached him because he had so
often flinched in the way of the holy cross. Scottish worthies whose
lives he had often read, and whose sayings had been often quoted from
the pulpit, sat in judgment upon him as to his own personal faith and
to his own ends in the ministry. Samuel Rutherford, with his passionate
letters, reproached him for his coldness towards Christ; and MacCheyne's
life, closed in early manhood, and filled with an unceasing hunger
for the salvation of human souls, condemned him for his easy walk and
conversation; and Leighton, the gentlest of all the Scotch saints, made
him ashamed of bitter words and resentful feelings. And from the walls
the face of his mother's minister regarded him with wistful regret, and
seemed to plead with him to return to his first love and the simplicity
of his mother's faith.
The roof hung heavy over his head, and the walls took a deeper red,
while the burning logs reminded him of the consuming fire. An owl
hooted outside--a weird and mournful cry--and to the mind of a Celt
like Carmichael it seemed to be a warning to set his house in order. He
crossed to the window, which faced west, and commanded a long stretch
of Glen, and, standing within the curtain, he looked out upon the clear
winter night. How pure was the snow, putting all other white to shame!
How merciless the cold light of the moon, that flung into relief the
tiniest branches of the trees! “Holiness be-cometh thine house, O Lord,
for ever.” And he was a minister of the Word and sacrament! The people
had been called unto repentance, but he needed most of all the contrite
heart. The people had been commanded to confess their sins; it were time
that he began.
He knelt at his table, bending his head over the very place where he
wrote his sermons, and as he prayed before God the sins of early years
came up before him, and passed as in a woful procession--ghosts which
had risen from their graves, in which they had long been hid beneath
the green grass and the flowers. There remained nothing for him but
to acknowledge them one by one with shame and confusion of face, and
behold! as he did so, and humbled himself before the Lord, they vanished
from his sight till he hoped that the last of them had come and gone.
When it seemed to him as if one had lingered behind the rest, and
desired to see him quite alone, and when the shroud fell down, he looked
into the face of one who had been his friend in college days, and then
he knew that all which had gone before was only a preparation, and this
was now his testing time.
It was a mighty college to which Carmichael had belonged, and the men
thereof had been lifted high above their fellows, and among them all
there had been none so superior as this man who was once his friend.
Some he looked down upon because they were uncouth in manner; and some
because they were deficient in scholarship; and others, who were neither
ill-bred nor unlearned, he would have nothing to do with because they
had not the note of culture, but were Philistine in their ideas of art
and in their ignorance of “precious” literature.
In spite of all this foolishness, the root of the matter was in
Frederick Harris. No man had a keener sense of honour, no man was more
ready to help a fellow-student, none worked harder in the mission of the
college, none lived a simpler life. Yet because he was without doubt a
superior person, even beyond all other superior persons--and the college
was greatly blessed with this high order of beings--certain men were
blind to his excellences, and cherished a dull feeling of resentment
against him; and there were times when Carmichael dared to laugh at
him, whereat Harris was very indignant, and reproached him for vulgar
frivolity.
One day a leaflet was found in every class-room of the college, and in
the dining-hall, and in the gymnasium, and in every other room--even, it
is said, in the Senate-room itself. Its title was, _A Mighty Young Man_,
and it was a merciless description of Harris in verse, from the crown of
his head to the sole of his foot, in all his ways and words--coarse and
insulting, but incisive and clever. He was late in entering the Hebrew
class-room that morning, and was soon conscious that the students were
interested in other things besides the authorship of the Pentateuch.
Opposite him lay the poem, and, after he had read the first verse, his
face turned to a fiery red, and then he left the class-room with much
dignity.
It had been better for himself, and it would have saved much sorrow to
Carmichael, if Harris had treated the poem with indifference; but, like
many other people who allow themselves the luxury of despising their
fellow-creatures, he was morbidly sensitive when his fellow-creatures
turned on him. For some reason, known only to himself, he concluded that
Carmichael had written the poem, and demanded an apology with threats;
and Carmichael, who had thought the thing in very poor taste, and would
have been willing to laugh at it along with Harris, was furious that
he should have been supposed guilty of such a breach of friendship. So,
being a Celt, who acts by impulse rather than by reason, he told Harris
in the Common Hall that, if he supposed that he had written the sheet,
he was at liberty to do so, and need not expect either a denial or an
apology.
They never spoke again, nor met except in a public place, and when
Carmichael was ordained minister in the Glen, Harris joined a mission
settlement in one of the lowest quarters of a southern city.
From time to time Carmichael read greedily of his heroic service, and
the power which he was acquiring--for he had never been haughty with
poor people, but ever with them most gentle and humble. Again and again
it had been laid on Carmichael to write to his old friend, and express
regret for his pride, and assure him of his innocence in the matter of
the squib, but he thought that Harris ought first to write to him, and
then, if he did, Carmichael meant to telegraph, and invite his friend
to come up to the Glen, where they would renew the fellowship of former
days. But Harris gave no sign, and Carmichael had no need to telegraph.
Carmichael rose from his knees, and opened a drawer in his
writing-table, and from below a mass of college papers took out a
photograph. The firelight was enough to show the features, and
memory did the rest. They had once shared rooms together, and a more
considerate chum no man could have. They had gone on more than one
walking tour together, and never once had Harris lost his temper; they
had done work together in a mission school, and on occasion Harris had
been ready to do Carmichael's as well as his own; they had also prayed
together, and there was no pride in Harris when he prayed.
What were his faults, after all? A certain fastidiousness of
intellect, and an unfortunate mannerism, and a very innocent form of
self-approbation, and an instinctive shrinking from rough-mannered
men--nothing more. There was in him no impurity, nor selfishness, nor
meanness, nor trickiness, nor jealousy, nor evil temper. And this
was the man--his friend also--to whom he had refused to give the
satisfaction of an explanation, and whom he had made to suffer bitterly
during his last college term. And just because Harris was of porcelain
ware, and not common delf, would he suffer the more.
He had refused to forgive this man his trespass, which was his first
transgression against him, and now that he thought of it, hardly to
be called a transgression. How could he ask God to forgive him his own
trespasses? and if he neither forgave nor was forgiven, how dare he
minister the sacrament unto his people? He would write that night, and
humble himself before his friend, and beseech him for a message, however
brief, that would lift the load from off his heart before he broke bread
in the sacrament.
Then it came to his mind that no letter could reach that southern town
till Saturday morning, and therefore no answer come to him till Monday,
and meanwhile who would give the people the sacrament, and how could
he communicate himself? For his own sin, his foolish pride and fiery
temper, would fence the holy table and hinder his approach. He must
telegraph, and an impression took hold upon his heart that there must be
no delay. The clock in the lobby--an eight-day clock that had come
from his mother's house, and seemed to him a kind of censor of his
doings--struck three, for the hours had flown in the place of judgment,
and now the impression began to deepen that there was not an hour to be
lost. He must telegraph, and as the office at Kilbogie would be open
at five o'clock to dispatch a mail, they would send a wire for him. It
would be heavy walking through the snow, but the moon was still up, and
two hours were more than enough.
As he picked his way carefully where the snow had covered the ditches,
or turned the flank of a drift, he was ever grudging the lost time, and
ever the foreboding was deeper in his heart that he might be too late,
not for the opening of Kilbogie post-office, but for something else--he
knew not what. So bravely had he struggled through the snow that it was
still a quarter to five when he passed along sleeping Kilbogie; and so
eager was he by this time that he roused the friendly postmaster, and
induced him by all kinds of pleas, speaking as if it were life and
death, to open communication with Muirtown, where there was always a
clerk on duty, and to send on to that southern city the message he had
been composing as he came down through the snow and the woods:
“It was not I. I could not have done it. Forgive my silence, and send a
message before Sunday, for it is my first sacrament in Drumtochty.
“Your affectionate friend,
“John Carmichael.”
It was still dark when he reached the manse again, and before he fell
asleep he prayed that the telegram might not be too late, but as he
prayed, he asked himself what he meant, and could not answer. For the
Celt has warnings other men do not receive, and hears sounds they do not
hear.
It was noon next day, the Saturday before the sacrament, and almost time
for the arrival of the preacher, before he awoke, and then he had
not awaked unless the housekeeper had brought him this telegram from
“Mistress Harris, St. Andrew's Settlement, Mutford, E.”:
“My son Frederick died this morning at eight o'clock of malignant fever.
He was conscious at the end, and we read your telegram to him. He sent
this message: 'Long ago I knew it was not you, and I ought to have
written. Forgive me, as I have forgiven you. My last prayer is for a
blessing upon you and your people in the sacrament to-morrow. God be
with you till we meet at the marriage supper of the Lamb!'”
The text which Carmichael took for his action sermon on the morrow was,
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them who trespass against us,”
and he declared the forgiveness of sins with such irresistible grace
that Donald Menzies twice said “Amen” aloud, and there are people who
will remember that day unto the ages of ages.