THE CLERICAL CONFERENCE.
A few days found Clayton in the city of ----, guest of the Rev. Dr.
Cushing. He was a man in middle life; of fine personal presence, urbane,
courtly, gentlemanly. Dr. Cushing was a popular and much-admired
clergyman, standing high among his brethren in the ministry, and almost
the idol of a large and flourishing church, a man of warm feelings,
humane impulses, and fine social qualities, his sermons, beautifully
written, and delivered with great fervor, often drew tears from the eyes
of the hearers. His pastoral ministrations, whether at wedding or
funeral, had a peculiar tenderness and unction. None was more capable
than he of celebrating the holy fervor and self-denying sufferings of
apostles and martyrs; none more easily kindled by those devout hymns
which describe the patience of the saints; but, with all this, for any
practical emergency, Dr. Cushing was nothing of a soldier. There was a
species of moral effeminacy about him, and the very luxuriant softness
and richness of his nature unfitted him to endure hardness. He was
known, in all his intercourse with his brethren, as a peace-maker, a
modifier, and harmonizer. Nor did he scrupulously examine how much of
the credit of this was due to a fastidious softness of nature which made
controversy disagreeable and wearisome. Nevertheless, Clayton was at
first charmed with the sympathetic warmth with which he and his plans
were received by his relative. He seemed perfectly to agree with Clayton
in all his views of the terrible evils of the slave system and was
prompt with anecdotes and instances to enforce everything that he said.
"Clayton was just in time," he said; "a number of his ministerial
brethren were coming to-morrow, some of them from the northern states.
Clayton should present his views to them."
Dr. Cushing's establishment was conducted on the footing of the most
liberal hospitality; and that very evening the domestic circle was made
larger by the addition of four or five ministerial brethren. Among these
Clayton was glad to meet, once more, father Dickson. The serene, good
man, seemed to bring the blessing of the gospel of peace with him
wherever he went.
Among others, was one whom we will more particularly introduce, as the
Rev. Shubael Packthread. Dr. Shubael Packthread was a minister of a
leading church, in one of the northern cities. Constitutionally, he was
an amiable and kindly man, with very fair natural abilities, fairly
improved by culture. Long habits, however, of theological and
ecclesiastical controversy had cultivated a certain species of acuteness
of mind into such disproportioned activity, that other parts of his
intellectual and moral nature had been dwarfed and dwindled beside it.
What might, under other circumstances, have been agreeable and useful
tact, became in him a constant and life-long _habit_ of stratagem. While
other people look upon words as vehicles for conveying ideas, Dr.
Packthread regarded them only as mediums for concealment. His constant
study, on every controverted topic, was so to adjust language that, with
the appearance of the utmost precision, it should always be capable of a
double interpretation. He was a cunning master of all forms of
indirection; of all phrases by which people _appear_ to say what they do
not say, and _not_ to say what they _do_ say.
He was an adept also in all the mechanism of ecclesiastical debate, of
the intricate labyrinths of heresy-hunting, of every scheme by which
more simple and less advised brethren, speaking with ignorant sincerity,
could be entrapped and deceived. He was _au fait_ also in all compromise
measures, in which two parties unite in one form of words, meaning by
them exactly opposite ideas, and call the agreement a _union_. He was
also expert in all those parliamentary modes, in synod or general
assembly, by which troublesome discussions could be avoided or disposed
of, and credulous brethren made to believe they had gained points which
they had not gained; by which discussions could be at will blinded with
dusty clouds of misrepresentation, or trailed on through interminable
marshes of weariness, to accomplish some manoeuvre of ecclesiastical
tactics.
Dr. Packthread also was master of every means by which the influence of
opposing parties might be broken. He could spread a convenient report on
necessary occasions, by any of those forms which do not assert, but
which disseminate a slander quite as certainly as if they did. If it was
necessary to create a suspicion of the orthodoxy, or of the piety, or
even of the morality, of an opposing brother, Dr. Packthread understood
how to do it in the neatest and most tasteful manner. He was an
infallible judge whether it should be accomplished by innocent
interrogations, as to whether you had heard "so and so of Mr. ----;" or,
by "charitably expressed hopes that you had not heard so and so;" or, by
gentle suggestions, whether it would not be as well to inquire; or, by
shakes of the head, and lifts of the eyes, at proper intervals in
conversation; or, lastly, by _silence_ when silence became the strongest
as well as safest form of assertion.
In person, he was rather tall, thin, and the lines of his face appeared,
every one of them, to be engraved by caution and care. In his boyhood
and youth, the man had had a trick of smiling and laughing without
considering why; the grace of prudence, however, had corrected all this.
He never did either, in these days, without understanding precisely what
he was about. His face was a part of his stock in trade, and he
understood the management of it remarkably well. He knew precisely all
the gradations of smile which were useful for accomplishing different
purposes. The solemn smile, the smile of inquiry, the smile affirmative,
the smile suggestive, the smile of incredulity, and the smile of
innocent credulity, which encouraged the simple-hearted narrator to go
on unfolding himself to the brother, who sat quietly behind his face, as
a spider does behind his web, waiting till his unsuspecting friend had
tangled himself in incautious, impulsive, and, of course, contradictory
meshes of statement, which were, in some future hour, in the most gentle
and Christian spirit, to be tightened around the incautious captive,
while as much blood was sucked as the good of the cause demanded.
It is not to be supposed that the Rev. Dr. Packthread, so skilful and
adroit as we have represented him, failed in the necessary climax of
such skill--that of deceiving himself. Far from it. Truly and honestly
Dr. Packthread thought himself one of the hundred and forty and four
thousand, who follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, in whose mouth is
found no guile. _Prudence_ he considered the chief of Christian graces.
He worshipped Christian prudence, and the whole category of
accomplishments which we have described he considered as the fruits of
it. His prudence, in fact, served him all the purposes that the stock of
the tree did to the ancient idolater. "With part thereof he eateth
flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth himself, and
saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: and the residue thereof he
maketh a god, even his graven image; he falleth down unto it, and
worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art
my god."
No doubt, Dr. Packthread expected to enter heaven by the same judicious
arrangement by which he had lived on earth; and so he went on, from year
to year, doing deeds which even a political candidate would blush at;
violating the most ordinary principles of morality and honor; while he
sung hymns, made prayers, and administered sacraments, expecting, no
doubt, at last to enter heaven by some neat arrangement of words used in
two senses.
Dr. Packthread's cautious agreeableness of manner formed a striking
contrast to the innocent and almost child-like simplicity with which
father Dickson, in his threadbare coat, appeared at his side. Almost as
poor in this world's goods as his Master, father Dickson's dwelling had
been a simple one-story cottage, in all, save thrift and neatness, very
little better than those of the poorest; and it was a rare year when a
hundred dollars passed through his hands. He had seen the time when he
had not even wherewithal to take from the office a necessary letter. He
had seen his wife suffer for medicine and comforts, in sickness. He had
himself ridden without overcoat through the chill months of winter; but
all those things he had borne as the traveller bears a storm on the way
to his home; and it was beautiful to see the unenvying, frank, simple
pleasure which he seemed to feel in the elegant and abundant home of his
brother, and in the thousand appliances of hospitable comfort by which
he was surrounded. The spirit within us that lusteth to envy had been
chased from his bosom by the expulsive force of a higher love; and his
simple and unstudied acts of constant good-will showed that simple
Christianity can make the gentleman. Father Dickson was regarded by his
ministerial brethren with great affection and veneration, though wholly
devoid of any ecclesiastical wisdom. They were fond of using him much as
they did their hymn-books and testaments, for their better hours of
devotion; and equally apt to let slip his admonitions, when they came to
the hard, matter-of-fact business of ecclesiastical discussion and
management; yet they loved well to have him with them, as they felt
that, like a psalm or a text, his presence in some sort gave sanction to
what they did.
In due time there was added to the number of the circle our joyous,
out-spoken friend, father Bonnie, fresh from a recent series of
camp-meetings in a distant part of the state, and ready at a minute's
notice for either a laugh or a prayer. Very little of the stereotype
print of his profession had he; the sort of wild woodland freedom of his
life giving to his manners and conversation a tone of sylvan roughness,
of which Dr. Packthread evidently stood in considerable doubt. Father
Bonnie's early training had been that of what is called, in common
parlance, a "self-made man." He was unsophisticated by Greek or Latin,
and had rather a contempt for the forms of the schools, and a joyous
determination to say what he pleased on all occasions. There were also
present one or two of the leading Presbyterian ministers of the north.
They had, in fact, come for a private and confidential conversation with
Dr. Cushing concerning the reunion of the New School Presbyterian Church
with the Old.
It may be necessary to apprise some of our readers, not conversant with
American ecclesiastical history, that the Presbyterian Church of America
is divided into two parties in relation to certain theological points,
and that the adherents on either side call themselves _old_ or _new_
school. Some years since, these two parties divided, and each of them
organized its own general assembly.
It so happened that all the slaveholding interest, with some very
inconsiderable exceptions, went into the old school body. The great
majority of the new school body were avowedly anti-slavery men,
according to a solemn declaration, which committed the whole
Presbyterian Church to those sentiments in the year eighteen hundred and
eighteen. And the breach between the two sections was caused quite as
much by the difference of feeling between the northern and southern
branches on the subject of slavery, as by any differences of doctrine.
After the first jar of separation was over, thoughts of reunion began to
arise on both sides, and to be quietly discussed among leading minds.
There is a power in men of a certain class of making an organization of
any kind, whether it be political or ecclesiastical, an object of
absorbing and individual devotion. Most men feel empty and insufficient
of themselves, and find a need to ballast their own insufficiency by
attaching themselves to something of more weight than they are. They put
their stock of being out at interest, and invest themselves somewhere
and in something; and the love of wife or child is not more absorbing
than the love of the bank where the man has invested himself. It is
true, this power is a noble one; because thus a man may pass out of
self, and choose God, the great good of all, for his portion. But human
weakness falls below this; and, as the idolater worships the infinite
and unseen under a visible symbol till it effaces the memory of what is
signified, so men begin by loving institutions for God's sake, which
come at last to stand with them in the place of God.
Such was the Rev. Dr. Calker. He was a man of powerful though narrow
mind, of great energy and efficiency, and of that capability of abstract
devotion which makes the soldier or the statesman. He was earnestly and
sincerely devout, as he understood devotion. He began with loving the
church for God's sake, and ended with loving her better than God. And,
by the church, he meant the organization of the Presbyterian Church in
the United States of America. Her cause, in his eyes, was God's cause;
her glory, God's glory; her success, the indispensable condition of the
millennium; her defeat, the defeat of all that was good for the human
race. His devotion to her was honest and unselfish.
Of course Dr. Calker estimated all interests by their influence on the
Presbyterian Church. He weighed every cause in the balance of her
sanctuary. What promised extension and power to her, _that_ he
supported. What threatened defeat or impediment, _that_ he was ready to
sacrifice. He would, at any day, sacrifice himself and all his interests
to that cause, and he felt equally willing to sacrifice others and
their interests. The anti-slavery cause he regarded with a simple eye to
this question. It was a disturbing force, weakening the harmony among
brethren, threatening disruption and disunion. He regarded it,
therefore, with distrust and aversion. He would read no facts on that
side of the question. And when the discussions of zealous brethren would
bring frightful and appalling statements into the general assembly, he
was too busy in seeking what could be said to ward off their force, to
allow them to have much influence on his own mind. Gradually he came to
view the whole subject with dislike, as a pertinacious intruder in the
path of the Presbyterian Church. That the whole train of cars, laden
with the interests of the world for all time, should be stopped by a
ragged, manacled slave across the track, was to him an impertinence and
absurdity. What was he, that the Presbyterian Church should be divided
and hindered for him? So thought the exultant thousands who followed
Christ, once, when the blind beggar raised his importunate clamor, and
they bade him hold his peace. So thought not HE, who stopped the tide of
triumphant success, that he might call the neglected one to himself, and
lay his hands upon him.
Dr. Calker had from year to year opposed the agitation of the slavery
question in the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church, knowing
well that it threatened disunion. When, in spite of all his efforts,
disunion came, he bent his energies to the task of reuniting; and he was
the most important character in the present caucus.
Of course a layman, and a young man also, would feel some natural
hesitancy in joining at once in the conversation of those older than
himself. Clayton, therefore, sat at the hospitable breakfast-table of
Dr. Cushing rather as an auditor than as a speaker.
"Now, brother Cushing," said Dr. Calker, "the fact is, there never was
any need of this disruption. It has crippled the power of the church,
and given the enemy occasion to speak reproachfully. Our divisions are
playing right into the hands of the Methodists and Baptists; and ground
that we might hold, united, is going into their hands every year."
"I know it," said Dr. Cushing, "and we southern brethren mourn over it,
I assure you. The fact is, brother Calker, there's no such doctrinal
division, after all. Why, there are brethren among us that are as new
school as Dr. Draper, and we don't meddle with them."
"Just so," replied Dr. Calker; "and we have true-blue old school men
among us."
"I think," said Dr. Packthread, "that, with suitable care, a document
might be drawn up which will meet the views on both sides. You see, we
must get the extreme men on both sides to agree to hold still. Why, now,
I am called new school; but I wrote a set of definitions once, which I
showed to Dr. Pyke, who is as sharp as any body on the other side, and
he said, 'He agreed with them entirely.' Those N---- H---- men are
incautious."
"Yes," said Dr. Calker, "and it's just dividing the resources and the
influence of the church for nothing. Now, those discussions as to the
time when moral agency begins are, after all, of no great account in
practical workings."
"Well," said Dr. Cushing, "it's, after all, nothing but the tone of your
abolition fanatics that stands in the way. These slavery discussions in
general assembly have been very disagreeable and painful to our people,
particularly those of the western brethren. They don't understand us,
nor the delicacy of our position. They don't know that we need to be let
alone in order to effect anything. Now, I am for trusting to the
softening, meliorating influences of the Gospel. The kingdom of God
cometh not with observation. I trust that, in his mysterious providence,
the Lord will see fit, in his own good time, to remove this evil of
slavery. Meanwhile, brethren ought to possess their souls in patience."
"Brother Cushing," said father Dickson, "since the assembly of eighteen
hundred and eighteen, the number of slaves has increased in this country
four-fold. New slave states have been added, and a great, regular system
of breeding and trading organized, which is filling all our large cities
with trading-houses. The ships of our ports go out as slavers, carrying
loads of miserable creatures down to New Orleans; and there is a
constant increase of this traffic through the country. This very summer
I was at the death-bed of a poor girl, only seventeen or eighteen, who
had been torn from all her friends and sent off with a coffle; and she
died there in the wilderness. It does seem to me, brother Cushing, that
this silent plan does not answer. We are not half as near to
emancipation, apparently, as we were in eighteen hundred and eighteen."
"Has there ever been any attempt," said Clayton, "among the Christians
of your denominations, to put a stop to this internal slave-trade?"
"Well," said Dr. Cushing, "I don't know that there has, any further than
general preaching against injustice."
"Have you ever made any movement in the church to prevent the separation
of families?" said Clayton.
"No, not exactly. We leave that thing to the conscience of individuals.
The synods have always enjoined it on professors of religion to treat
their servants according to the spirit of the Gospel."
"Has the church ever endeavored to influence the legislature to allow
general education?" said Clayton.
"No; that subject is fraught with difficulties," said Dr. Cushing. "The
fact is, if these rabid northern abolitionists would let us alone, we
might, perhaps, make a movement on some of these subjects. But they
excite the minds of our people, and get them into such a state of
inflammation, that we cannot do anything."
During all the time that father Dickson and Clayton had been speaking,
Dr. Calker had been making minutes with a pencil on a small piece of
paper, for future use. It was always disagreeable to him to hear of
slave-coffles and the internal slave-trade; and, therefore, when
anything was ever said on these topics, he would generally employ
himself in some other way than listening. Father Dickson he had known of
old as being remarkably pertinacious on those subjects; and therefore,
when he began to speak, he took the opportunity of jotting down a few
ideas for a future exigency. He now looked up from his paper and
spoke:--
"Oh, those fellows are without any reason--perfectly wild and crazy!
They are monomaniacs! They cannot see but one subject anywhere. Now,
there's father Ruskin, of Ohio--there's nothing can be done with that
man! I have had him at my house hours and hours, talking to him, and
laying it all down before him, and showing him what great interests he
was compromising. But it didn't do a bit of good. He just harps on one
eternal string. Now, it's all the pushing and driving of these fellows
in the general assembly that made the division, in my opinion."
"We kept it off a good many years," said Dr. Packthread; "and it took
all our ingenuity to do it, I assure you. Now, ever since eighteen
hundred and thirty-five, these fellows have been pushing and crowding in
every assembly; and we have stood faithfully in our lot, to keep the
assembly from doing anything which could give offence to our southern
brethren. We have always been particular to put them forward in our
public services, and to show them every imaginable deference. I think
our brethren ought to consider how hard we have worked. We had to be
instant in season and out of season, I can tell you. I think I may claim
some little merit," continued the doctor, with a cautious smile
spreading over his face; "if I have any talent, it is a capacity in the
judicious use of language. Now, sometimes brethren will wrangle a whole
day, till they all get tired and sick of a subject; and then just let a
man who understands the use of terms step in, and sometimes, by omitting
a single word, he will alter the whole face of an affair. I remember one
year those fellows were driving us up to make some sort of declaration
about slavery. And we really had to do it, because it wouldn't do to
have the whole west split off; and there was a three days' fight, till
finally we got the thing pared down to the lowest terms. We thought we
would pass a resolution that slavery was a _moral evil_, if the southern
brethren liked that better than the old way of calling it a sin, and we
really were getting on quite harmoniously, when some of the southern
ultras took it up; and they said that moral evil meant the same as sin,
and that would imply a censure on the brethren. Well, it got late, and
some of the hottest ones were tired and had gone off; and I just quietly
drew my pen across the word _moral_, and read the resolution, and it
went unanimously. Most ministers, you see, are willing to call slavery
an _evil_--the trouble lay in that word _moral_. Well, that capped the
crater for that year. But, then, they were at it again the very next
time they came together, for those fellows never sleep. Well, then we
took a new turn. I told the brethren we had better get it on to the
ground of the reserved rights of presbyteries and synods, and decline
interfering. Well, then, that was going very well, but some of the
brethren very injudiciously got up a resolution in the assembly
recommending disciplinary measures for dancing. That was passed without
much thought, because, you know, there's no great interest involved in
dancing, and, of course, there's nobody to oppose such a resolution;
but, then, it was very injudicious, under the circumstances; for the
abolitionists made a handle of it immediately, and wanted to know why we
couldn't as well recommend a discipline for slavery; because, you see,
dancing isn't a sin, _per se_, any more than slavery is; and they
haven't done blowing their trumpets over us to this day."
Here the company rose from breakfast, and, according to the good old
devout custom, seated themselves for family worship. Two decent,
well-dressed black women were called in, and also a negro man. At father
Dickson's request, all united in singing the following hymn:--
"Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb;
And shall I fear to own his cause,
Or blush to speak his name?
Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?
Sure I must fight if I would reign;
Increase my courage, Lord!
I'll bear the cross, endure the shame,
Supported by thy word
The saints, in all this glorious war,
Shall conquer, though they die;
They see the victory from afar,
With faith's discerning eye.
When that illustrious day shall rise,
And all thine armies shine
In robes of victory through the skies,
The glory shall be thine."
Anybody who had seen the fervor with which these brethren now united in
singing these stanzas, might have supposed them a company of the
primitive martyrs and confessors, who, having drawn the sword and
thrown away the scabbard, were now ready for a millennial charge on the
devil and all his works. None sung with more heartiness than Dr.
Packthread, for his natural feelings were quick and easily excited; nor
did he dream he was not a soldier of the cross, and that the species of
skirmishes he had been describing were not all in accordance with the
spirit of the hymn. Had you interrogated him, he would have shown you a
syllogistic connection between the glory of God and the best good of the
universe, and the course he had been pursuing. So that, if father
Dickson had supposed the hymn would act as a gentle suggestion, he was
very much mistaken. As to Dr. Calker, he joined, with enthusiasm,
applying it all the while to the enemies of the Presbyterian Church, in
the same manner as Ignatius Loyola might have sung it, applying it to
Protestantism. Dr. Cushing considered the conflict described as wholly
an internal one, and thus all joined alike in swelling the chorus:--
"A soldier for Jesus, hallelujah!
Love and serve the Lord."
Father Dickson read from the Bible as follows:--
"Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our consciences, that in
simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the
grace of God, we have our conversation in the world."
Father Dickson had many gentle and quiet ways, peculiar to himself, of
suggesting his own views to his brethren. Therefore, having read these
verses, he paused, and asked Dr. Packthread "if he did not think there
was danger of departing from this spirit, and losing the simplicity of
Christ, when we conduct Christian business on worldly principles."
Dr. Packthread cordially assented, and continued to the same purpose in
a strain so edifying as entirely to exhaust the subject; and Dr. Calker,
who was thinking of the business that was before them, giving an uneasy
motion here, they immediately united in the devotional exercises, which
were led with great fervor by Dr. Cushing.