THE ATTIC.
The little man led the way into a tolerably large room, with
down-sloping ceiling on both sides, lighted by a small window in the
gable, near the fireplace, and a dormer window as well. The low
walls, up to the slope, were filled with books; books lay on the
table, on the bed, on chairs, and in corners everywhere.
"Aha!" said Wingfold, as he entered and cast his eyes around, "there
is no room for surprise that you should have found me out so easily,
Mr. Polwarth! Here you have a legion of detectives for such
rascals."
The little man turned, and for a moment looked at him with a
doubtful and somewhat pained expression, as if he had not been
prepared for such an entrance on a solemn question; but a moment's
reading of the curate's honest face, which by this time had a good
deal more print upon it than would have been found there six months
agone, sufficed; the cloud melted into a smile, and he said
cordially,
"It is very kind of you, sir, to take my presumption in such good
part. Pray sit down, sir. You will find that chair a comfortable
one."
"Presumption!" echoed Wingfold. "The presumption was all on my part,
and the kindness on yours. But you must first hear my explanation,
such as it is. It makes the matter hardly a jot the better, only a
man would not willingly look worse, or better either, than he is,
and besides, we must understand each other if we would be friends.
However unlikely it may seem to you, Mr. Polwarth, I really do share
the common weakness of wanting to be taken exactly for what I am,
neither more nor less."
"It is a noble weakness, and far enough from common, I am sorry to
think," returned Polwarth.
The curate then told the gate-keeper of his uncle's legacy, and his
own ignorance of Jeremy Taylor.
"But," he concluded, "since you set me about it, my judgment has
capsized itself, and it now seems to me worse to use my uncle's
sermons than to have used the bishop's, which anyone might discover
to be what they are."
"I see no harm in either," said Polwarth, "provided only it be above
board. I believe some clergymen think the only evil lies in
detection. I doubt if they ever escape it, and believe the amount of
successful deception in that kind to be very small indeed. Many in a
congregation can tell, by a kind of instinct, whether a man be
preaching his own sermons or not. But the worse evil appears to me
to lie in the tacit understanding that a sermon must SEEM to be a
man's own, although all in the congregation know, and the would-be
preacher knows that they know, that it is none of his."
"Then you mean, Mr. Polwarth, that I should solemnly acquaint my
congregation next Sunday with the fact that the sermon I am about to
read to them is one of many left me by my worthy uncle, Jonah
Driftwood, D.D., who, on his death-bed, expressed the hope that I
should support their teaching by my example, for, having gone over
them some ten or fifteen times in the course of his incumbency, and
bettered each every time until he could do no more for it, he did
not think, save by my example, I could carry further the enforcement
of the truths they contained:--shall I tell them all that?"
Polwarth laughed, but with a certain seriousness in his merriment,
which however took nothing from its genuineness, indeed seemed
rather to add thereto.
"It would hardly be needful to enter so fully into particulars," he
said. "It would be enough to let them know that you wished it
understood between them and you, that you did not profess to teach
them anything of yourself, but merely to bring to bear upon them the
teaching of others. It would raise complaints and objections,
doubtless; but for that you must be prepared if you would do
anything right."
Wingfold was silent, thoughtful, saying to himself--"How straight an
honest bow can shoot!--But this involves something awful. To stand
up in that pulpit and speak about myself! I who, even if I had any
opinions, could never see reason for presenting them to other
people! It's my office, is it--not me? Then I wish my Office would
write his own sermons. He can read the prayers well enough!"
All his life, a little heave of pent-up humour would now and then
shake his burden into a more comfortable position upon his bending
shoulders. He gave a forlorn laugh.
"But," resumed the small man, "have you never preached a sermon of
your own thinking--I don't mean of your own making--one that came
out of the commentaries, which are, I am told, the mines whither
some of our most noted preachers go to dig for their first
inspirations--but one that came out of your own heart--your delight
in something you had found out, or something you felt much?"
"No," answered Wingfold; "I have nothing, never had anything worth
giving to another; and it would seem to me very unreasonable to
subject a helpless congregation to the blundering attempts of such a
fellow to put into the forms of reasonable speech things he really
knows nothing about."
"You must know about some things which it might do them good to be
reminded of--even if they know them already," said Polwarth. "I
cannot imagine that a man who looks things in the face as you do,
the moment they confront you, has not lived at all, has never met
with anything in his history which has taught him something other
people need to be taught. I profess myself a believer in preaching,
and consider that in so far as the church of England has ceased to
be a preaching church--and I don't call nine-tenths of what goes by
the name of it PREACHING--she has forgotten a mighty part of her
high calling. Of course a man to whom no message has been personally
given, has no right to take the place of a prophet--and cannot, save
by more or less of simulation--but there is room for teachers as
well as prophets, and the more need of teachers that the prophets
are so few; and a man may right honestly be a clergyman who teaches
the people, though he may possess none of the gifts of prophecy."
"I do not now see well how you are leading me," said Wingfold,
considerably astonished at both the aptness and fluency with which a
man in his host's position was able to express himself. "Pray, what
do you mean by PROPHECY?"
"I mean what I take to be the sense in which St. Paul uses the
word--I mean the highest kind of preaching. But I will come to the
point practically: a man, I say, who does not feel in his soul that
he has something to tell his people, should straightway turn his
energy to the providing of such food for them as he finds feed
himself. In other words, if he has nothing new in his own treasure,
let him bring something old out of another man's. If his own soul is
unfed, he can hardly be expected to find food for other people, and
has no business in any pulpit, but ought to betake himself to some
other employment--whatever he may have been predestined to--I mean,
made fit for."
"Then do you intend that a man SHOULD make up his sermons from the
books he reads?"
"Yes, if he cannot do better. But then I would have him read--not
with his sermon in his eye, but with his people in his heart. Men in
business and professions have so little time for reading or
thinking--and idle people have still less--that their means of
grace, as the theologians say, are confined to discipline without
nourishment, whence their religion, if they have any, is often from
mere atrophy but a skeleton; and the office of preaching is, after
all, to wake them up lest their sleep turn to death; next, to make
them hungry, and lastly, to supply that hunger; and for all these
things, the pastor has to take thought. If he feed not the flock of
God, then is he an hireling and no shepherd."
At this moment, Rachel entered with a small tea-tray: she could
carry only little things, and a few at a time. She cast a glance of
almost loving solicitude at the young man who now sat before her
uncle with head bowed, and self-abasement on his honest countenance,
then a look almost of expostulation at her uncle, as if interceding
for a culprit, and begging the master not to be too hard upon him.
But the little man smiled--such a sweet smile of re-assurance, that
her face returned at once to its prevailing expression of content.
She cleared a place on the table, set down her tray, and went to
bring cups and saucers.