as he responded to the old pastor's outstretched hand, he knew he
met with one in whom firm gentleness and affable dignity were the
chief charm of character. There was not, as he anticipated,
coarse, crass assertiveness--a semi-cultured man whose narrow
creed joined hands with barren intelligence. Far otherwise; he
stood before one whose presence commanded reverence, one at whose
feet he felt he must bow.
Mr. Morell was tall and erect, with a fine Greek head whose crown
of snowy hair lent dignity to a face sunny with the light of
kindness, while every line of expression, those soul-inscriptions
written by the years on the plastic flesh, told of thought and
culture. The accent, too, was finished, and every gesture betrayed
refinement and ease.
At first the conversation was restrained, for both men
instinctively felt that between them lay a gulf which it would be
difficult to bridge; but, as Dr. Hale played well the part of
middleman, the ministers were drawn out towards each other, and in
a little while struck mutual chords in one another's hearts.
During the morning the two men talked of art, of philosophy, and
of history, the discussion of these calling out a light of
intelligence and rapture on the old man's face. When, however, the
graver questions of theology were broached, his voice became hard
and inflexible, a shadow fell, and the radiancy of the man and
scholar became lost in the gloom of the divine.
Whenever Mr. Penrose ventured to hint on some phase of the broader
theology, the old man was provoked to impatience; and when he went
so far as to quote Browning, and declare that--
'The loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless god
Amid his worlds,'
a gleam of fire shot from the mild eye of Mr. Morell, significant
as a storm-signal across a sea of glass.
The younger man was often taken at disadvantage, for, while he was
in touch with modern thought, he did not possess the old
dialectician's skill. Once, as Mr. Penrose remarked that science
was modifying theology, Mr. Morell, detecting the flaw in his
armour, thrust in his lance to the hilt by replying that science
and Calvinism were logically the same, with the exception that,
for heredity and environment, the Calvinist introduced grace.
Whereupon Mr. Penrose cried with some vehemence:
'No, no, Mr. Morell! that will not do. I cannot accept your
statement at all.'
'Can't you?' said the old man, rising from his chair, the war
spirit hardening his voice and flaming in his eye. 'Can't you?
What says science of the first hundred men which will pass you, if
you take your stand in the main thoroughfare of the great city
over the hills yonder? Watch them; one is drunk, another is linked
arm in arm with his paramour, a third is handcuffed, and you can
see by the conduct of him who follows that he is as reckless of
life as though the years were for ever. Why these? Ask science,
and it answers _election_--the election of birth and circumstance.
Ask Calvinism, and it, too, answers election--the election of
decrees.'
'But science does not do away with will, Mr. Morell.'
'Well, then, it teaches its impotence, and that is the same thing.
It bases will on organization, and traces conduct to material
sources. Huxley tells us the salvation of a child is to be born
with a sound digestion, and Calvinism says the salvation of a
child is to be born under the election of grace. Logically, the
basis of both systems is the same; the sources of life differ,
that is all. One traces from matter, the other from mind--from the
mind and will of the Eternal.'
'But science fixes it for earth only--you fix it for eternity,'
suggestively hinted the younger man.
'Yes, you are right, Mr. Penrose; we do.'
'Then a man is lost because he cannot be saved, and punished for
things over which he had no control?'
'Ask science,' was the curt reply.
'Well, Mr. Morell, I will ask science, and science will yield
hope. Science says, take a hundred men and a hundred women, and
let them live on a fruitful island and multiply, and in four
generations you will have an improved stock--a stock freer from
atavism, hysteria, anomalies, and insanities. Science holds out
hope; you don't. You say God's will and decrees are eternal, and
what they were a thousand ages since they will be a thousand ages
to come. Science does eventually point to a new heaven and new
earth, but Calvinism throws no light across the gloom.'
The old man quietly shifted his ground by asking his opponent if
he ever asked himself why he did, and why he did not, do certain
things.
'I suppose the reason is because of my choice, is it not?'
'And what governs choice--or, if you like, will?'
'I do, myself.'
'Who are you, and what part of you governs it? Will cannot govern
Will, can it? And can you divorce will from personality?'
'Tennyson answers your question, Mr. Morell.
'"Our wills are ours, we know not how,"
that is the mystery of existence.
'"Our wills are ours, to make them Thine,"
that is the mystery of salvation.'
'Then, Mr. Penrose, I ask you--why don't we make our wills God's?'
Mr. Penrose was silent, and then he made a slip, and played into
his opponent's hands by saying:
'My faith in a final restitution meets that difficulty. We shall
all be God's some time; His love is bound to conquer.'
'Suppose what you call Will defies God's love, what then?'
'It cannot.'
'Then it is no longer will.'
'Cannot you conceive of Will winning Will?'
'I can conceive of Will, as you define it, defying Will, and that
for ever. But we escape your contradictions; we accept the fact
that some men are under a Divine control they cannot resist--'
'Then you both agree as to the principle,' broke in Dr. Hale; 'you
are both Calvinists, with this difference: you, Mr. Morell, say
only the few will be called; Mr. Penrose, here, says all will be
called. Let us go in for the larger hope.'
'You are right, doctor. I am a Calvinistic Universalist,' cried
Mr. Penrose in triumph.
And Mr. Morell was bound to admit the doctor had scored.
It was not long, however, before Mr. Penrose found a spring of
tenderness hidden beneath the crust of Calvinism that lay around
the old man's soul, and on which were written in fiery characters
the terrors of a merciless law. And the rod that smote this rock
and tapped the spring was none other than the story of Amanda's
return and repentance, told in part by Dr. Hale and in part by the
young pastor himself.
As the story was unfolded, the old man evinced much feeling, often
raising his hand to shade fast-filling eyes, or to brush away the
tears that fell down his furrowed face. They told him of Amanda's
silence as to the past, and he commended her for it, remarking to
Mr. Penrose that the true penitent seldom talked of the yesterdays
of sin; they told him how she counted herself unworthy of home and
of love, seeking blame and not welcome from the mother to whom she
had returned, and he declared it to be a token of her call; they
told him of the great light and peace that fell on her as she
rested on the goodness of God, and they heard from him the echo of
his Master's words over Mary--'She hath loved much, for she hath
had much forgiven'; and then they told him of her desire for the
restoration of her name on the Rehoboth register, and he was
silent--and for some minutes no sound disturbed his reverie.
That silence was God's speaking hour. Within the old pastor's soul
a voice was whispering before which the thunderings of the creed
of a sect were hushed. He, poor man, knew full well that it was a
voice which had long striven to make itself heard--a still, small
voice that would neither strive nor cry--a haunting voice, a voice
constant in its companionship during his later years. How often he
would fain have listened to it! But he dared not, for was it not a
contradictory voice? Did it not traverse the letter which he had
sworn to uphold and declare? What if the voice were the voice of
God? No! It could not be. God spoke in His Book. It was plain.
Wayfaring men might read, and fools had no need to err. But was
God's voice for ever hushed? Had He had no message since the seal
was fixed to the Canon of Scripture? What if that which he heard
was one of those messages concerning which Christ said, 'I have
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.' Had the
_now_ in his life passed? Had the _then_ come when a fuller
revelation was about to be vouchsafed? Nay! even the Apostle--the
man inspired--only knew in part. Why should he, then, try to pry
into the clouds and darkness that were round about the awful
throne? And yet in Him who sat on that throne was no darkness at
all. Supposing the feelings struggling in his heart now were rays
of light from Him--rays seeking to pierce the clouds, and bring
more truth--truth which, in his highest moments, he had dreamed
of, but never dared to follow. Was not Dr. Hale right after all?
Was it not better to trust what we knew to be best in us, and
follow the larger rather than the lesser hope?
And so, in the silence, the two voices reasoned in the soul of Mr.
Morell.
In a little while Mr. Morell, roused from his reverie, turned to
the young pastor, and said:
'Your poet is right, Mr. Penrose. The loving worm within its clod
is diviner than a loveless god amid his worlds. Let us go as far
as the chapel.'
As they walked along the narrow, winding roadways, broken by
projecting gables, and fenced by irregular rows of palisades, the
old pastor began to re-live the long-departed days. Objects, once
familiar, on which his eye again rested, restored faded and
forgotten colours, and opened page after page in the books of the
past. Many cottages mutely welcomed him, their time-stained walls
memorials of generations with whom he held sacred associations.
There was the Old Fold Farm, with its famous fruit-trees, on
which, in spring evenings, he used to watch the blanching blossoms
blush beneath the glowing caress of the setting sun; and Alice o'
th' Nook's garden, with its beds of camomile, the scent of which
brought back, as perfumes are wont to, forms and faces long since
summoned by the 'mystic vanishers.' There, too, stood the old
manse--now tenantless--so long the temple of his studies and
domesticities, the shrine of joys and sorrows known to none save
himself. How the history of a life lay hidden there, each wall
scored with fateful characters, decipherable only to the eye of
him who for so many ears sought the shelter which they gave.
On the summit of the hill in front of him was the chapel, its
sagging roof silhouetted against the blue of the morning sky, the
tombstones, irregular and rude, rising from the billowy sea of
grave-mounds that lay around their base. Beyond him, in grandly
distant sweeps, rose the moors. How well he knew all their
contours, their histories, their names! How familiar he used to be
with all their moods--moods sombre and gladsome--as now they were
capped with mist, now radiant in sunlight, their sweeps dappled
with cloud shadows, moving or motionless, or white in the broad
eye of day. Thus it was, within the distance of a half-mile walk,
his past life, like an open scroll, lay before him; and he
remarked to Mr. Penrose that he had that morning found the book of
memory to be a book of life and a book of judgment also.
As the three men passed through the chapel-gates they were met by
old Joseph, who was hearty in his welcome of Mr. Morell.
'Eh! Mr. Morell,' he said, grasping his hand in a hard and earthy
palm, 'aw'm some fain to see yo'. We've hed no gradely preachin'
sin yo' left Rehoboth. This lad here,' pointing to Mr. Penrose,
'giz us a twothree crumbs betimes; but some on us, I con tell yo',
are fair clamming for th' bread o' life. None o' yo'r hawve-kneyded
duf (dough), nor your hawve-baked cakes, wi' a pinch o' currants
to fotch th' fancy tooth o' th' young uns. Nowe, but gradely
bread, yo' know.'
Mr. Morell tried to check the brutal volubility and plain-spokenness
of Joseph, but in vain. He continued the more vehemently.
'It's all luv naa, and no law. What mak' o' a gospel dun yo' co it
when there's no law, no thunerins (thunderings), Mr. Morell, no
leetnins? What's th' use o' a gospel wi'out law? No more use nor a
chip i' porritch. Dun yo' remember that sarmon yo' once preached
fro' "Jacob have I luved, but Esau have I hated"? It wur a grand
un, and Owd Harry o' th' Brig went straight aat o' th' chapel to
th' George and Dragon and geet drunk, 'cose, as he said, he mud as
well ged drunk if he wor baan to be damned, as be damned for
naught. Amos Entwistle talks abaat that sarmon naa, and tells bits
on it o'er to th' childer i' th' catechism class, and then maks
'em ged it off by heart.'
How long old Joseph would have continued in this strain it is hard
to say, had not Mr. Morell, who did not seem to care to hear more
of his pulpit deliverance of other days, silenced him by demanding
the vestry keys.
As the three men entered the vestry a close, damp atmosphere smote
them--an atmosphere pervading all rooms long shut up from air, and
with foundations fed by fattened graves.
Nor was the vestry itself more inviting. Gloomy and low-ceiled,
the plaster of its walls, soddened and discoloured from the
moisture of the moors, lay peeling off in ragged strips, while its
oozing floor of flags seemed to tell of sweating corpses in their
narrow beds beneath.
Through a small window, across which a spider had woven its web, a
shaft of sunlight lay tremulous with the dance of multitudinous
motes; and, falling on the dust-covered table, lighted up with its
halo a corroded pen and stained stone jar, half filled with
congealed ink.
On the right of this window stood a cupboard, with its panels of
dark oak, behind which lay the parchments and papers of the
Rehoboth Church--parchments and papers whose inscriptions were
fast fading, whose textures were fast rotting--companioning in
their decay the decay of the creeds they sought to preserve and
proclaim.
It was to this cupboard Mr. Morell turned, taking therefrom two
time-stained, leather-bound volumes--the one a record of the
interments of the past hundred years, the other containing the roll
of Rehoboth communicants since the establishment of the Church.
Laying the former aside, he took up the latter with a tenderness
and devoutness becoming one who was touching the sacred books of
some fetish of the East. It was, indeed, to him a book to be
reverenced; and as he slowly and sadly turned over its time-stained
pages, his eye rested on many names entered in his own small
handwriting--names which carried him back to companionship with
lives for ever past. Some he had known from birth to death,
blessing them in their advent, and committing them at the grave to
Him who is the sure and certain hope. There were those, too, whom
he piloted along the rocky coasts of youth--those with whom he once
wept in their shadowed homes, and from whom he never withheld his
joy in their hour of triumph. As name after name met his eye, it
was as though he travelled the streets of a ruined city--a city
with which in the days of its glory he had been familiar.
Memories--nothing but memories--greeted him. He heard voices, but
they were silent; he saw forms, but they were shadowy.
As he turned over page after page he read as never before the
record of his half-century's pastorate--his moorland ministry
among an ever-changing people, and there passed before him the
pageant of a life--not loud in blare, nor brilliant in colour--but
sombre, stately, and true.
Continuing to turn over the pages, he came to where a black line
was drawn across the name of Amanda Stott, and where against the
cancelled name a word was written as black as the ink with which
it was inscribed.
Again there came a pause. Long and tearfully the old pastor looked
at that name disfigured, as she, too, who bore it had been, by the
hand of man. Then, taking up the corroded pen and filling it, he
re-wrote the name in the space between the narrow blue-ruled
lines, and, looking up with smiling face, said:
'Yet there is room.'
And the shaft of sunlight that fell in through the cobwebbed
window of the Rehoboth vestry lay on the newly-inscribed name, as
though heaven sealed with her assent the act of the old man who
felt himself the servant of the One who said, 'I will in no wise
cast out.'
IV.
SAVED AS BY FIRE
It was a narrow, gloomy yard, paved with rough flags dinted and
worn by the wheels of traffic and the tread of many feet. On one
side stood the factory, cheerless and gray, with its storied
heights, and long rows of windows that on summer evenings flamed
with the reflected caresses of the setting sun, and in the shorter
days of winter threw the light of their illuminated rooms like
beacon fires across the miles of moor. Flanking the factory were
sheds and outbuildings and warehouses, through the open doors of
which were seen skips and trollies and warps, and piles of cloth
pieces ready for the market in the great city beyond the hills.
Within a stone's-throw the sluggish river crept along its
blackened bed, no longer a stream fresh from the hills, but foul
with the service of selfish man.
It was breakfast hour, and the monotonous roar of machinery was
hushed, no longer filling the air with the pulsations of mighty
manufacture. The thud of the ponderous engines had ceased; the
deafening rattle of the looms was no more heard; a myriad spooming
spindles were at rest. A dreamy sound of falling waters floated
from the weir, and the song of birds in a clump of stunted trees
made music in the quiet of the morning light--it was Nature's
chance to teach man in one of the brief pauses of his toil, had he
possessed the ear to hearken or the heart to understand.
Beneath the shelter of a 'lean-to' a group of men sat, hurriedly
gulping their morning meal, finding time, all the same, for loud
talk and noisy chaff. They were prosaic, hard-faced men, with
lines drawn deeply beneath their eyes, and complexions sallow,
despite the breezes of the hills among which they were reared.
From childhood they had been the slaves of labour; the bread they
ate was earned by sweat and sorrow, while their spare hours were
given to boisterous mirth--the rebound of exacting toil. Two or
three were conning the betting news in a halfpenny paper of the
previous evening, and talking familiarly of the chances of the
favourites, while others disputed as to sentiments delivered in
the last great political speech.
In one corner sat Amos Entwistle, the butt of not a little mirth
from a half-dozen sceptics who had gathered round him. They
addressed him as 'Owd Brimstone,' and made a burlesque of his
Calvinistic faith, one going so far as to call him 'a glory bird,'
while another declared he was 'booked for heaven fust-class baat
payin' for his ticket.'
'Why should he pay for his ticket,' asked an impudent-looking
youth, 'when th' Almeety's gan it him? Th' elect awlus travels for
naught, durnd they, Amos?'
'Thaa's more Scripture larning abaat thee nor I thought thaa had,'
said Amos, withdrawing his wrinkled face from the depths of a can
out of which he was drinking tea. 'But it's noan knowledge 'at
saves, Dan; th' devils believe and tremble.'
'But I noan tremble, Amos; I geet too mich brimstone i' yon fire
hoile to be flayed at what yo' say is "resarved" for them as isn't
called.'
(Dan's occupation was to feed the boiler fires.)
'If thaa'rt noan flayed, that doesn't say thaa hasn't a devil,'
replied Amos, again raising the can to his lips.
'Well, I'm noan to blame if a' cornd help miself, am I?'
But Amos remained silent.
'Aw say, Amos,' said a thoughtful-looking man, 'aw often wonder if
thaa'll be content when thaa geets up aboon to see us lot in
t'other shop.'
'Yi! and when we ax him, as th' rich mon axed Lazarus, for a sooap
(drink) of summat cool, it'll be hard lines, wirnd (will not) it,
owd lad, when thaa cornd help us?' asked the man who sat against
him.
'Happen it will,' replied Amos. 'But thaa knows there'll be no
sharin' baggin (tea or refreshment) there. Them as hed oil
couldn't gi' it to them as hed noan.'
'Then thaa'll not come across the gulf and help us, Amos?'
'Nowe!' cried Dan. 'He'd brun (burn) his wings if he did.'
And at this all laughed, save the thoughtful man who put the first
question to the old Calvinist.
'Thaa knows, Amos,' said he, 'I look at it i' this way. Supposin'
th' factory geet o' fire this mornin', an' yo' hed th' chance o'
savin' that lass o' mine that back-tents for yo', yo'd save her,
wouldn't yo'?'
'Yi, lad, if I'd th' _chance_,' replied Amos.
'Then haa is it yo're so mich better nor Him, as yo' co th'
Almeety, for yo' reckon He'll noan save some o' us?'
'I tell thee I'd save th' lass if I hed th' chance. We con nobbud
do what we're permitted to do. We're only instruments in th'
Almeety's honds.'
'But isn't th' Almeety His own Measter?'
'So He is, but His ways are past findin' out.'
'An' thaa means to say thaa'd save my lass, and th' Almeety
wouldn't save me?'
'It's decrees, thaa knows, lad, it's decrees,' said Amos, unshaken
by the argument of his friend.
'Then there's summat wrang with th' decrees, that's all, Amos.
There's been a mistak' somewhere.'
'Hooist, lad! hooist! durnd talk like that. Woe to th' mon that
strives wi' his Maker.'
'If thi Maker's th' mon thaa maks Him aat to be, I'm noan
partic'lar abaat oather His woes or His blessin's.'
'No more am I,' cried Dan, as he stood up and stretched himself
with a yawn. 'We mud as well mak' most o' life if we're booked for
t'other shop, though mine's a warm un i' this world, as yo' all
know.'
'It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God
that showeth mercy,' said Amos, in solemn tones.
And the whistle sounded for the renewal of work, and the men
dispersed.
* * * * *
The clock in the factory yard pointed to the hour of ten, and four
hundred toilers were sweating out their lives in one of
Manufacture's minting-shops of wealth. Overhead the shafting ran
in rapid revolutions, communicating its power and speed by lengths
of swaying, sagging belts to the machinery that stood so closely
packed on the vibrating floors, and between which passed, and
behind which stood, the operatives, unconscious of danger, and
with scarce a care than how to keep pace with the speed of steam
and the flying hours. Every eye was strained, and every nerve as
highly strung as the gearing of the revolving wheels, the keen
glances of the overlookers seeing to it that none paused until the
hour of release.
The atmosphere was heavy, the temperature high, and flecks of
'fly' floated on the stifling air, wafted by the breath born of
whirring wheels, and finding rest on the hair of women and the
beards of men until the workers looked as though they were
whitened by the snows of a premature decay.
Women and girls sang snatches of songs, and bits of old familiar
airs, with no accompaniment but the roar and rattle around, their
voices unheard save when some high-pitched note was struck; and
others found odd moments when by lip-signs and dumb show they
communicated with their fellow-workers.
Men and women, boys and girls, passed and repassed one another in
narrow alleys and between revolving machinery, crushing together
without sense of decency, and whispering hastily in one another's
ear some lewd joke or impure word, the moisture from their warm
flesh mingling with the smell of oil and cotton, and their
semi-nude forms offering pictures for the realistic pen of a Zola
or a Moore.
It was but one of the laps in the great race of competition where
steam contends with human breath, and iron is pitted against flesh
and blood. Over the hills were other factories where the same race
was going on, where other masters were competing, and other hands
were laying down life that they themselves and their little ones
might live--examples of the strange paradox that only those can
save their lives who lose them. Outside was pasturage and
moorlands, and the dear, sweet breath of heaven, the flowers of
the field, the song of birds, the yearning bosom of Nature warm
with love towards her children. Yet here, within, was a reeking
house of flesh--not the lazar ward of the city slum, but the
sweating den of a competitive age.