PEEWEE PREACHING.
Upon the following Sunday the Rev. Amos Peewee, D.D., made a suitable
improvement of the melancholy event of the week. He enlarged upon the
uncertainty of life. He said that in the midst of life we are in death.
He said that we are shadows and pursue shades. He added that we are here
to-day and gone to-morrow.
During the long prayer before the sermon a violent thunder-gust swept
from the west and dashed against the old wooden church. As the Doctor
poured forth his petitions he made the most extraordinary movements with
his right hand. He waved it up and down rapidly. He opened his eyes for
an instant as if to find somebody. He seemed to be closing imaginary
windows--and so he was. It leaked out the next day at Mr. Gray's that Dr.
Peewee was telegraphing the sexton at random--for he did not know where
to look for him--to close the windows. Nobody better understood the
danger of draughts from windows, during thunder-storms, than the Doctor;
nobody knew better than he that the lightning-rod upon the spire was no
protection at all, but that the iron staples with which it was clamped
to the building would serve, in case of a bolt's striking the church, to
drive its whole force into the building. As a loud crash burst over the
village in the midst of his sermon, and showed how frightfully near the
storm was, his voice broke into a shrill quaver, as he faltered out,
"Yes, my brethren, let us be calm under all circumstances, and Death
will have no terrors."
The Rev. Amos Peewee had been settled in the village of Delafield since a
long period before the Revolution, according to the boys. But the parish
register carried the date only to the beginning of this century. He wore
a silken gown in summer, and a woolen gown in winter, and black worsted
gloves, always with the middle finger of the right-hand glove slit,
that he might more conveniently turn the leaves of the Bible, and the
hymn-book, and his own sermons.
The pews of the old meeting-house were high, and many of them square. The
heads of the people of consideration in the congregation were mostly
bald, as beseems respectable age, and as the smooth, shiny line of pates
appeared above the wooden line of the pews they somehow sympathetically
blended into one gleaming surface of worn wood and skull, until it seemed
as if the Doctor's theological battles were all fought upon the heads of
his people.
But the Doctor was by no means altogether polemical. After defeating and
utterly confounding the fathers who fired their last shot a thousand
years ago, and who had not a word to say against his remaining master of
the field, he was wont to unbend his mind and recreate his fancy by
practical discourses. His sermons upon lying were celebrated all through
the village. He gave the insidious vice no quarter. He charged upon it
from all sides at once. Lying couldn't stand for a moment. White lies,
black lies, blue lies, and green lies, lies of ceremony, of charity, and
of good intention disappeared before the lightning of his wrath. They are
all children of the Devil, with different complexions, said Dr. Peewee.
But if lying be a vice, surely, said he, discretion is a virtue. "My
dear Mr. Gray," said Dr. Peewee to that gentleman when he was about
establishing his school in the village, and was consulting with the
Doctor about bringing his boys to church--"my dear Mr. Gray," said the
Doctor, putting down his cigar and stirring his toddy (he was of an
earlier day), "above all things a clergyman should be discreet. In
fact, Christianity is discretion. A man must preach at sins, not sinners.
Where would society be if the sins of individuals were to be rudely
assaulted?--one more lump, if you please. A man's sins are like his
corns. Neither the shoe nor the sermon must fit too snugly. I am a
clergyman, but I hope I am also a man of common sense--a practical man,
Mr. Gray. The general moral law and the means of grace, those are the
proper themes of the preacher. And the pastor ought to understand the
individual characters and pursuits of his parishioners, that he may
avoid all personality in applying the truth."
"Clearly," said Mr. Gray.
"For instance," reasoned the Doctor, as he slowly stirred his toddy, and
gesticulated with one skinny forefinger, occasionally sipping as he went
on, "if I have a deacon in my church who is a notorious miser, is it not
plain that, if I preach a strong sermon upon covetousness, every body in
the church will think of my deacon--will, in fact, apply the sermon to
him? The deacon, of course, will be the first to do it. And then, why,
good gracious! he might even take his hat and cane and stalk heavily down
the broad aisle, under my very nose, before my very eyes, and slam the
church door after him in my very face! Here at once is difficulty in the
church; hard feeling; perhaps even swearing. Am I, as a Christian
clergyman, to give occasion to uncharitable emotions, even to actual
profanity? Is not a Christian congregation, was not every early Christian
community, a society of brothers? Of course they were; of course we must
be. Little children, love one another. Let us dwell together, my
brethren, in amity," said the Doctor, putting down his glass, and
forgetting that he was in Mr. Gray's study; "and please give me your
ears while I show you this morning the enormity of burning widows upon
the funeral pyres of their husbands."
This was the Peewee Christianity; and after such a sermon the deacon has
been known to say to his wife--thin she was in the face, which had a
settled shade, like the sober twilight of valleys from which the sun has
long been gone, though it has not yet set--
"What shocking people the Hindoos are! They actually burn widows! My
dear, how grateful we ought to be that we live in a Christian country
where wives are not burned!--Abraham! if you put another stick of wood
into that stove I'll skin you alive, Sir. Go to bed this instant, you
wicked boy!--It must be bad enough to be a widow, my dear, let alone
the burning. Shall we have evening prayers, Mrs. Deacon?"
In the evening of the day on which the Doctor improved the drowning, and
exhorted his hearers to be brave, Mr. Gray asked Gabriel Bennet, "Where
was the text?"
"I don't know, Sir," replied Gabriel. As he spoke there was the sound of
warm discussion on the other side of the dining-room, in which the boys
sat during the evening.
"What is it, Gyles?" asked Mr. Gray.
"Why, Sir," replied he, "it's nothing. We were talking about a ribbon,
Sir."
"What ribbon?"
"A ribbon we saw at church, Sir."
"Well, whose was it?" asked Mr. Gray.
"I believe it was Miss Hope Wayne's."
"You believe, Gyles? Why don't you speak out?"
"Well, Sir, the fact is that Abel Newt says she had a purple ribbon on
her bonnet--"
"She hadn't," said Gabriel, breaking in, impetuously. "She had a
beautiful blue ribbon, and lilies of the valley inside, and a white
lace vail, and--"
Gabriel stopped and turned very red, for he caught Abel Newt's eyes fixed
sharply upon him.
"Oh ho! the text was there, was it?" asked Mr. Gray, smiling.
But Abel Newt only said, quietly:
"Oh well! I guess it _was_ a blue ribbon after all."