IN CHURCH.
They turned into Chambers Street, in which was the little church where
Dr. Channing was to preach. Lawrence Newt led the way up the aisle to
his pew. The congregation, which was usually rather small, to-day quite
filled the church. There was a general air of intelligence and shrewdness
in the faces, which were chiefly of the New England type. Amy Waring
saw no one she had ever seen before. In fact, there were but few present
in whose veins New England blood did not run, except some curious hearers
who had come from a natural desire to see and hear a celebrated man.
When our friends entered the church a slow, solemn voluntary was playing
upon the organ. The congregation sat quietly in the pews. Chairs and
benches were brought to accommodate the increasing throng. Presently the
house was full. The bustle and distraction of entering were over--there
was nothing heard but the organ.
In a few moments a slight man, wrapped in a black silk gown, slowly
ascended the pulpit stairs, and, before seating himself, stood for a
moment looking down at the congregation. His face was small, and thin,
and pale; but there was a pure light, an earnest, spiritual sweetness
in the eyes--the irradiation of an anxious soul--as they surveyed the
people. After a few moments the music stopped. There was perfect silence
in the crowded church. Then, moving like a shadow to the desk, the
preacher, in a voice that was in singular harmony with the expression
of his face, began to read a hymn. His voice had a remarkable cadence,
rising and falling with yearning tenderness and sober pathos. It seemed
to impart every feeling, every thought, every aspiration of the hymn.
It was full of reverence, gratitude, longing, and resignation:
"While Thee I seek, protecting Power,
Be my vain wishes stilled;
And may this consecrated hour
With better hopes be filled."
When he had read it and sat down again, Hope Wayne felt as if a religious
service had already been performed.
The simplicity, and fervor, and long-drawn melody with which he had read
the hymn apparently inspired the choir with sympathy, and after a few
notes from the organ they began to sing an old familiar tune. It was
taken up by the congregation until the church trembled with the sound,
and the saunterers in the street outside involuntarily ceased laughing
and talking, and, touched by some indefinable association, raised their
hats and stood bareheaded in the sunlight, while the solemn music filled
the air.
The hymn was sung, the prayer was offered, the chapter was read; then,
after a little silence, that calm, refined, anxious, pale, yearning face
appeared again at the desk. The preacher balanced himself for a few
moments alternately upon each foot--moved his tongue, as if tasting the
words he was about to utter--and announced his text: "Peace I leave with
you: my peace I give unto you."
He began in the same calm, simple way. A natural, manly candor certified
the truth of every word he spoke. The voice--at first high in tone, and
swinging, as it were, in long, wave-like inflections--grew gradually
deeper, and more equally sustained. There was very little movement of
the hands or arms; only now and then the finger was raised, or the hand
gently spread and waved. As he warmed in his discourse a kind of
celestial grace glimmered about his person, and his pale, thoughtful face
kindled and beamed with holy light. His sentences were entirely simple.
There was no rhetoric, no declamation or display. Yet the soul of the
hearer seemed to be fused in a spiritual eloquence which, like a white
flame, burned all the personality of the speaker away. The people sat
as if they were listening to a disembodied soul.
But the appeal and the argument were never to passion, or prejudice, or
mere sensibility. Fear and horror, and every kind of physical emotion, so
to say, were impossible in the calmness and sweetness of the assurance of
the Divine presence. It was a Father whose message the preacher brought.
Like as a father so the Lord pitieth His children, said he, in tones that
trickled like tears over the hearts of his hearers, although his voice
was equable and unbroken. He went on to show what the children of such a
Father must needs be--to show that, however sinful, and erring, and lost,
yet the Father had sent to tell them that the doctrine of wrath was of
old time; that the eye for the eye, and the tooth for the tooth, was
the teaching of an imperfect knowledge; that a faith which was truly
childlike knew the Creator only as a parent; and that out of such faith
alone arose the life that was worthy of him.
Wandering princes are we! cried the preacher, with a profound ecstasy
and exultation in his tone, while the very light of heaven shone in his
aspect--wandering princes are we, sons of the Great King. In foreign
lands outcast and forlorn, groveling with the very swine in the mire, and
pining for the husks that the swine do eat; envying, defying, hating,
forgetting--but never hated nor forgot; in the depths of our rage, and
impotence, and sin--in the darkest moment of our moral death, when we
would crucify the very image of that Parent who pities us--there is one
voice deeper and sweeter than all music, the voice of our elder brother
pleading with that common Father--"Forgive them, forgive them, for they
know not what they do!"
He sat down, but the congregation did not move. Leaning forward, with
upraised eyes glistening with tears and beaming with sympathy, with hope,
with quickened affection, they sat motionless, seemingly unwilling to
destroy the holy calm in which, with him, they had communed with their
Father. There were those in the further part of the church who did not
hear; but their mouths were open with earnest attention; their eyes
glittered with moisture; for they saw afar off that slight, rapt figure;
and so strong was the common sympathy of the audience that they seemed to
feel what they could not hear.
Lawrence Newt did not look round for Aunt Martha. But he thought of her
listening to the discourse, as one thinks of dry fields in a saturating
summer rain. She sat through the whole--black, immovable, silent. The
people near her looked at her compassionately. They thought she was an
inconsolable widow, or a Rachel refusing comfort. Nor, had they watched
her, could they have told if she had heard any thing to comfort or
relieve her sorrow. From the first word to the last she gazed fixedly at
the speaker. With the rest she rose and went out. But as she passed by
the pulpit stairs she looked up for a moment at that pallid face, and a
finer eye than any human saw that she longed, like another woman of old
looking at another teacher, to kiss the hem of his garment. Oh! not by
earthquake nor by lightning, but by the soft touch of angels at midnight,
is the stone rolled away from the door of the sepulchre.