Mr. Hardcap's Family Prayers.
"JENNIE," said I, the other evening, "I should like to go and make a
call at Mr. Hardcap's."
Our new pastor had preached a sermon on that unapplied passage of
Scripture, Luke xiv: 12-14. It had made a great stir in our little
village. Mr. Wheaton thought it was a grand sermon, but
impracticable. Mrs. Potiphar resented it as personal. Deacon
Goodsole thought it was good sound doctrine. I thought I would give
the sermon a trial; meanwhile I reserved my judgment.
It is not a bad method, by the way, of judging a sermon to try it
and see how it works in actual experiment.
Jennie assented with alacrity to my proposition; her toilet did not
take long, and to Mr. Hardcap's we went.
It was very evident that they did not go into society or expect
callers. In answer to our knock we heard the patter of a child's
feet on the hall floor and Susie opened the door. As good fortune
would have it, the sitting-room door at the other end of the hall
stood invitingly open, and so, without waiting for ceremony, I
pushed right forward to the common room, which a great blazing wood
fire illuminated so thoroughly that the candles were hardly
necessary. Mrs. Hardcap started in dismay to gather up her basket of
stockings, but on my positive assurance that we should leave
forthwith if she stopped her work she sat down to it again. Luckily
the night was cold and there was no fire in the stove of the
cheerless and inhospitable parlor. So they were fain to let us share
with them the cheery blaze of the cozy sitting-room. We did not
start out till after seven, and we had not been in the room more
than ten minutes before the old-fashioned clock in the corner rang
out the departure of the hour and ushered in eight o'clock--whereat
James laid aside his book, and at a signal from his father brought
him the family Bible.
"We always have family prayers at eight o'clock," said Mr. Hardcap,
"before the children go to bed; and I never let anything interfere
with it."
This in the tone of a defiant martyr; as one under the impression
that we were living in the middle ages and that I was an Inquisitor
ready to march the united family to the stake on the satisfactory
evidence that the reading of the Bible was maintained in it.
I begged him to proceed, and he did so, the defiant spirit a little
mollified.
He opened at a mark somewhere in Numbers. It was a chapter devoted
to the names of the tribes and their families. Poor Mr. Hardcap! If
he was defiant at the first threatening of martyrdom, he endured the
infliction of the torture with a resolute bravery worthy of a
covenanter. The extent to which he became entangled in those names,
the new baptism they received at his hands, the singular contortions
of which he proved himself capable in reproducing them, the
extraordinary and entirely novel methods of pronunciation which he
evolved for that occasion, and the heroic bravery with which he
struggled through, awoke my keenest sympathies. Words which he
fought and vanquished in the first paragraph rose in rebellion in a
second to be fought and vanquished yet again. The chapter at length
drew to an end. I saw to my infinite relief that he was at last
emerging from this interminable feast of names. What was my horror
to see him turn the page and enter with fresh zeal upon the conquest
of a second chapter.
Little Charlie (five years old) was sound asleep in his mother's
arms. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy and her mind interiorly
calculating something. I wondered not that James snored audibly on
the sofa. Susie never took her eyes off her father, but sat as one
that watches to see how a task is done. My wife listened for a
little while with averted face, then wandered off, as she afterwards
told me, to a mental calculation of her resources and expenses for
the next month. And still Mr. Hardcap rolled out those census tables
of Judea's ancient history. It was not till he had finished three
chapters that at length he closed the book and invited me to lead in
prayer.
Half an hour later, after Jamie had been roused up from his corner
of the sofa and sent off to bed, and Charlie had been undressed and
put to bed without being more than half aroused, Mrs. Hardcap asked
my advice as to this method of reading the Bible.
"Mr. Hardcap," said she, "read a statement the other day to the
effect that by reading three chapters every day and five on Sunday
he could finish the Bible in a year. And he is going through it in
regular course. But I sometimes doubt whether that is the best way.
I am sure our children do not take the interest in it which they
ought to; and I am afraid those chapters of hard names do not always
profit me."
The martyr in Mr. Hardcap re-asserted itself.
"All Scripture," said he solemnly, "is given by inspiration of God
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and for
instruction in righteousness. We cannot afford to pass by any part
of the word of God."
"What do you think about it, Mr. Laicus?" said Mrs. Hardcap.
"Think!" said I; "I should be afraid to say what I think lest your
husband should account me a hopeless and irreclaimable unbeliever."
"Speak out," said Mr. Hardcap; "as one who at the stake should say,
'pile the fuel on the flame, and try my constancy to its utmost.'
"Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."
"Well," said I, "if I were to speak out, I should say that this way
of reading the Bible reminds me of the countryman who went to a city
hotel and undertook to eat right down the bill of fare, supposing he
ought not to call for fish till he had eaten every kind of soup. It
is as if one being sick, should go to the apothecary's shop, and
beginning on one side, go right down the store taking in due order
every pill, potion, and powder, till he was cured-or killed."
Mr. Hardcap shook his head resolutely. "Is it not true," said he,
"that all Scripture is profitable?"
"Yes," said I, "but not that it is all equally profitable for all
occasions. All the food on the table is profitable, but not to be
eaten at one meal. All the medicine in the apothecary's shop is
profitable, but not for the same disease."
"There is another thing," said Mrs. Hardcap, "that I cannot help
being doubtful about. James is learning the New Testament through as
a punishment."
"As a punishment!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," said she. "That is, Mr. Hardcap has given him the New
Testament, and for his little offences about the house he allots him
so many verses to learn; sometimes only ten or twelve, sometimes a
whole chapter. I am afraid it will give the poor boy a distaste for
the word of God."
"There is no danger," said Mr. Hardcap, oracularly. "The word of God
is sharper than a two edged sword, and is quick even to the dividing
asunder of the joints and the marrow. It is the book to awaken
conviction of sin, the proper book for the sinner. There is no book
so fitting to bring him to a sense of his sinfulness and awaken in
him a better mind."
"And how," said I, "do you find it practically works? Does he seem
to love his Bible?"
"Says he hates it awfully," said his mother.
"Such," said Mr. Hardcap, "is the dreadful depravity of the human
heart. It is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."
It was quite idle to argue with Mr. Hardcap. We left him
unconvinced, and I doubt not he is still reading his three chapters
a day and five on Sunday. But I pity poor James from the bottom of
my heart; and as my wife and I walked home I could not but help
contrasting in my own mind Mr. Hardcap's way of reading the Bible
and that which Deacon Goodsole pursues in his family.