CHAPTER XVIII

THE OLD AND THE NEW

Rufus awoke next morning to the sound of Christmas bells ringing wildly down the valley and out across the hills. It was a pleasant sound, and awoke many tender memories in his heart. Instinctively his thoughts turned back to the Gospel story, and to the Christ who had changed the history of the world. Whatever might be said of the doctrines and dogmas that his grandfather had preached for fifty years with so much vehemence and energy, there could be no doubt as to the ethical value of Christ's life and sayings.

He had not looked into the New Testament for a good many years now, but it suddenly occurred to him that it was scarcely fair to hold Christ responsible for all the foolish things done and taught in His name. He recalled without effort whole paragraphs of the Sermon on the Mount, for he had been compelled, as a boy, to get off whole chapters both of the Old and New Testament by heart, and he felt that nothing nobler had been taught in all the history of the world. Besides all that, there was something infinitely beautiful and touching in the tragedy of Christ's life and death. He was a martyr for scorned ideals. He gave up his life rather than compromise with evil, or be a party to the hypocrisies of His time. He was, undoubtedly, the friend of the poor, and outcast, and oppressed, and was the only religious man of His time who had the courage to speak a kind word to publicans and harlots.

Rufus began to have an uncomfortable feeling that he had scarcely treated this sacred figure with ordinary chivalry or fair play. The very ideals he stood for and advocated were among those the Man of Nazareth lived for and died for. From what, then, had he revolted? Against what had he protested?

He closed his eyes while the bells rang on, and tried to think. He could recall no word of Christ to which he could take exception, no single act that was not in itself a message of goodwill to men. Here was a life absolutely unselfish, and sacrificed in the pursuit of the noblest ideal. Here was teaching that struck at the greed and hypocrisy and lust of a corrupt age. Here was an influence, if taken by itself, which must always be for the common good.

Why, then, had he revolted? He had called Christianity a delusion and a snare. A benumbing superstition, an invention of priests for the enslavement of men and women. In his defence of the position he had taken up he had pointed out that Christianity had stood for slavery, for war, for oppression, for persecution, for greed, and for the rule of the strong over the rights and consciences of the weak. Had he been wrong in this contention? And if not, where was the discrepancy?

Could it be true that Christ stood for one thing, and Christianity for another? In other words, was the thing that bore the name of Christianity, Christianity at all? Did it bear anything but the most distant resemblance to that sweet and ennobling influence that Jesus breathed into the life of the world?

He became interested in the problem. The bells ceased their wild revel, and a little company of carol singers broke out in the front garden:

Hark! the glad sound, the Saviour comes, The Saviour promised long, Let every heart prepare a throne, And every voice a song.

They sang well and tunefully, sustaining all the parts, and throwing heart and enthusiasm into the exercise. He listened with interest and pleasure. A new chord seemed to have been struck in his nature. A fresh window had been opened in his mind. A year ago the carol might have irritated him, and he would probably have laid the flattering unction to his soul, that he had outgrown a mouldy and moth-eaten superstition.

He wondered if loving Madeline Grover had made his heart sensitive to new influences, or if it was the possibility of a speedy escape from life that had turned his heart anew to these questions.

The carol-singers had come to honour his grandfather. He was no longer their pastor. He had preached till he was eighty--preached till his once crowded congregation had dwindled down to a mere handful, and the glory of "Zion," as the chapel was called, had become but a memory. Yet his name was revered still. For fifty years and more he had lived in Tregannon, and had lived a life of strict and severe integrity, and, though the younger generation had drifted away from his ministry, and "Zion" was no longer enthusiastic about the terms of its title-deeds, yet there was no one who had not a good word to speak of the white-haired supernumerary.

He heard the door open at length. The old servant had gone down to let the singers in, and he knew there would be cocoa and saffron cake, and a word of welcome and exhortation from his grandfather. It was pleasant, after all, to be remembered with so much affection after a life of eighty-four years.

Rufus wondered if his name would ever be held in any degree of esteem by his fellows, or if he would live unhonoured, and die unlamented. Why was it his grandfather's name was so much revered? Was it the manner of his life or the character of his preaching that had touched the heart and imagination of Tregannon?

He had not much difficulty in answering that question. Nobody cared about his sermons now. The few that were remembered, were remembered only to be discussed and discarded. His criticisms of Luther, his fierce attacks on Arminianism, his deadly assaults on Darwin and Huxley, who were beginning to be talked about, his righteous scorn at infant baptism, his ponderous defence of verbal inspiration, his laboured expositions of the prophecies of Daniel, his flounderings in the deep waters of the Apocalypse, his weighty disquisitions on foreknowledge and predestination, and his nicely-balanced definitions of such terms as atonement, justification, regeneration and the like--what did they all amount to now? Who recalled them or were made the better by them? The thing that mattered was goodness. In so far as he had set an example of uprightness of character, of simplicity of aim, of unselfishness in his dealings with his fellows, he had lived to purpose. The sermon that all Tregannon remembered was his upright life. Austere he had always been, carrying himself with a certain reserve that no one could break down, but beneath a cold and placid surface there had beaten a genuinely human heart. To the poor and suffering and heartbroken he had proved himself through two generations a genuine friend. Hence it was that though he had lived in retirement for the last four years his name was held in reverence still.

Rufus found himself debating the question from a fresh standpoint. Was Christianity what his grandfather preached, or what he lived? He had heard him declare from the pulpit, with passionate vehemence, that good works were filthy rags, and that morality might be a millstone around the neck to sink the soul in deeper perdition. Yet who cared for his grandfather's theology in Tregannon? The thing that made his name revered was that very morality which he had so often warned his hearers against.

"There's a screw loose somewhere," Rufus said to himself, with a smile. "Perhaps I had better read the New Testament again and try to find out what Christianity is. What passes in its name I like as little as ever I