Chapter 15

The story that Reynolds Bartram had "stood up for prayers" went through Bruceton and the surrounding country like wildfire. Scarcely anyone believed it, no matter by whom he was told: the informer might be a person of undoubted character, but the information was simply incredible. People would not believe such a thing unless they could see it with their own eyes and hear it with their own ears: so the special meetings became at once so largely attended that they were held in the body of the church instead of the little basement called the "lecture-room."

The most entirely amazed person in the town was Deacon Quickset. Never before had he been absent, unless sick, from any special effort of his church to persuade the sinners to flee from the wrath to come; but when Dr. Guide announced that he should ask Sam Kimper to assist him in the special meetings, the deacon's conscience bade him halt and consider. Dr. Guide was wrong,--there could be no doubt of that: would it be right, then, merely for the sake of apparent peace and unity, for him, the deacon, to seem to agree with his pastor's peculiar views? The deacon made it a matter of prayer, and the result was that he remained at home.

That Reynolds Bartram had been the first-fruits of the new special effort was a statement which the deacon denied as soon as he heard it. Frequent repetition of the annoying story soon began to impress him with its probability, and finally a brother deacon, who had been present, set all doubt at rest by the assertion that Bartram had not only been converted, but was assisting at the meetings. When, however, the attending deacon went on to inform his absentee brother that Bartram had attributed his awakening and conversion to the influence of Sam Kimper, Deacon Quickset lost his temper, and exclaimed,--

"It's all a confounded lie! It's a put-up job!"

"Brother Quickset!" exclaimed the astonished associate, with a most reproving look.

"Oh, I don't mean that _you lie_," explained the angry defender of the faith. "If you heard Bartram say it, he _did_ say it, of course. But there's something wrong somewhere. The minister's rather lost his head over Sam Kimper, just because the wretch isn't back in his old ways again, and he's got a new notion in his head about how the gospel ought to be preached. New notions have been plenty enough ever since true religion started; there's always some man or men thinking out things for themselves and forgetting everything else on account of them. There were meddlers of that kind back to the days of the apostles, and goodness knows the history of the church is full of them. They've been so set in their ways that no sort of discipline would cure them; they've even had to be hanged or burned, to save the faith from being knocked to pieces."

"But, brother Quickset," pleaded the other deacon, "every one knows our pastor isn't that sort of a person. He is an intelligent, thoughtful, unexcitable man, that--"

"That's just the kind that always makes the worst heretics," roared the deacon. "Wasn't Servetus that kind of a person? And didn't Calvin have to burn him at the stake? I tell you, deacon, it takes a good deal of the horror out of those times when you have a case of the kind come right up before your eyes."

"What? Somebody being burned?" exclaimed the other deacon, raising his hands in horror.

"No, no," testily replied the defender of the faith. "Only somebody that ought to be."

"But where does the lying come in, that you were talking about?"

"I tell you just what I believe," said Deacon Quickset, dropping his voice and drawing closer to his associate; "I believe Dr. Guide believes just what he says,--of course nobody's going to doubt that he's sincere,--but when it's come to the pinch he's felt a little shaky. What does any other man do when he finds himself shaky about an important matter of opinion? Why, he consults a lawyer, and gets himself pulled through."

"But you don't mean to say that you think Dr. Guide would go to a rank, persistent disbeliever in anything--but himself--like Ray Bartram, do you, in a matter of this kind?"

"Why not? Ministers have often got lawyers to help them when they've been muddled on points of orthodoxy. What the lawyer believes or don't believe hasn't got anything to do with it: it's his business to believe as his client does, and make other folks believe so, too. Ray Bartram is just the sort of a fellow a man would want in such a case. He's got that way of looking as if he knew everything, just like his father had before him, that makes folks give in to him in spite of themselves. Besides, he'll say or do anything to carry his point."

"Isn't that putting it rather strong, Brother Quickset?"

"Of course it isn't. Don't I know, I should like to ask? Don't I always hire him myself?"

"Oh!" That was the only word the other deacon spoke, but his eyes danced, and he twisted his lips into an odd grin.

"Oh, get out!" exclaimed the pillar of orthodoxy. "You needn't take it that way. Of course what I ask him to do is only right: if I didn't think so, I wouldn't ask him."

"Of course not, brother. But think a moment: do you really believe that any form of professional pride would persuade that young man--proud as Lucifer, and just as conceited and headstrong, a young man who always has argued against religion and against every belief you and I hold dear--to rise for prayers in an inquiry meeting, and afterwards say it was the Christian life of Sam Kimper,--a man whom a high-born fellow like Bartram must believe as near the animals as humanity ever is,--to say it was the Christian life of Sam Kimper that convinced him of the supernatural origin and saving power of Christianity?"

"I can't believe he put it that way: there must be something else behind it. I'm going to find out for myself and do it at once, too. This sort of nonsense must be stopped. Why, if men go to taking everything Jesus Christ said just as He said it, everything in the world in the way of business is going to be turned upside down."

Away went Deacon Quickset to Bartram's office, and was so fortunate as to find the lawyer in. He went right at his subject:

"Well, young man, you've been in nice business, haven't you?--trying to go up to the throne of grace right behind a jail-bird, while the leaders and teachers whom the Lord has selected have been spurned by you for years!"

Reynolds Bartram was too new a convert to have changed his old self and manner to any great extent: so he flushed angrily, and retorted,--

"One thief is about as good as another, Deacon Quickset."

Then it was the deacon's turn to look angry. The two men faced each other for a moment with flashing eyes, lowering brows, and hard-set jaws. The deacon was the first to recover himself: he took a chair, and said,--

"Maybe I haven't heard the story rightly. What I came around for was to get it from first hands. Would you mind telling me?"

"I suppose you allude to my conversion?"

"Yes," said the deacon, with a look of doubt, "I suppose that's what we will have to call it, for want of a better word."

"It is a very short story," said Bartram, now entirely calm, as he leaned against his desk and folded his arms. "Like every other man with any brains, I've always been interested in religion, intellectually, and have had to believe that if it was right, as I heard it talked, it had sometimes got away from its Founder in a manner for which there seemed to be no excuse. Everything was being taught by the servants, nothing by the Master. When I want to know your wishes, deacon, about any matter in which we are mutually interested, I do not go to your back door and inquire of your servants: I go to you, direct. But when people--you among the number--have talked to me about religion, they've always talked Peter and Paul and James and John,--never Jesus."

"The Apostle Paul--" began the deacon, but the lawyer snatched the words from his lips, and continued:

"The Apostle Paul was the ablest lawyer that ever lived. I've studied him a good deal, in past days, for style."

"Awful!" groaned the deacon.

"Not in the least," said the lawyer, with fine earnestness. "He was just the man for his place and his time; 'twas his business to explain the new order of things to the hard-headed Jews, of whom he had been so notable a representative, that to convert him it was necessary that he should be knocked senseless and remain so for the space of three days: you remember the circumstance? He was just the man, too, to explain the new religion to the heathens and pagans of his day, for those Greeks and Romans were a brainy lot of people. But why should he have been quoted to me, or any other man in the community? We don't have to be convinced that Jesus lived: we believe it already. The belief has been born in us; it has run through our blood for hundreds of years. Do you know what I've honestly believed for years about a lot of religious men in this town, you among the number? I've believed that Jesus was so good that you've all been making hypocritical excuses, through your theology, to get away from this!"

"Get away from my Saviour!" gasped the deacon.

"Oh, no; you wanted enough of Him to be saved by,--enough to die by; but when it comes to living by him--well, you know perfectly well that you don't."

"Awful!" again groaned the deacon.

"When I heard of that wretched convict taking his Saviour as an exemplar of daily life and conduct, it seemed ridiculous. If better men couldn't do it, how could he? I had no doubt that while he was under lock and key, with no temptations about him, and nothing to resist, he had succeeded; but that he could do it in the face of all his old influences I did not for an instant believe. I began to study him, as I would any other criminal, and when he did not break down as soon as I had expected, I was mean enough--God forgive me!--to try to shake his faith. The honest truth is, I did not want to be a Christian myself, and had resisted all the arguments I had heard; but I was helpless when dear friends told me that nothing was impossible to me that was being accomplished by a common fellow like Sam Kimper."

"Nothing is impossible to him that believes," said the deacon, finding his tongue for a moment.

"Oh, I believe; there was no trouble about that: 'the devils also believe,'--you remember that passage, I suppose? Finally, I began to watch Sam closely, to see if perhaps he wasn't as much of a hypocrite, on the sly, as some other people I know. He can't make much money on the terms he has with Larry, no matter how much work reaches the shop. I've passed his shop scores of times, early and late, and found him always at work, except once or twice when I've seen him on his knees. I've hung about his wretched home nights, to see if he did not sneak out on thieving expeditions; I've asked store-keepers what he bought, and have found that his family lived on the plainest food. That man is a Christian, deacon. When I heard that he was to make an exhortation at the meeting, I went there to listen--only for that purpose. But as he talked I could not help recalling his mean, little, insignificant face as I'd seen it again and again when I was a younger man, dropping into justices' courts for a chance to get practice at pleading, and he was up for fighting or stealing. It was the same face: nothing can ever make his forehead any higher or broader, or put a chin where nature left one off. But the expression of countenance was so different--so honest, so good--that I got from it my first clear idea of what was possible to the man who took our Saviour for a model of daily life. It took such hold of me that when the pastor asked those who wanted the prayers of God's people to rise, I was on my feet in an instant; I couldn't keep my seat."

"Then you do admit that there are some God's people besides Sam Kimper?" sneered the deacon.

"I never doubted it," replied the lawyer.

"Oh, well," said the deacon, "if you'll go on, now you've begun, you'll see you've only made a beginning. By the way, have you got that Bittles mortgage ready yet?"

"No," said the lawyer, "and I won't have it ready, either. To draw a mortgage in that way, so the property will fall into your hands quickly and Bittles will lose everything, is simple rascality, and I'll have nothing to do with it."

"It's all right if he's willing to sign it, isn't it?" asked the deacon, with an ugly frown. "His signature is put on by his own free will, isn't it?"

"You know perfectly well, Deacon Quickset," said the lawyer, "that fellows like Bittles will sign anything without looking at it, if they can get a little money to put into some new notion. A man's home should be the most jealously guarded bit of property in the world: I'm not going to deceive any man into losing it."

"I didn't suppose," said the deacon, "that getting religious would take away your respect for the law, and make you above the law."

"It doesn't: it makes me resolve that the law shan't be used for purposes of the devil."

"Do you mean to call me the devil?" screamed the deacon.

"I'm not calling you anything: I'm speaking of the unrighteous act you want done. I won't do it for you; and, further, I'll put Bittles on his guard against any one else who may try it."

"Mr. Bartram," said the deacon, rising, "I guess I'll have to take all my law-business to somebody else. Good-morning."

"I didn't suppose I should have to suffer for my principles so soon," said the lawyer, as the deacon started; "but when _you_ want to be converted, come see me and you'll learn I bear you no grudge. Indeed, you'll be obliged to come to me, as you'll learn after you think over all your affairs a little while."

The deacon stopped: the two men stood face to face a moment, and then parted in silence.