CHAPTER IV

A YOUNG PREACHER.

In one of the hottest days of the summer of 184-, a young man of lofty bearing and aristocratic descent was riding on horseback carelessly along the highroad that leads from Great Yarmouth to Ipswich, and not many miles from the rising town of Lowestoft. He had a companion with him not very much older than himself, but with a face bronzed with foreign travel.

‘How hot it is!’ said the younger of the two, as he reined up his steed on the brow of a small hill, at the foot of which was a stretch of marshland draining slowly into the sea a mile off on his left, while on the other side of the marsh, given up to cattle and horses and sheep, the road led to a rising tableland, dotted with old red-brick farmhouses and stately oaks and dark firs. A painter such as Constable or Gainsborough would have soon transferred something of the peaceful rustic beauty all round to his canvas. Far off was the calm blue sea, dark with slow-sailing colliers on their way to or from the distant port of London; nearer the shore were the brown sails of the fishing boats; while among them were a few pleasure yachts, the proprietors of which were endeavouring to earn an honest penny by carrying holiday makers to the sands which mark the commencement of the Yarmouth Roads. Nowhere was the dark line of smoke which marks the modern steamer visible. England then trusted in her wooden walls and her sailors with their hearts of oak, and dreamt not of the time when all that craft should be replaced by big iron or steel built steamers, ready to sink to the bottom, with all their crew and cargo or passengers, in case of a collision, in the twinkling of an eye.

‘Hot, is it? You should have been with me in India.’

‘And got wounded as you have?’

‘Yes, if you like. A good pension heals many a nasty wound.’

‘But—’ And here the younger man gave a joyful exclamation, ‘Why, there is Uncle Dick!’

‘True enough,’ said that individual, who was urging on his steed at a furious pace, and had just joined them. He was hawk-eyed, square-built, very red-faced, with an eye anything but expressive of saintly life. ‘What the devil are you gay fellows up to? I thought you were far away yachting.’

‘Duty,’ was the reply; ‘the fact is, I am rather tired of dissipation, and am thinking of settling down quietly.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ said the newcomer, who was the wealthy incumbent of a neighbouring parish. ‘But you had better tarry with me for the night, and have a carouse over some port that you can’t get hold of every day. I have done duty, and am quite at your service. This is Sunday night, and I propose a quiet rubber. The vicarage is close by. I am a bachelor, you know.’

‘Yes, we all know that. And a model priest and a pillar of the Church.’

‘Now, drop that,’ said the parson. ‘It is my misfortune that I have to wear a black coat rather than a red one. You, lucky dog! can do as you like.’

‘Well, uncle, we’ll test your hospitality,’ said the younger one of the horsemen, the elder accepting at the same time.

They had already reached the village, the main street of which consisted of a few houses and shops, with a lane which led to the village meeting—an old-fashioned building of red brick—towards which a crowd, at any rate, as much of a crowd as could be got together in the village, was making its way.

‘What are all these people up to?’

‘Going to meeting, I suppose,’ said the parson.

‘What, are meetings allowed on the estate?’

‘Unfortunately, they are. My brother’s grounds only come up to the village, and the people there do as they like. But it is getting late. Let us have a trot.’ Unfortunately, as the horsemen broke into a trot, they ran right into a group of poor people on their way to meeting. Unfortunately, a poor old woman was caught by one of the horses and thrown down.

‘Are you much hurt?’ said a young man, running to her rescue.

‘No, Mr. Wentworth,’ said one of the group. ‘Mother, I believe, is more frightened than hurt. We would have had her stop at home, but she said she must come and hear you preach. She said she was here when your father came to preach for the first time, and we could not keep her at home.’

‘And who are the men on horseback?’ who by this time were far away.

‘Why, one of ’em, the young one, is Sir Watkin Strahan, with his uncle, the parson of the next parish.’

‘Well, for a young man, he was by no means pleasant-looking. At any rate, he might have stopped to see if he had done any harm. But these rich men are all hard. Poor people have but one duty—to get out of their way, and to take their hats off to them when they meet!’

The expression of the young man was not to be taken literally. Farmer and peasant alike never took off the hat to anyone. The peasant simply made an obeisance and put up his hand to pull a lock of his front hair in proof of his deference to the ruling powers.

The crowd still clustered round the old woman, who was happily more frightened than hurt. She was one of a class rarely to be met with in our villages now, but at one time very common. She was a ‘meetinger.’ In some way she was a sufferer for the fact. When Christmas came there were coals and blankets at the Hall for such of the villagers as attended the parish church, but the ‘meetingers’ were left out in the cold; and yet they were the salt of the place—steady, orderly, industrious—content with their lot, however humble and hard. At the meeting they were all equals, brothers and sisters in Christ, believing that life was a scene of sorrow and difficulty, of darkness and poverty and death—believing also that that sorrow and pain would pass away, that that darkness would be turned into light, that the tear would be wiped from every eye, and the riches of heaven would be theirs in exchange for the poverty of earth, that death should be swallowed up in life. They studied one book, and that was the Bible. Their talk was in Scripture phrase, and it was not cant with them, but the utterance of a living faith. That faith exists no longer, but while it lasted it filled the peasant’s heart with a joy that the world could neither give nor take away, and there was peace and content in the home. There was no day like the Sunday, no treat like that of singing the songs of Zion, or of listening to the Gospel, as they held the sermon to be. Nowadays our villagers prefer to smoke a pipe and read the newspaper, and to talk of their rights. Then they were of the same way of thinking as the citizens of a small German duchy, who, when the year of revolution came across Europe, and the Grand-Duke gave them a representative government, were much annoyed at the trouble thus imposed on them, when he, the Grand-Duke, was born and endowed to do all the ruling himself.

But the old lady was better, and to her we must return, as she made her way to meeting.

The person most annoyed was the young preacher. He was shocked at the autocratic insolence of the party.

‘I shall know that young fellow on horseback,’ he said to himself, ‘if ever I meet him again, which is not very likely;’ and the young man continued his walk to the meeting, where he was to preach.

When he got there the place was crowded. Tremblingly he entered the vestry, and more tremblingly he climbed the pulpit stairs. Everybody whom he knew was there. For a village, it was a highly respectable congregation, consisting of well-to-do shopkeepers and farmers with their families, who sat in genteel old square pews lined with baize, while the labourers, in clean smock-frocks, filled the body of the place. On the floor, just under the pulpit, was the table-pew, crowded with all the musical talent of the place. Loud and long and wonderful was their performance. There are no such village choirs now, nor such congregations. The landlords have put down Dissent in that part. It is well understood that when there is a farm to let no Dissenter need apply.

The old meeting-house yard was pleasant to the eye, with its grand trees guarding the gates. It was a warm night, and the doors were wide open, and from the pulpit the eye could range over trim cottage gardens all ablaze with sweet flowers, whose scent floated pleasantly along the summer air. From afar one could hear also the echoes of the distant sea. There is a wonderful stillness and beauty in a country village on a Sunday night, that is if it be at a decent distance from town.

Even that dull red-brick meeting-house was rich in holy associations. It recalled memories of martyrs and saints, of men of whom the world was not worthy, who had given up all for Christ.

But let us turn to the present. In the pulpit is the lad whom we already know. He has been at a London college. This was his first sermon, and so still was the place that even the Sunday-school children—always the most troublesome part of the audience, and very naturally so—were silent. For a wonder, in no pew was a farmer asleep. The emotion of the dear old minister, as he sat in the family pew, was painful to witness. That lad up yonder was his only son, and had been set apart from his childhood for the service of the altar. Like another Timothy, from a child he had known the Scriptures. Like another Samuel, he had been early trained to wait upon the Lord. Had the prayers of pious parents been heard and answered? It seemed so. But who can tell what later years may do for the lad?

Let us look at him—tall, well-built, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. He was trembling and pale at first, but be was so no longer. The nervousness with which he read the Bible and offered up prayer has passed away. He has got accustomed to the sound of his own voice—a great thing for an orator of any kind.

The sermon was of the usual type—popular at that time in all Evangelical circles. It would have been deemed sinful to have preached in any other manner, and, after all, a raw lad can but preach the theology he had gone to college to learn, or which he had been taught on his mother’s knees. In religion, as in other things, you cannot put an old head upon young shoulders, but as far as he knows the preacher is emphatic and in earnest.

‘Men and brethren and sisters,’ he exclaimed towards the end of his discourse, ‘will you not accept the offered blessing? Dare you retire from this place rejecting the offer of Divine mercy and the invitations of Divine love? Will you continue in your sin and perish? Your souls that can never die are in danger. Now God waits to save you; to-morrow it may be too late. It may be that if you procrastinate now you may never again hear the offer of the Gospel. Turn your back on God now, and perhaps He may turn His back on you. From this house of prayer, from the sound of my voice, you may go home, to forget all I have said, or you may be hurried away by the rude hand of Death. I speak as to wise men. Judge ye what I say. Another throb of this heart, another beat of this pulse, another tick of that clock, and you may have gone to be alone with God. Life and death are set before you—a blessing and a curse—heaven and hell.’

As the young preacher, with eager eye and palpitating heart, sat down, it was with difficulty that the aged father could control his emotion so as to give out the hymn to be sung and to pronounce the benediction. More than one sob was heard—more than one face was bathed in tears. More than one in that crowd resolved from that day forth to lead a new and better life. It was some time before that sermon was forgotten. It was a village nine days’ wonder. A time was to come when that young preacher was to modify very considerably his theology and enlarge his creed. It is to be questioned whether, however, afterwards he ever preached with more fervour, or left a pulpit in a happier frame of mind. When a man feels what he says, what place is there in which he can feel more joyous than in the pulpit? To men in such a mood it is the very gate of heaven. Shame on the men who go into one without a Divine call and a living faith, who are preachers by training and by the acts of mistaken friends and relatives, who assume the priest’s office for a bit of bread, just as others become lawyers or medical men!

No wonder that the pulpit is a failure in our day; that men who feel themselves equal in education and spiritual life to the man in the pulpit stop away; that, in fact, men rarely darken church doors—especially the poor, the weary, and the heavy-laden, who need something more than a musical performance, or a religious ceremonial, or a sensational appeal. Yet are not these the men for whom a Saviour lived and prayed and died? When people were given to church and chapel going, something of the life and energy of the old Reformers—the Wesleys and the Whitfields, and their followers—had been left alive. The old traditions had still a force; the old habits had not died out. It had not become respectable to attend what were then really the means of grace, if I may use such an old-fashioned, conventional term. The world had not invaded the Church, and swindlers and adventurers had not discovered that if they would succeed in their schemes on the community, or get returned to Parliament, or stand well in society, they must identify themselves with one or other of the religious bodies, whose members would supply them with a decent proportion of dupes. It is a fine advertisement for a wealthy man to contribute largely to the funds of the religious body with which he is more or less connected. Such pecuniary generosity always has its reward. A working man candidate even who will get into a pulpit is also sure of success, even if he intimates that the parson does not know his business, or that the church and congregation are groping in the dark. If now and then he can get into a pulpit he is a made man.