Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/281

Rh in the minds of those who now directed its affairs — was not to save its present congregation, but to gather a larger — ultimately that they might be saved, let us hope, but primarily that the drain upon the purses of those who were responsible for its rent and other outlays might be lessened. Mr. Masquar, therefore, to whom the post was a desirable one, had been mainly anxious that morning to prove his orthodoxy, and so commend his services. Not that in those days one heard so much of the dangers of heterodoxy — that monster was as yet but growling far off in the jungles of Germany — but certain whispers had been abroad concerning the preacher which he thought it desirable to hush, especially as they were founded in truth. He had tested the power of heterodoxy to attract attention, but having found that the attention it did attract was not of a kind favorable to his wishes, had so skilfully remodelled his theories that, although to his former friends he declared them in substance unaltered, it was impossible any longer to distinguish them from the most uncompromising orthodoxy; and his sermon of that morning had tended neither to the love of God, the love of man, nor a hungering after righteousness — its aim being to disprove the reported heterodoxy of Jacob Masquar.

As they walked home, Mrs. Marshal, addressing her husband in a tone of conjugal disapproval, said, with more force than delicacy, "The pulpit is not the place to give a man to wash his dirty linen in."

"Well, you see, my love," answered her husband in a tone of apology, "people won't submit to be told their duty by mere students, and just at present there seems nobody else to be had. There's none in the market but old stagers and young colts — eh, Fred? — But Mr. Masquar is at least a man of experience."

"Of more than enough, perhaps," suggested his wife. "And the young ones must have their chance, else how are they to learn? You should have given the principal a hint. It is a most desirable thing that Frederick should preach a little oftener."

"They have it in turn, and it wouldn't do to favor one more than another,"

"He could hand his guinea, or whatever they gave him, to the one whose turn it ought to have been, and that would set it all right."

At this point the silk-mercer, fearing that the dominie, as he called him, was silently disapproving, and willing therefore to change the subject, turned to him and said, "Why shouldn't you give us a sermon, Graham?"

The schoolmaster laughed. "Did you never hear," he said, "how I fell like Dagon on the threshold of the Church, and have lain there ever since?"

"What has that to do with it?" returned his friend, sorry that his forgetfulness should have caused a painful recollection.

"That is ages ago, when you were little more than a boy. Seriously," he added, chiefly to cover his little indiscretion, "will you preach for us the Sunday after next?" Deacons generally ask a man to preach for them.

"No," said Mr. Graham.

But even as he said it a something began to move in his heart — a something half of jealousy for God, half of pity for poor souls buffeted by such winds as had that morning been roaring, chaff-laden about the church, while the grain fell all to the bottom of the pulpit. Something burned in him: was it the word that was as a fire in his bones, or was it a mere lust of talk? He thought for a moment. "Have you any gatherings between Sundays?" he asked.

"Yes, every Wednesday evening," replied Mr. Marshal. "And if you won't preach on Sunday, we shall announce tonight that next Wednesday a clergyman of the Church of Scotland will address the prayer-meeting."

He was glad to get out of it so, for he was uneasy about his friend, both as to his nerve which might fail him, and his Scotch oddities which would not.

"That would be hardly true," said Mr. Graham, "seeing I never got beyond a license."

Nobody here knows the difference between a licentiate and a placed minister; and if they did, they would not care a straw. So we'll just say clergyman."

"But I won't have it announced in any terms. Leave that alone, and I will try to speak at the prayer-meeting."

"It won't be in the least worth your while except we announce it. You won't have a soul to hear you but the pew-openers, the woman that cleans the chapel, Mrs. Marshal's washerwoman, and the old greengrocer we buy our vegetables from. We must really announce it."

"Then I won't do it. Just tell me: what would our Lord have said to Peter or John if they had told him that they had been to synagogue and had been asked to speak, 