Part 7 (1/2)
He came--and with him the two ministers who often drank tea with my mother; both of whom, as they played some small part in the drama of my after-life, I may as well describe here. The elder was a little, sleek, silver-haired old man, with a blank, weak face, just like a white rabbit. He loved me, and I loved him too, for there were always lollipops in his pocket for me and Susan. Had his head been equal to his heart!--but what has been was to be--and the dissenting clergy, with a few n.o.ble exceptions among the Independents, are not the strong men of the day--none know that better than the workmen. The old man's name was Bowyer. The other, Mr. Wigginton, was a younger man; tall, grim, dark, bilious, with a narrow forehead, retreating suddenly from his eyebrows up to a conical peak of black hair over his ears. He preached ”higher doctrine,” _i.e._, more fatalist and antinomian than his gentler colleague,--and, having also a stentorian voice, was much the greater favourite at the chapel. I hated him--and if any man ever deserved hatred, he did.
Well, they came. My heart was in my mouth as I opened the door to them, and sank back again to the very lowest depths of my inner man when my eyes fell on the face and figure of the missionary--a squat, red-faced, pig-eyed, low-browed man, with great soft lips that opened back to his very ears: sensuality, conceit, and cunning marked on every feature--an innate vulgarity, from which the artisan and the child recoil with an instinct as true, perhaps truer, than that of the courtier, showing itself in every tone and motion--I shrank into a corner, so crestfallen that I could not even exert myself to hand round the bread and b.u.t.ter, for which I got duly scolded afterwards. Oh! that man!--how he bawled and contradicted, and laid down the law, and spoke to my mother in a fondling, patronizing way, which made me, I knew not why, boil over with jealousy and indignation. How he filled his teacup half full of the white sugar to buy which my mother had curtailed her yesterday's dinner--how he drained the few remaining drops of the threepennyworth of cream, with which Susan was stealing off to keep it as an unexpected treat for my mother at breakfast the next morning--how he talked of the natives, not as St. Paul might of his converts, but as a planter might of his slaves; overlaying all his unintentional confessions of his own greed and prosperity, with cant, flimsy enough for even a boy to see through, while his eyes were not blinded with the superst.i.tion that a man must be pious who sufficiently interlards his speech with a jumble of old English picked out of our translation of the New Testament. Such was the man I saw. I don't deny that all are not like him. I believe there are n.o.ble men of all denominations, doing their best according to their light, all over the world; but such was the one I saw--and the men who were sent home to plead the missionary cause, whatever the men may be like who stay behind and work, are, from my small experience, too often such. It appears to me to be the rule that many of those who go abroad as missionaries, go simply because they are men of such inferior powers and attainments that if they stayed in England they would starve.
Three parts of his conversation, after all, was made up of abuse of the missionaries of the Church of England, not for doing nothing, but for being so much more successful than his own sect; accusing them, in the same breath, of being just of the inferior type of which he was himself, and also of being mere University fine gentlemen. Really, I do not wonder, upon his own showing, at the savages preferring them to him; and I was pleased to hear the old white-headed minister gently interpose at the end of one of his tirades--”We must not be jealous, my brother, if the Establishment has discovered what we, I hope, shall find out some day, that it is not wise to draft our missionaries from the offscouring of the ministry, and serve G.o.d with that which costs us nothing except the expense of providing for them beyond seas.”
There was somewhat of a roguish twinkle in the old man's eye as he said it, which emboldened me to whisper a question to him.
”Why is it, Sir, that in olden times the heathens used to crucify the missionaries and burn them, and now they give them beautiful farms, and build them houses, and carry them about on their backs?”
The old man seemed a little puzzled, and so did the company, to whom he smilingly retailed my question.
As n.o.body seemed inclined to offer a solution, I ventured one myself.
”Perhaps the heathens are grown better than they used to be?”
”The heart of man,” answered the tall, dark minister, ”is, and ever was, equally at enmity with G.o.d.”
”Then, perhaps,” I ventured again, ”what the missionaries preach now is not quite the same as what the missionaries used to preach in St. Paul's time, and so the heathens are not so angry at it?”
My mother looked thunder at me, and so did all except my white-headed friend, who said, gently enough,
”It may be that the child's words come from G.o.d.”
Whether they did or not, the child took very good care to speak no more words till he was alone with his mother; and then finished off that disastrous evening by a punishment for the indecency of saying, before his little sister, that he thought it ”a great pity the missionaries taught black people to wear ugly coats and trousers; they must have looked so much handsomer running about with nothing on but feathers and strings of sh.e.l.ls.”
So the missionary dream died out of me, by a foolish and illogical antipathy enough; though, after all, it was a child of my imagination only, not of my heart; and the fancy, having bred it, was able to kill it also.
And David became my ideal. To be a shepherd-boy, and sit among beautiful mountains, and sing hymns of my own making, and kill lions and bears, with now and then the chance of a stray giant--what a glorious life! And if David slew giants with a sling and a stone, why should not I?--at all events, one ought to know how; so I made a sling out of an old garter and some string, and began to practise in the little back-yard. But my first shot broke a neighbour's window, value sevenpence, and the next flew back in my face, and cut my head open; so I was sent supperless to bed for a week, till the sevenpence had been duly saved out of my hungry stomach--and, on the whole, I found the hymn-writing side of David's character the more feasible; so I tried, and with much brains-beating, committed the following lines to a sc.r.a.p of dirty paper. And it was strangely significant, that in this, my first attempt, there was an instinctive denial of the very doctrine of ”particular redemption,” which I had been hearing all my life, and an instinctive yearning after the very Being in whom I had been told I had ”no part nor lot” till I was ”converted.” Here they are. I am not ashamed to call them--doggerel though they be--an inspiration from Him of whom they speak. If not from Him, good readers, from whom?
Jesus, He loves one and all; Jesus, He loves children small; Their souls are sitting round His feet, On high, before His mercy-seat.
When on earth He walked in shame, Children small unto Him came; At His feet they knelt and prayed, On their heads His hands He laid.
Came a spirit on them then, Greater than of mighty men; A spirit gentle, meek, and mild, A spirit good for king and child.
Oh! that spirit give to me, Jesus, Lord, where'er I be!
So--
But I did not finish them, not seeing very clearly what to do with that spirit when I obtained it; for, indeed, it seemed a much finer thing to fight material Apollyons with material swords of iron, like my friend Christian, or to go bear and lion hunting with David, than to convert heathens by meekness--at least, if true meekness was at all like that of the missionary whom I had lately seen.
I showed the verses in secret to my little sister. My mother heard us singing them together, and extorted, grimly enough, a confession of the authors.h.i.+p. I expected to be punished for them (I was accustomed weekly to be punished for all sorts of deeds and words, of the harmfulness of which I had not a notion). It was, therefore, an agreeable surprise when the old minister, the next Sunday evening, patted my head, and praised me for them.
”A hopeful sign of young grace, brother,” said he to the dark tall man.
”May we behold here an infant Timothy!”
”Bad doctrine, brother, in that first line--bad doctrine, which I am sure he did not learn from our excellent sister here. Remember, my boy, henceforth, that Jesus does _not_ love one and all--not that I am angry with you. The carnal mind cannot be expected to understand divine things, any more than the beasts that perish. Nevertheless, the blessed message of the Gospel stands true, that Christ loves none but His Bride, the Church.
His merits, my poor child, extend to none but the elect. Ah! my dear sister Locke, how delightful to think of the narrow way of discriminating grace!
How it enhances the believer's view of his own exceeding privileges, to remember that there be few that be saved!”