Chapter Six.
This chapter showeth, in a methodical manner, how to find a faith and lose a religion; also, to procure a call for persons of all manner of callings.
I had, as I have related, been encouraged in fits of passion, and had been taught to be pugnacious; my mind was now to be opened to loftier speculations; and religious dread, with all the phantoms of superstition in its train, came like a band of bravoes, and first chaining down my soul in the awe of stupefaction, ultimately loosened its bonds, and sent it to wander in all its childish wildness in the direful realms of horrible dreams, and of waking visions hardly less so. I was fashioning for a poet.
My nurse was always a little devotional. She went to the nearest chapel or church, and, satisfied that she heard the word of God, without troubling herself with the niceties of any peculiar dogma, which she could not have understood if she had, and finding herself on the threshold of Divine grace, she knelt down in all humility, prayed, and was comforted. Old Ford was a furious Methodist: he owned that he never could reform; and, as he daily drained the cup of sin to the very dregs, he tried, as an antidote, long prayer and superabounding faith. The unction with which he struck his breast, and exclaimed, “Miserable sinner that I am!” could only be exceeded by the veracity of the assertion. Mrs Brandon only joined in the prayer-meetings that he held at our house, when Ford himself was perfectly sober—thus she did not often attend—Brandon never. Whilst he wore the top-boots, he was an optimist, and perfectly epicurean in his philosophy—I use the term in the modern sense. When he had eighty pounds odd a year, with no family of his own, no man was more jovial or happy. He had the most perfect reliance on Providence. He boasted that he belonged to the Established Church, because it was so respectable—and he loved the organ. However, he never went in the forenoon, because he was never shaved in time; in the afternoon he never went, because he could not dispense with his nap after dinner; and, in the evening, none but the serving classes were to be seen there. He ridiculed the humble piety of his wife, and the fanatical fervour of his lodger. He was a High Churchman, and satisfied. But when he was obliged, with an increasing family and a decreased income, to work from morning till night, he grew morose and very unsettled in his faith.
The French Revolution was then at its wildest excess: equality was universally advocated in religious, as well as political establishments. The excitement of the times reached even to the sawpit. Brandon got tipsy one Saturday night with a parcel of demagogues, and when he awoke early next Sunday morning—it was a beautiful summer day—he made the sudden discovery that he had still his faith to seek for. Then began his dominical pilgrimages: with his son Ralph in his hand, he roved from one congregation to another over the vast metropolis, and through its extensive environs: I do not think that we left a single place dedicated to devotion unvisited. I well remember that he was much struck with the Roman Catholic worship. We repeated our visits three or four times to the Catholic chapel, a deference we paid to no other. The result of this may be easily imagined: when an excited mind searches for food, it will be satisfied with the veriest trash, provided only that it intoxicates. We at length stumbled upon a small set of mad Methodists, more dismal and more excluding than even Ford’s sect: the congregation were all of the very lowest class, with about twelve or thirteen exceptions, and those were decidedly mad. The pastor was an arch rogue, that fattened upon the delusion of his communicants. They held the doctrine of visible election, which election was made by having a call—that is, a direct visitation of the Holy Ghost, which was testified by falling down in a fit—the testification being the more authentic, if it happened in full congregation. The elected could never again fall: the sins that were afterwards committed in their persons were not theirs—it was the evil spirit within them, that they could cast out when they would, and be equally as pure as before. All the rest of the world, who had not had their call, were in a state of reprobation, and on the highroad to damnation.
All this, of course, I did not understand till long afterwards, but I too unhappily understood, or at least fancied I did, the dreadful images of eternal torments, and the certainty that they would soon be mine. First of all, either from inattention, or from want of comprehension, these denunciations made but a faint impression upon me. But the frightful descriptions took, gradually, a more visible and sterner shape, till they produced effects that proved all but fatal.
The doctrines of these Caterians just suited the intellect and the strong passions of Brandon. The sect was called Caterians, after the Reverend Mr Cate, their minister. My foster-father went home, after the second Sunday, and put his house in order. As far as regarded the household, the regulations would have pleased Sir Andrew Agnew: the hot joint was dismissed—the country walk discontinued—at meeting four times a day. Even Ford did not like it. Brandon was labouring hard for his call: he strove vehemently for the privilege of sinning with impunity. He was told by Mr Cate that he was in a desperate way. Brandon did all he could, but the call would not come for the calling. Mrs Brandon got it very soon, though she strenuously denied the honour. My good nurse was in the family-way, and Mr Cate had frightened her into fits, with a vivid delineation of the agonies of a new-born infant, under the torture of eternal fire, because it had died unelected. However, Brandon began a little to weary of waiting and long prayer, and perhaps of the now too frequent visits of Mr Cate. He commenced to have his fits of alternate intemperate recklessness, and religious despondency. One Sunday morning—well do I recollect it—he called me up early, before seven; and I supposed, as usual, that we were going to early meeting: we walked towards the large room that was used as a chapel. We had nearly reached it, when the half-open door of an adjacent ale-house let out its vile compound of disgusting odours upon the balmy Sabbath air. My conductor hesitated—he moved towards the meeting-house, but his head was turned the other way—he stopped.
“Ralph,” said he, “did you not see Mr Ford go into the public-house?”
“No, father,” said I; “don’t think he’s up.”
“At all bounds, we had better go and see; for I must not allow him to shame a decent house by tippling, on a Sunday morning, in a dram-shop.”
We entered. He found there some of his mates. Pint after pint of purl was called for; at length, a gallon of strong ale was placed upon the table, a quart of gin was dashed into it, and the whole warmed with a red-hot poker. I was instructed to lie. I promised to tell mother that we had gone into a strange chapel; but I made my conditions, that mother should not be any more beaten. It was almost church-time when the landlord put us all out by the back way. The drunken fellows sneaked home—whilst Brandon, taking me by the hand, made violent, and nearly successful, efforts to appear sober.
After a hasty breakfast, we went to meeting. My foster-father looked excessively wild. Mr Cate was raving in the midst of an extempore prayer, when a heavy fall was heard in the chapel. The minister descended from his desk, and came and prayed over the prostrate victim of intoxication, and, perhaps, of epilepsy, and he pronounced that brother Brandon had got his call, and was now indisputably one of the elect. He did not revive so soon as was expected—his groans were looked upon as indications of the workings of the Spirit; and when, at length, he was so far recovered as to be led home by two of the congregation, the conversion of the sawyer was dwelt upon by the preacher, from a text preached upon the chapter that relates to the conversion of Saul, and the cases were cited as parallel. Let the opponents of the Established Church rail at it as they will, scenes of such wickedness and impiety could never have happened within its time-honoured walls.
When we returned to dinner, we found that Brandon had so far recovered as to become very hungry, very proud, and very pharisaically pious. Mr Cate dined with us. He was full of holy congratulations on the miraculous event. The sawyer received all this with a humble self-consequence, as the infallible dicta of truth, and, apparently, with the utter oblivion of any such things existing as purl and red-hot pokers. Was he a deep hypocrite, or only a self-deceiver? Who can know the heart of man? However, “this call” had the effect of making the “called one” a finished sinner, and of filling up the measure of wretchedness to his wife.