CHAPTER VI. BUILDER STOTT SAVES THE FAITH.
The Scripture Club proceeded promptly to work on the ensuing Sunday. Too many men had brought to the previous meeting ideas which they could not find time to express; so on the second Sunday in which the nature and reward of the meek were considered, the members who had not expressed their views, with several who had, made haste to occupy front seats, so as to be sure of opportunities to speak.
Among these was Squire Woodhouse. He had several times ruined the regularity of the proceedings of other meetings, but still he was unsatisfied. He had not expressed his own views in full, partly because he had not been asked to do so, but principally because he had had no settled views to express. Now, however, the case was different. He had leisurely pondered over everything that he had heard in the class, he had admired each original idea with the true American heartiness toward new notions, he had endeavored to reconcile them with his unformulated but still very positive preconceived religious opinions, and his honesty had finally triumphed over his theology and his sophistry. When he came to church, therefore, he neglected his own pew and took the front seat and the extreme right end thereof, so when Deacon Bates opened the exercises of the class immediately after service, it was impossible not to call upon Squire Woodhouse first of all. The Squire cleared his throat, waved his head about in a dissatisfied manner, and finally said:
"This thing of being meek grows pretty big when you think about it for a little while, and the worst of it is that everything else in the chapter is only a chip out of the same block. All of it—being meek and everything else—seems to come in the end to just this: you mustn't be like folks in general, particularly like business men. I confess that I don't know exactly how to do it all, but it seems to me it must be done by any one who believes that Jesus Christ had the right to say all that he did. I don't know how to be meek about the way I was swindled—treated, I mean—by the insurance companies when my barn burned down——"
"Personal!" whispered Mr. Prymm.
"I don't care if it is personal," said Squire Woodhouse. "I'm trying to point a moral, and it isn't my fault if other folks get in the way and get hurt. I don't know how to be meek when I'm abused, but——"
"It isn't required of you," said Mr. Jodderel. "You're expected to take care of what has been intrusted to you in your capacity as a steward of the Lord."
Many were the affirmative shakes of head which followed this remark.
"I suppose I am," said the Squire, "and so long as I am a human being I won't be likely to forget it; but whether when I get mad over being swindled the anger all comes from my feeling of being deprived of the Lord's property, I'm not so sure: I've a suspicion that more of it comes from the heart of Squire Woodhouse than from the kingdom of heaven."
"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Hopper, finding at last a subject upon which he could speak from the abundance of his heart. "Aren't you working for the good of your family, and don't St. Paul say that the man who don't look out for his family is worse than an infidel?"
"Yes," said the Squire meditatively; "but he don't tell you to boil over when there's nothing to be gained by it, and when getting mad makes you uninteresting to everybody, not excepting yourself. He doesn't tell you to let your suspicions manage your wits, and determine what sort of a man your neighbor is. The man who gets the best of me in a trade may be a scoundrel; I've always made it a rule to think so, in fact; but when I come to think of it, I remember that I've sometimes made a hard, sharp trade myself without meaning anything wrong."
"You never carried back the unfair gains, though, when you saw what you'd done, did you?" asked Captain Maile.
"Well, no; not that I can recollect. I have tried to make it up to the man in some way or other, though."
"Taking pains to tell him why you were trying to do it?" asked the Captain.
"No—no, I can't say that I did—I don't know that I ever succeeded in doing it, any how," said the Squire honestly. "I'd think it over, off and on, and before I'd know it, the whole thing would fall out of my mind."
"So all you did was to ease your conscience—sing it to sleep, so to speak," continued the Captain. "You gave him all the good feeling you could, which you couldn't help giving any way, because you're naturally a good-hearted fellow, and then when you'd comforted yourself your work stopped."
"That's about the truth of the matter," replied the Squire, "though I didn't mean to out with it all so plainly before folks."
"Then," asked the Captain, "what's the moral difference between you and a rascal?"
"Sh—h—h—h" arose in chorus, even President Lottson taking part in the remonstrance.
"There isn't any," said the Squire stoutly, "if everybody's a rascal that's called one. But anybody that has the honest feelings I have, and that loves the square thing so much, and likes so much to see it done, isn't a rascal, and as I've had the kind of experiences I've told about, I don't see why other men that have had others like them, and that are called ugly names by me as well as everybody else, mayn't be just as right at heart as I am. After this I'm going to believe them so, any how."
There was a general nod of assent, and President Lottson arose, went around to where the Squire was sitting, and offered his hand to the loser of the barn. The Squire took it, rather gingerly at first, but finally gave it a squeeze so hearty that President Lottson winced and drew his hand away.
"There!" exclaimed Captain Maile; "everything is all right now, of course. Goodness don't consist in doing right, but only in feeling right. Not what you do, but what you believe is what saves a man."
"Such is the decree of God and the decision of the Church," remarked Mr. Prymm.
"Then what saints the devils must be!" observed the Captain; "for they believe, though, to be sure, they tremble."
Another murmur of dissent was heard, and young Mr. Waggett hastened to throw a small quantity of oil on the troubled waters by remarking that whatever was sufficient to salvation was the fulfillment of God's plan as revealed in the holy Scriptures.
"I'm not through yet," said the Squire. "I was coming to that point. Of course, other men make blunders very much like mine. I ought to be meek about judging them—I ought to forgive them their trespasses as I hope to have mine forgiven. But if there's so much excuse to think bad of men for what they do and don't do, we ought to put the cause out of the way, as well as to be patient with others as we'd have them patient with us. If I've had reason so many times to think the worst about church members, I suppose that sinners—sinners outside of the Church—must see them to be just as bad as I do. And if they do, what inducement is there for sinners to come into the Church?"
"Salvation!" promptly answered young Mr. Waggett.
"That's no moral inducement," said the Squire; "it's a selfish one."
"Oh, oh, oh!" exclaimed Builder Stott, supported by a sympathetic sensation which was manifested by most of the members, while Mr. Jodderel sprang to his feet and said—shouted, almost:
"Mr. Chairman, I protest against this drifting away from the subject by talking all sorts of new-fangled notions that——"
"Free speech is the rule of this class," said Captain Maile. "You've given us a great deal about the kingdom of heaven that nobody ever heard of before, that's as unheard of in the Bible or the Church——"
"It is in the Bible," said Mr. Jodderel; "you'll find it in the prophets and apostles from beginning to end."
"I would suggest," said Mr. Prymm, in the most measured and soothing of tones, "that Brother Woodhouse should remember that we have but a single hour in the week to talk upon these subjects, and that however deeply he may be interested in his own peculiar views, it would be well to let all who are present have an opportunity to offer their views."
"Yes, let's get away from morality as soon as we can," said Captain Maile. "What's Sunday good for, if you can't in it get away from these enraging affairs of the week? Nine-tenths of the moral questions in the world are started by business; and who has any right to drag business into the Lord's house on Sunday, and just after a sermon, too?"
Faces confused, awry, angry, and merry, showed that the Captain had aroused a great deal of feeling, which, in sentiment, was not a unit. Deacon Bates would have ordered the immediate relief of the class from extraneous subjects; but he had, from the beginning of the services, groaned over the fact that next to Squire Woodhouse sat Mr. Jodderel, and no one else could be called upon without destroying that rule of rotation upon which the leader generally depended for relief. Silently resolving to pack the front seats on the succeeding Sunday, he said, in tones so subdued as to be almost pathetic:
"Brother Jodderel."
The members looked resignedly into each other's eyes; Mr. Stott turned to the table of Hebrew weights and measures in his Bible, and tried to lose himself in them; Broker Whilcher began slyly ciphering on a card, doubtless to solve some problem of the market; Mr. Alleman buried himself in a school report from some other town; Mr. Hopper re-read to himself the paper on "The True Location of the Holy Sepulchre;" and Mr. Buffle dropped into gentle slumber.
"I want to say," said Mr. Jodderel, "that you can't rightly know how to be meek until you know what's to be required of you in the earth which the meek are to inherit, and you can't know that without knowing where and what that earth is. Now, it can't mean this earth, for if the meek inherited it, it would be stolen away from them precious quickly. What happens to a meek man when somebody hits him without knocking the meekness out of him?—he gets hit again. What happens to him if somebody tries to swindle him out of his property, and he don't show that he won't endure imposition?—he'll be cheated out of every cent. So the meekness that we think about is evidently not the thing for the earth that's to be inherited, and the question is, what is? And that brings us back to the question, What sort of a land are we going to inherit? It——"
"If it is to be the abode of the finally saved and redeemed," said Mr. Radley, "I really don't see that meekness can be enjoined upon its inhabitants, unless we are all mistaken about the nature of the change that will take place after death. Our mental condition will be determined for us, and we can't do better on this earth than act according to what seems the highest order of goodness. I should really like to ask the gentleman if the next world is all that we are to think of while we remain in this one, and whether we are not to guide ourselves somewhat by the rights of other people as well as by our own desires?"
"This earth is not our abiding place," quoted Mr. Prymm; "we have a home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
"Certainly," said Mr. Jodderel; "that's correct; it is in the heavens—in the sky—the air above us, in which are suspended all the planetary bodies, one of which——"
"The gentleman has lost sight of my question," said Mr. Radley.
"So will everybody else," remarked Captain Maile. "If you press that question, you'll ruin the interest of this meeting. We didn't come here to learn what we ought to do; we're here to study out what's to be done for us."
"Not a bit of it," said Mr. Buffle, who has slowly awakened from his nap. "I'm not, any way. I'm as fond as any one else of getting anything; but I've already been blessed with more than I deserve, and I want to know what God's will concerning me is on earth as well as in heaven."
"Always providing it don't cost you anything," said Captain Maile.
"Nonsense," replied Mr. Buffle, rather angrily. "I never refused to spend money on any really useful charity."
Several members softly responded, "That's true."
"Yes," said Captain Maile; "you occasionally spend a penny out of a dollar, so to speak, and you deserve credit for it, for very few other men of means go so far; you're ahead of your day and generation. When I carry around a subscription paper for anything, your name always has a handsome sum after it. But do you really mean that you are going through this Sermon on the Mount—if we live long enough to get through it, which is very unlikely at the present rate of progress—and practically agree to what it says?"
Mr. Buffle was cornered; but blessed be corners! There are no other positions in life from which a man can obtain so good a view of himself. Mr. Buffle studied the back of the seat in front of him for a few seconds; looked rather blank, then very modest, then very manly, raised his head, and said:
"Yes, I do."
"Good!" was the only word Captain Maile uttered, while Mr. Jodderel shook his head dismally, and exclaimed:
"Here we are, away from the subject again, Mr. Leader!"
"We can hurry back to it, if the gentleman will answer my question," observed Mr. Radley.
"It's one o'clock," remarked Builder Stott.
The members arose, and most of them departed as soon as possible, while President Lottson turned to Stott, and said:
"You did that just in time."
"Well," said Stott modestly, "something had to be done. This old fight between faith and works has played the mischief wherever it's come up among men, and I'm not going to sit still and see it break up an interesting class like this. I've no other chance to study the Bible except here, and I'm not going to have it ruined by a lot of theorists getting into a row. I'm afraid it's too late, though. Buffle got some new notion into his head when Maile cornered him there; and he never lets go of any thought that strikes him as good. The first thing you'll hear of will be another subscription list, with his name at the head, and he'll go into it with all his might, like he did about the building of this church; and everybody will be worried by him, and he'll drag it in here, and act as if the Bible wasn't anything but a code of every-day morals."
"And forget all about the gospel-plan of salvation," said young Mr. Waggett.
"And the kingdom of heaven," suggested Mr. Jodderel.
"And the atonement, the central truth of the Scriptures," remarked Mr. Prymm; "the vicarious efficacy of the atonement."
"And you'll shut your ears and eyes for fear you might be converted and healed," said Captain Maile.
And the lingerers went straightway every man to his own house.