“Tha’ll get nowt at th’ Co-op, chuse ha. It’s nobbut dry drinkin’ they han on tap theer, folk say. But aw dunnot set thi on th’ road a bit, an’ if tha can stand Tom Pinder’s preichin’ aw reckon aw can. It’s nooan like a regular chapel tha sees.”
And thus the lecture room filled.
Now there were two men of all others who received the doings at Co-op Mill with disfavour. One was the Rev. David Jones. That very energetic preacher did not like to hear anyone’s praises sung but his own. His Welsh fluency, his striking, daring flights of rhetoric, his excursions into tempting but dangerous speculations on the fundamental truths of the creed embodied, consecrated, and enshrined in the Trust Deed of Aenon Chapel, had secured for him the admiring following of considerable numbers of men who, whilst still clinging as for dear life to the shattered remnants of the old dogmas, turned longing eyes to the rationalism of a new criticism and a faith grounded upon human experience. They were like the frail ones of the softer sex, who concede all favours but the last, their heart or their passions consenting, their timidity restraining. Aenon Chapel was now packed with a new set of worshippers whose presence was not too welcome to the “old end,” as the Conservative adherents of Calvinistic theology and tradition were styled. “Owd fire an’ brimstone” the irreverent styled their leader and spokesman. But the objections of those chiefly responsible for the maintenance and carrying on of the chapel and school, whose father’s money had built and furnished the edifice in which Mr. Jones declaimed his mild heresies, were stripped of their accustomed force by one all-persuasive consideration—the collection box. Never before in all the history of Aenon Chapel had the anniversaries of church and schools yielded so profitable a harvest to the anxious treasurer. The debt, without which it is commonly supposed no religious work can prosper, was reduced. Mr. Jones’s stipend was increased. The deacons of former days were consumed with envy, and dolefully acknowledging that Mr. Jones had gone up like a rocket, expressed their hope that he might not come down like a stick, but expressed it in a tone that indicated their hope and expectation were not as one. But the new officers of the chapel exulted in their swelling money-bags, in the well-filled pews, and idolized the preacher of the new inspiration.
And not only in his own chapel, but far and near spread the fame of the Rev. David Jones, and to chapel openings and consecrations, to missions and special efforts, invitations came in showers. He became the rage, and though he protested at any term that savoured of Episcopacy and the Scarlet Woman, he, in his heart of hearts, acknowledged the discernment of an ardent admirer who had publicly referred to him as the Bishop of the Holme Valley. At nights he dreamed of the Presidency of the Union.
And now, when all things seemed to go well, people began to talk of the Sunday meetings at Co-op mill, and of Tom Pinder, who, folk said, spoke out what Jones only hinted at.
“Aw’ll tell yo’ what it is,” said one shrewd level-headed critic, “Aw’ve heard that pea-i’-a-bladder preich at Aenon Chapel, and aw’ve heard Co-op Tom fro’ th’ same text, but Pinder doesn’t ca’ it preichin’, he ca’s it explainin’.”
“An’ what wer’ text?”
“Why t’ eleventh commandment, and mi own opinion is ’at Pinder sees as far as th’ purson, an’ spits it aat like a man, upright and dahnwright, and a babby could tell what he meeans: but th’ other chap, he goes as far as Pinder, but he beats abaat th’ bush, an’ he ‘perhaps this’ and ‘may it not be that?’ an’ he watches th’ deacons an’ th’ chief pew-howders to see ha’ it gooas dahn, an’ he lets hissen aat an’ he poo’s hissen in like th’ cap’n of a sailin’ booat wi’ one eye on the clouds an’ t’other on th’ shoals an’ reefers.”
“Nah, Pinder just says what’s in him, an’ if yo’ dunnot like it yo can lump it. An’ what’s more, at th’ end o’ ivvery lectur’, yo’ can get up an’ just ha’ a few minnit’s enjoyment o’ yo’r own accaant an’ pitch into th’ discourse like owd Billy, an’ th’ harder yo’ hit th’ more Pinder seems to like it.”
“An’ why canno’ Jones speik it aat plain same as Pinder?”