"THAT HOLY MAN, NOAH."
Particular stories are suggested by the place where one first heard them. This profound remark is worked out in detail by Sir William Hamilton and Professor Sully. As I look at the map of the road I traversed that day, I am reminded of certain anecdotes retailed by my genial and reverend guide.
"After leaving college," said he, "I was appointed assistant to a worthy D.D. who regarded the higher critics as a species of vermin. Hell with him was not a mere unpleasant state passed in this world, but an actual raging bonfire specially prepared for everyone who could not repeat the Shorter Catechism. The parishioners of this worthy man were, in consequence, devoutly orthodox, and had, one and all, a keen nose for bad doctrine. They did not like to be fobbed off with a sermon of the spineless order; they liked bones, blood, and fire—not a mosaic of cheery quotations from Tennyson about the larger hope and about worms not being cloven in vain. They had also a great liking for the patriarchs, especially Noah. By ill luck, I spoke one Sunday on the patriarchs, and handled them pretty roughly. I felt that sacred enthusiasm which every man feels in denouncing the sins of others. I gave the Captain of the Ark a special lick of tar. This sermon caused a mighty commotion in the district. I might as well have asserted that the paraphrases were inspired, or that Sankey's hymns were canonical. I could see that the elders began to look coldly upon me. In barn and byre little groups discussed my preaching, and there was much wagging of the head and shooting out of the lip. A deputation came out of a potato-field to me one day as I was walking along the road, and the leader, an old theological crofter, said bluntly: 'Your sermons are not pleasing us, if you please, sir.' 'Is the doctrine bad?' I asked. 'Not exactly that, but the folk say it's very unseemly.' 'What special sermon do they object to?' 'They think you're not sound on that holy man, Noah.' 'Do they go the length of saying Noah was perfect?' 'They don't just go that length; but, while admitting Noah was human, they desire' (here the old man raised his head, shut his eyes, and shouted) 'to hear no more from a young inexperienced lad like you, a single word about the patriarch's shortcomings. The man was a patriarch, and therefore a saint. Talk about his virtues as much as you like, but don't fash about his trespasses, there's a good boy, I speak as your friend.'"
FLADIBISTER.
When my friend had delivered himself of this story, he pointed with his pipe to a little confused collection of low, thatched cottages which we were rapidly approaching on the left, and, oblivious of Noah, went thus musing on: "You are now in the charmed domain of Fladibisteria, of which the core or citadel, as it were, is this village of Fladibister. This is no settlement of Norsemen: no, this is a Celtic nook where second sight and such witchcraft flourished not so many years ago. Did not the minister once rebuke them for their spells and mystic whims by aptly applying to them the words of St. Paul to the Galatians: 'Oh, foolish Fladibisterians, who hath bewitched you?' There is an atmosphere of tranquillity and Arcadian peace swimming over Fladibister such as is nowhere else to be found in Shetland. The young men of the place roam far over the sea, as mariners and fishers; but like the exiled Jacobite—
'Who sighed at Arno for his lovelier Tees,'
they never feel happy till they are back home here under the roofs of thatch. And what a work their women folks make with them when they return! What feasting and merrymaking! What screwing of fiddle-pegs, nimble motion of elbows and long-sustained dancing and skipping. I don't deny that there is clink of glasses, too, at times, to aid the passage of the hours far past the noon of night."
CUNNINGSBURGH.
Cunningsburgh, the journey to which was shortened by these tales, is one of those places you might pass through without being aware of it; that is to say, there is no feature about it so startling or abrupt as to impress itself at once on the attention. The district all round is well tilled, and the houses bien and comfortable.
The minister of the place arrests the attention instantly. His genial face and hearty handshake have a more Christianising effect on the soul than a ton of sermons. I have never heard a more kindly voice or seen a face in which tenderness, merriment, and intellectual keenness, were all so harmoniously blended. He does not smoke himself, but has that wise and wide perception of things which leads him to press those who are anxious to smoke, but say they are not, to take out their pipes in his drawing-room. It was easy to see the man he was, by a hasty look at his book-shelves. All the philosophers were represented there, from Plato to the present-day mystical Germans. Lang's Odyssey was side by side with the Icelandic sagas and the Song of the Niebelungs. I did not see many books of Systematic Theology; but the Greek tragedians, the Sacred Books of the East, German and French novels, had all a place in the bookcase of this cosmopolitan clergyman of a remote Shetlandic parish.