“Surely,” exclaimed Mr. Bent, “you are not going to hang a dog for his collar?”
“Pardon me!” said Mr. Pounderly, “I hang no man. But, unless my judgment is strangely at fault, that text, considering the time and the place, spells upheaval.”
“And the manner!” chimed in Mr. Beadle, “the assured, precocious manner! The air of confidence and authority! I agree with Pounderly that we are marked down for slaughter; it is the death-knell of the Classics!”
And the two men walked off together shaking their heads.
Mr. Chowdler did not content himself with shaking his head afterwards in the great quadrangle. He shook it frequently and emphatically during the sermon, in order that everybody might know that he was in complete disagreement with the preacher. And on him fell the unpleasant duty, as he phrased it, of making a reply and restating the Lanchester position, on the third Sunday of the Term.
For, needless to say, Mr. Chowdler was in orders. No mere laymen could have combined such a capacity for quarrelling with so profound a conviction of his own reasonableness and humility. In Mr. Chowdler’s hands religion became a weapon to smite with. For choice, he smote lies, cant, humbug, and Bible critics; but, occasionally, quite innocent and respectable things found themselves floored by Mr. Chowdler’s massive fist and trampled under his double-welted heel. For, when Mr. Chowdler mounted the pulpit, necessity was laid upon him to smite something or somebody. There were men, like Mr. Plummer, who doubted whether there would be much scope in Heaven for Mr. Chowdler’s type of religion; but, if they did not regard it as the highest form of Christianity, they had to admit that it was manly, and therefore good for the boys.
But, on this third Sunday of the Term, Mr. Chowdler was no ordinary smiter; he was the incarnation of the Lanchester spirit repelling a German invasion. And his text, “Hold fast to that which is good,” was not delivered like an ordinary text; it was fired like a six-inch shell full at the stall in which the headmaster was sitting. Mr. Bent said, afterwards, that he fully expected to see Chowdler follow up the discharge of the text by leaving the cover of the pulpit and attacking with the bayonet. However, the preacher spoke daggers but used none. Change? Yes, change was necessary, growth was necessary; but not change in essentials and axioms, not change in the foundations. Hold fast to the foundations, hold fast to that which is good! There was a tendency in a restless, riotous age to imagine that, because a thing lasted, because it was old and venerable, it was therefore obsolete. A fool’s mistake! Why, granite lasts, gold lasts. Hold fast to the granite, hold fast to the gold, hold fast to that which is good. Again, there was a tendency in an age of feverish and futile activity to assail whatever is venerable, whatever has withstood the destructiveness of man and the storms of time. You tear up the mighty oak, and replace it by what? Tares? Yes, too often by tares, or at best by some finnikin exotic treelet, such as you may see in gaudy Eastern pots in decadent drawing-rooms. Once more, hold fast to the mighty oak, hold fast to that which is good! Fortunately, and God be praised for it, they had in that place a great example by which to guide their endeavours—Abraham Lanchester, their great headmaster, restorer not destroyer, whose clear, sane intellect and genius, conservative in the best and noblest meaning of the word, had left them an imperishable birthright and a priceless heritage. Hold fast to a priceless heritage, hold fast to a great tradition, hold fast to that which is good! And so on for five-and-twenty minutes.
Mr. Flaggon was conscious that he was being preached at, and he knew that the boys knew it; for they kept turning round continually to see how he was taking it. Mrs. Chowdler, who watched him narrowly, maintained that he had been profoundly impressed and “looked as if a new light had suddenly dawned on him”; but the general opinion among the boys was that he hadn’t “turned a hair” and that it was impossible to be sure whether he had really understood what “Old Jowler” was driving at.
It is reasonable to suppose that the sermon gave Mr. Flaggon food for reflection; he certainly sat for some time afterwards in his study, looking into the fire and apparently thinking. But, whatever his thoughts may have been, he kept them to himself and said nothing.
Mr. Chowdler’s effort was much appreciated on the staff, even by some who were more prone to criticise than to praise. Mr. Pounderly pronounced it statesmanlike, and Mr. Black went so far as to say that it was inspired. Mr. Bent’s was the only voice that called it “bosh,” and he received a grave and well-deserved rebuke from Mr. Plummer for his lack of reverence. It was confidently assumed by many that Mr. Chowdler’s serious note of warning, voicing, as it did, the general feeling of the staff, would give Mr. Flaggon pause and force him to recognise facts. But their optimism was of short duration; for, within a few days, a notice asking every master to send in a copy of his weekly routine, made it clear to the most sanguine that the era of change and experiment had begun.