Though in theory we allowed no official ruler of the synagogue, in practice Mr. Pentecost Dodderidge was our Great High Priest. He alone was spoken of as Mister. He alone was immune from error and criticism. It is hard for me to reconstruct his personality now, when my own mentality is so different from when I knew him, when he prayed for me, blessed me, took me on his knees. It is still harder to convey to this generation the reverence in which his venerable white hairs were held. The world in which he ruled, the Saints' world, may have been small; but within its pale, through all England, he was revered as the holiest child of man. And we of the Tawborough Meeting possessed him for ourselves: in his old age he ceased to travel, and left us but little. We shone in the reflected glory of his presence; knew ourselves the Meeting of Meetings, called blessed of the Lord. He lived by prayer alone: the anonymous gifts of money on which he chiefly lived came to him whence he did not know, except that they came from God. In the old ancestral house another famous Pentecost Dodderidge had built he still lived; in one hallowed room he welcomed all who came to him for their souls' good; another was fitted as a workshop, and here till after his eightieth year he spent a portion of every day at the lathe. He could preach in eight languages, in five of them fluently. He never rose later than four and devoted the three hours before breakfast to "knee-drill," i. e., incessant prayer. He baptized believers in the river Taw till his eightieth year. One memorable immersion of which I shall speak later took place when he had turned eighty-four. His one kink was a trick of godly epigrams and holy repartees, cunningly led up to, of which he was as nearly vain as he could be. I remember Aunt Jael once saying to him in our dining-room at Bear Lawn:
"Your 'Life' should be written, Mr. Pentecost."
"But it is being written, dear sister," he replied. "It will be published in the morning."
"Published? Where?"
"Beyond the sky. The author is the Lord Jesus Christ. The ink is His precious Blood."
Another day my Grandmother asked him if he would begin to remember me in his prayers.
"I cannot," he replied gently.
"Cannot?" faltered my Grandmother.
"No, I cannot begin to pray for her. I have begun already."
For all his eminence Pentecost took no preponderating share in worship, nor ever made himself like the "Ministering Brothers" of some other meetings, who prayed almost all the prayers, chose almost all the hymns, gave one long sermon-like piece of exposition, and officiated alone at the Lord's Table—for all the world like a dissenting parson in his chapel or a priest in his church.