Again a silence followed. Then Mr Templeton spoke:—
“Don’t think I am satisfied,” he said, “because I don’t choose to say anything more till I have thought about it. I think you are wrong in your conclusions about the Church, though surely you are right in thinking we ought to have patience with each other. And now tell me true, Mr Walton,—I’m a blunt kind of man, descended from an old Puritan, one of Cromwell’s Ironsides, I believe, and I haven’t been to a university like you, but I’m no fool either, I hope,—don’t be offended at my question: wouldn’t you be glad to see me out of your parish now?”
I began to speak, but he went on.
“Don’t you regard me as an interloper now—one who has no right to speak because he does not belong to the Church?”
“God forbid!” I answered. “If a word of mine would make you leave my parish to-morrow, I dare not say it. I do not want to incur the rebuke of our Lord—for surely the words ‘Forbid him not’ involved some rebuke. Would it not be a fearful thing that one soul, because of a deed of mine, should receive a less portion of elevation or comfort in his journey towards his home? Are there not countless modes of saying the truth? You have some of them. I hope I have some. People will hear you who will not hear me. Preach to them in the name and love of God, Mr Templeton. Speak that you do know and testify that you have seen. You and I will help each other, in proportion as we serve the Master. I only say that in separating from us you are in effect, and by your conduct, saying to us, “Do not preach, for you follow not with us.” I will not be guilty of the same towards you. Your fathers did the Church no end of good by leaving it. But it is time to unite now.”
Once more followed a silence.
“If people could only meet, and look each other in the face,” said Mr Templeton at length, “they might find there was not such a gulf between them as they had fancied.”
And so we parted.
Now I do not write all this for the sake of the church-rate question. I write it to commemorate the spirit in which Mr Templeton met me. For it is of consequence that two men who love their Master should recognize each that the other does so, and thereupon, if not before, should cease to be estranged because of difference of opinion, which surely, inevitable as offence, does not involve the same denunciation of woe.
After this Mr Templeton and I found some opportunities of helping each other. And many a time ere his death we consulted together about things that befell. Once he came to me about a legal difficulty in connexion with the deed of trust of his chapel; and although I could not help him myself, I directed him to such help as was thorough and cost him nothing.