The Calling of Dan Matthews

by Harold Bell Wright

Nathaniel Jordan's prediction proved true.

In the two days between Dan's arrival and his first Sunday in Corinth, the Ally was actively engaged in making known the identity of the big stranger, who had so skillfully punished the man from Windy Cove. Also the name and profession of the young woman who had gone to Denny's assistance were fully revealed.

The new minister of the Memorial Church was the sensation of the hour. The building could scarcely hold the crowd, while the rival churches were deserted, save only by the few faithful "pillars" who were held in their places by the deep conviction that heaven itself would fall should they fail to support their own particular faith. With the people who had attended the fair, the Ally journeyed far into the country, and the roads being good with promise of a moon to drive home by, the country folk for miles around came to worship God, and, incidentally, to see the preacher who had fought and vanquished the celebrated Jud. Many were there that day who had not been inside a church before for years. The Ally went also, but then the Ally, they say, is a regular attendant at all the services of every church.

Judge Strong, with an expression of pious satisfaction on his hard face, occupied his own particular corner. From another corner Elder Jordan watched for signs of false doctrine. Charity, except when busy at the organ, never took her adoring eyes from the preacher's face. At the last moment before the sermon, Dr. Harry slipped into the seat beside the Doctor. And many other earnest souls there were who depended upon the church as the only source of their life's inspiration and strength.

Facing this crowd that even in the small town of Corinth represented every class and kind, Dan felt it all; the vulgar curiosity, the craving for sensation, the admiration, the suspicion, the true welcome, the antagonism, the spiritual dependence. And the young man from the mountains and the schools, who had entered the ministry from the truest motives, with the highest ideals, shrank back and was afraid.

Dan was, literally, to this church and people a messenger from another world. It was not strange that many of the people thought, "How out of place this big fellow looks in the pulpit." Many of them felt dimly, too, that which the Doctor had always felt, that this man was somehow a revelation of something that might have been, that ought to be. But no one tried to search out the reason why.

The theme of the new minister's sermon was, "The Faith of the Fathers," and it must have been a good one, because Martha said the next day, that it was the finest thing she had ever heard; and she had it figured out somehow that the members of neighboring churches, who were there, got some straight gospel for once in their lives. Elder Jordan assured the Doctor in a confidential whisper, that it was a splendid effort. The Doctor knew that Dan was splendid, and he could see that the boy had fairly hypnotized the crowd, but he could not understand why it should have been much of an effort. He confided to Martha that "so far as he could see, the sermon might have been taken from the barrel of any one of the preachers that had served the Memorial Church since its establishment." But the sermon was new and fresh to Dan, and so gained something of interest and strength from the earnestness and personality of the speaker. "The boy had only to hold that gait," reflected the Doctor, "and he would, as Nathan had said, land at the very top of his profession."

In the evening, the Doctor slipped away from church as soon as the services were over, leaving Dan with those who always stay until the janitor begins turning out the lights. Martha would walk home with fellow workers in the Ladies' Aid, who lived a few doors beyond, and the Doctor wished to be alone.

Crossing the street to avoid the crowd, he walked slowly along under the big trees, trying to accustom himself to the thought of his boy dressed in the conventional minister's garb, delivering time worn conventionalities in a manner as conventional. It was to this strange thinking old man, almost as if he had seen Dan behind the grated doors of a prison cell.

Very slowly he went along, unmindful of aught but the thoughts that troubled him, until, coming to the Widow Mulhall's little cottage, where Deborah and Denny were sitting on the porch, he paused. Across the street in front of his own home, Martha and her friends were holding an animated conversation.