Reader, I have given you a description of the log-chapel at Puddleford. It is like a thousand other places of public worship in a "new country." If there is something to condemn, there is more to praise. There seems to be a providence in this, as in all other things.
The settlers in a forest are a rough, hardy, and generally an honest race of men. It is their business to hew down the wilderness, and prepare the way for a different class who will surely follow them. They cannot cultivate their minds to any extent, or refine their characters. They must be reached through the pulpit by such means as will reach them. Of what importance is a nice theological distinction with them? Of what force a labored pulpit disquisition? They have great vices and strong virtues. Their vices must be smitten and scattered with a sledge-hammer; they are not to be played with in a flourish of rhetoric. Just such a human tornado as Bigelow is the man for the place; he may commit some mischief, but he will leave behind him a purer moral atmosphere and a serener sky.
Society, in such a place as Puddleford, is cultivated very much like its soil. Both lie in a state of rude nature, and both must be improved. The great "breaking-plough," with its dozen yoke of cattle, in the first place, goes tearing and groaning through the roots and grubs that lie twisted under it, just as Bigelow tore and groaned through the stupidity and wickedness of his hearers. Then comes the green grass, and wheat, and flowers, as years draw on; producing, at last, "some sixty, and some a hundred-fold."
There is something impressive in the Sabbath in the wilderness. A quiet breathes over the landscape that is almost overwhelming. In a city, the church-steeples talk to one another their lofty music; but there are no bells in the wilderness to mark the hours of worship. The only bell which is heard is rung by Memory, as the hour of prayer draws nigh; some village-bell, far away, that vibrated over the hills of our nativity, the tones of which we have carried away in our soul, and which are awakened by the solemnity of the day.
There is a philosophy in all this, if we will but see it; there is more; there is a lesson, possibly a reproof. If we are disposed to smile at the rusticity of a Puddleford church, may we not with equal reason become serious over the overgrown refinement of many another? May not something be learned in the very contrast which is thus afforded? Do not the extravagant hyperbole, coarse allusions, irreverent anecdote, and strong but unpolished shafts of sarcasm, that such as Bigelow so unsparingly scatter over the sanctuary, give a rich background and strong relief to the finished rhetoric of many a pulpit essay, that has been written to play with the fancy and tranquillize the nerves of a refined and fashionable audience? Are not the extremes equally ridiculous? the one not having reached, the other having passed the zenith.
CHAPTER V.
Indian Summer.—Venison Styles again.—Jim Buzzard.—Fishing Excursion.—Muskrat City.—Indian Burying-ground.—The Pickerel and the Rest of the Fishes.—The Prairie.—Wild Geese.—The Old Mound.—Venison's Regrets at the degenerating Times.—His Luck, and Mine.—Reminiscences of the Beavers.—Camping out.—Safe Return.
Indian summer had not yet taken her bow from the woods or her breath from the sky. Old Autumn still lay asleep; Time stood by, with his hour-glass erect, slowly counting the palpitations of his heart.