Crying for the Light; Or, Fifty Years Ago. Vol. 1 [of 3]

by J. Ewing Ritchie

But the old lady was better, and to her we must return, as she made her way to meeting.

The person most annoyed was the young preacher. He was shocked at the autocratic insolence of the party.

‘I shall know that young fellow on horseback,’ he said to himself, ‘if ever I meet him again, which is not very likely;’ and the young man continued his walk to the meeting, where he was to preach.

When he got there the place was crowded. Tremblingly he entered the vestry, and more tremblingly he climbed the pulpit stairs. Everybody whom he knew was there. For a village, it was a highly respectable congregation, consisting of well-to-do shopkeepers and farmers with their families, who sat in genteel old square pews lined with baize, while the labourers, in clean smock-frocks, filled the body of the place. On the floor, just under the pulpit, was the table-pew, crowded with all the musical talent of the place. Loud and long and wonderful was their performance. There are no such village choirs now, nor such congregations. The landlords have put down Dissent in that part. It is well understood that when there is a farm to let no Dissenter need apply.

The old meeting-house yard was pleasant to the eye, with its grand trees guarding the gates. It was a warm night, and the doors were wide open, and from the pulpit the eye could range over trim cottage gardens all ablaze with sweet flowers, whose scent floated pleasantly along the summer air. From afar one could hear also the echoes of the distant sea. There is a wonderful stillness and beauty in a country village on a Sunday night, that is if it be at a decent distance from town.

Even that dull red-brick meeting-house was rich in holy associations. It recalled memories of martyrs and saints, of men of whom the world was not worthy, who had given up all for Christ.

But let us turn to the present. In the pulpit is the lad whom we already know. He has been at a London college. This was his first sermon, and so still was the place that even the Sunday-school children—always the most troublesome part of the audience, and very naturally so—were silent. For a wonder, in no pew was a farmer asleep. The emotion of the dear old minister, as he sat in the family pew, was painful to witness. That lad up yonder was his only son, and had been set apart from his childhood for the service of the altar. Like another Timothy, from a child he had known the Scriptures. Like another Samuel, he had been early trained to wait upon the Lord. Had the prayers of pious parents been heard and answered? It seemed so. But who can tell what later years may do for the lad?

Let us look at him—tall, well-built, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. He was trembling and pale at first, but be was so no longer. The nervousness with which he read the Bible and offered up prayer has passed away. He has got accustomed to the sound of his own voice—a great thing for an orator of any kind.

The sermon was of the usual type—popular at that time in all Evangelical circles. It would have been deemed sinful to have preached in any other manner, and, after all, a raw lad can but preach the theology he had gone to college to learn, or which he had been taught on his mother’s knees. In religion, as in other things, you cannot put an old head upon young shoulders, but as far as he knows the preacher is emphatic and in earnest.

‘Men and brethren and sisters,’ he exclaimed towards the end of his discourse, ‘will you not accept the offered blessing? Dare you retire from this place rejecting the offer of Divine mercy and the invitations of Divine love? Will you continue in your sin and perish? Your souls that can never die are in danger. Now God waits to save you; to-morrow it may be too late. It may be that if you procrastinate now you may never again hear the offer of the Gospel. Turn your back on God now, and perhaps He may turn His back on you. From this house of prayer, from the sound of my voice, you may go home, to forget all I have said, or you may be hurried away by the rude hand of Death. I speak as to wise men. Judge ye what I say. Another throb of this heart, another beat of this pulse, another tick of that clock, and you may have gone to be alone with God. Life and death are set before you—a blessing and a curse—heaven and hell.’