‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the landlady’s niece, a privileged person, as she was both young and good-looking, ‘all I can say is, young Mr. Wentworth preached a capital sermon to-night. A better sermon I never heard. There was no reading out of a book. It was all life-like. There was no drawling or hesitation. He spoke out like a man.’
The aunt looked solemn. This would never do. The Spread Eagle had always supported Church and State, and she was not going to change at her time of life. It was too bad to find heresy in her own flesh and blood.
‘Well,’ said she, ‘of course I don’t go to meetin’, and I’m very sorry to hear what I’ve heard to-night.’
‘Well, we will forgive the young lady,’ said the Rector condescendingly, with a familiar nod, ‘on condition that she does not do it again.’
‘Agreed,’ said the surgeon. ‘I go to church,’ he continued, ‘because it’s respectable; because my father went there before me; because, if I did not, I should never be asked to dine at the Hall; because, as it is, I find it hard to make both ends meet, and should lose all my practice if I went to meeting.’
‘Besides,’ added the Rector, ‘it is your duty to support the institutions of your country, and to set the people a good example. I am not much of a Churchman myself. I had rather have been a country squire, but my father said I must either take the family living or starve, so, as starving is not in my way, here I am.’
‘And a better parson we don’t want,’ said the old farmer enthusiastically.
‘Well, I try to do my duty in the situation in which Providence has placed me,’ said the Rector, with a truly edifying air.
‘We knows that,’ said the farmer, ‘You’ve allus a bottle for a friend, and you give us short sermons, and when we want to get up a race or a bit of sport, you are always ready to lend us a helping hand, and that is more than the meetingers ever do. I hates ’em like p’ison. All their talk is of eddication and religion—good things in their way, but not to be overdone. My best ploughman can’t read a bit, and what good will larnin’ do him, I should like to know.’
And here the farmer, red in the face, paused for a reply. In the meanwhile the Rector called for the Sunday paper, which had reached there that evening. The surgeon set off to attend a patient in labour—his principal employment in that healthy district, where the people kept good hours and breathed good air—and the bar-parlour of the Spread Eagle resumed its Sabbatic quiet. Only one should-be sleeper lay awake that night, and that was the village pastor’s son. He was to go on probation to Sloville. There was no minister there, and the people wanted one. Was he to succeed? Did he sufficiently realize the import of his message? Had he so mastered the truth that he could commend it in all its fulness and beauty to others? These were questions which gave him—as they do all in such a position—great searchings of heart. At college Wentworth had difficulties which were only to be put away, said his teachers, by Christian work. They, good people, had had doubts themselves, but they had lived them down, and so they went to their daily task quite satisfied, and they reaped the benefit of acquiescence as they became more and more celebrated for wisdom and piety, and as more and more they lost the meaning of Scriptural language in conventional and orthodox formula. Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles was not imposed on the young divine; but he was expected, nevertheless, to adopt a certain creed, and repeat it. Students at his college were not expected to study truth, but only as it appeared in a human, rather than a Divine, form. Any attempt at independent inquiry was rejected as heresy of the most odious kind. Happy were they who never had their minds darkened by doubt, who, according to their own ideas, were taught of the Spirit; who found every difficulty solved by prayer: to whom Deity revealed Himself, as He did to the Jews of old, as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night; who felt that their God was a jealous God, consuming with eternal fire the reprobate; who believed that God was angry with them if they took a walk in the fields on a Sunday, or kept studying secular affairs one moment after twelve (Greenwich time) on a Saturday night. To this class Wentworth did not belong. He was wont to regard the Creator of the world as a Father in heaven—as a God of love—who had filled all this wide earth with beauty for man to grasp and enjoy. Pious people said he lacked unction. But he was anxious for action, as all young men are, for real life and real work, and desirous ‘to settle,’ as the phrase is. His father was poor, and could not afford to keep him at home. He had finished his college career—with acceptance. No one had a word to say against him, and none doubted his ability. At Sloville the people were supposed to be profoundly orthodox. It was hard indeed to send such a young man there, yet it was agreed that Wentworth should go there on probation.