‘You’re right, brother,’ said the senior deacon. ‘It is the devil who makes us doubt, and it is only by prayer you can defy him. You know—
‘“Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.”
All that we have got to do is to believe what is in the Bible, and I do every blessed word of it, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last Book of Revelation. Don’t talk to me of carnal reason sitting in judgment on the Word of God. It makes me sick to hear such talk. It is downright wickedness. Human larnin’ will never save the soul. Scripture is plain, so that the wayfaring man, though a fool, may not err therein. The sooner we get an old experienced divine to come and preach to us the better. We shall have all the gay and giddy people at meetin’ if this young fellow preaches here much longer’—a sentiment which met with the hearty approval of all present. He continued: ‘It was only last night I asked him to come to supper, and he declined, “because,” he said, he had “promised to sup with” that new lawyer, who has come to our town, and who, I believe, never goes anywhere of a Sunday. “That ain’t right,” says I. “Why not?” says he. “Because,” says I, “the Church has nothing to do with the world. We are to be separate from sinners.” He said he did “not take that view of the case.” I said he “ought to,” and left him.’
The deacons were rather hard on the young parson, assuredly, and yet they were very good Christians in their way—ready to pay for an improvement in the chapel, for books for the Sunday-school, or to subscribe money to circulate the Bible or to send forth the missionary. What they lacked was the rarest of Christian virtues—charity; that charity which ‘suffereth long, and is kind; which envieth not; which vaunteth not itself; which is not puffed up; which beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.’ As our young friend set people thinking, refused to repeat old sentences and phrases like a parrot, and avoided religious clap-trap, he was regarded by the deacons with alarm and suspicion.
Just then the shop-bell rang, and the senior deacon left the company of his brother deacons to look after business. In a few minutes he returned, looking a little annoyed.
‘What’s the matter, brother?’ said they all.
‘Who do you think,’ said he, ‘was in the shop just now?’
‘We can’t guess. Pray tell us. The new parson?’
‘Oh no! Rose Wilcox—that poor silly girl the young men here make a fuss about.’
‘What, the girl that used to teach in the Sunday-school, and would have upset us all, had she not taken herself off? A girl who’ll come to no good end,’ said the chemist and druggist, shaking his head.