‘So I heard, sir,’ said the deacon. ‘I suppose you think human applause more precious than seeking a blessing on the means of grace. We, however, who did go, had a blessed opportunity. We remembered you, sir, thought it seems you forgot us.’
‘Well, I think I was in the path of duty, nevertheless.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said the deacon in a very unpleasant tone of voice. ‘How do you make that out?’
‘Well, according to my idea. Chartism means something, good or bad, and I thought I would go and see what it meant. It seemed to me that the poor fellows had a good deal of bad advice given them, and I thought I would try and give them a little better. Their grievances are many, and so are the wrongs which they have to bear. You know that it is in consequence of the little sympathy that is shown them by the Churches of all denominations these people are getting not only to disbelieve Christianity, but to hate its very name. It seemed to me that it was right that I should tell them as best I could how they were mistaken in thus judging the Church. We are losing the people, and then we call them infidels, and all that is bad. I say, instead of doing this, we should seek to win them by showing them how the Church is with them in their struggle for their rights. If we are Christians, our Christianity should display itself in our political life.’
‘Well,’ said the deacon with pride, ‘all I can say is that our late minister never attended a political meeting in his life.’
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said Mr. Wentworth.
‘Yes, sir,’ continued the deacon, not noticing the interruption, ‘and he died universally respected. He never made an enemy. He was all things to all men. Every Christmas morning and Good Friday he went to church, and it was quite beautiful to see how humble and happy he looked. “I never interfere in politics,” said he. “I am come here to preach the Gospel. I am not going to impair my usefulness by becoming a political partisan.” I am sure,’ continued the deacon, ‘if he had forgotten this, and attended a Chartist meeting, we should never have got the money from the gentry we did, when we had the old meeting-house done up.’
‘But,’ said Wentworth, ‘he might have made some of the Chartists Christians, and that would have been better. It’s no use to get the meeting-house done up if the people don’t come into it. It seems to me such conduct as you praise is the way to create the evils we deplore. In the Saviour’s time the common people heard the Gospel gladly, and why should they not do so now?’
‘Because they won’t, sir,’ said the deacon angrily. ‘Because they are dead in trespasses and sins; because they’re regular heathens—a drinking, swearing lot. Why, I should be ashamed to go near them, and if some of them were to come to chapel, I believe the members would leave the place at once. I am sure I should.’
The senior deacon was a good man, but he had his foibles. One of them was a due regard to his own worldly good. Most of the neighbouring gentry came to his shop. It was the best and the largest of the kind in the town. What would become of his customers if his minister went to a Chartist meeting? The thought was too horrible for words. Hence the interview with the parson, and his disappearance from the streets of Sloville for many a long day; not, however, till he gave a farewell address, which added fuel to the fire, or, in other words, made his deacons more implacable than ever.