As for Mr Maxwell, he was “coming to himself,” as Mrs Fleming had predicted. His health improved, and as he grew familiar with his new circumstances, the despondency that had weighed him down was dispelled. Before the snow came, he was making visits among the people, without any one to keep him in countenance. Not regular pastoral visits, but quite informal ones, to the farmer in his pasture or wood-lot, or as he followed his oxen over the autumn fields. He dropped now and then into the workshop of Samuel Green, the carpenter, and exchanged a word with John McNider as he passed his forge, where he afterward often stopped to have a talk. The first theological discussion he had in Gershom was held in Peter Longley’s shoe-shop, one morning when he found that amiable sceptic alone and disposed—as he generally was—for a declaration of his rather peculiar views of doctrine and practice; and his first temperance lecture was given to an audience of one, as he drove in Mark Varney’s ox-cart over that poor man’s dreary and neglected fields.
Chapter Seven.
Minister and People.
In Gershom in these primitive days, a deep interest in the affairs of their neighbours, private, personal and relative, and a full and free discussion of the same, implied to the minds of people in general no violation of any law of morals or expediency. It was a part of the established order of things, which had its advantages and disadvantages. Almost everybody had a measure of enjoyment in it, and everybody had to submit to it.
Even those among the people who would have found little to interest them in the comings and goings of their neighbours generally, took part in the admiring discussion of the comings and goings of the minister. There was a comfortable sense of duty about the matter, a feeling that they were manifesting an interest in “the cause,” and “holding up the minister’s hands” on such occasions that was agreeable. There was a sense of satisfaction in the frequent allusions made to the Sunday’s sermon, in the repetition of the text and “heads,” and in the admiring remarks and comparisons which usually accompanied this, as if it were religious conversation that was being carried on and enjoyed. The pleasing delusion extended to the old people’s endless talks about subscription-lists, and ways and means of support and to the young people’s plans and preparations for a great fair to be held for the purpose of obtaining funds for the future furnishing and adorning of the parsonage. So it was a happy era in the history of the congregation and the village. Everybody was interested, almost everybody was pleased.
If Mr Maxwell had heard half the kind and admiring things that were said of him, or if he had known a tenth part of what he was expected to accomplish by his sermons, his example, his influence, he would have been filled with confusion and dismay. But happily “a wholesome silence” with regard to these things was at first for the most part preserved toward him, and he took his way among his people unembarrassed by any over-anxious effort to meet expectations too highly raised.
To tell the truth, he was getting a good deal more credit than he deserved just at this time. His devotion to his work, his labours “in season and out of season,” his zeal and energy, and kindness in the way of visiting and becoming acquainted with the people, were due less to a conscious desire to do them good, or to serve his Master, than to a growing pleasure in friendly contact with his fellow-creatures. He was entering on a new and wonderful branch of study, the study of living men, and he entered upon it with earnestness and delight.
Hitherto his most intimate acquaintance had been with men, the greater number of whom had been dead for hundreds of years. His living friends had, for the most part, been men of one type, men of more or less intelligence, educated on the same plan, holding the same opinions—men of whose views on most subjects he might have been sure without a word from them. His intercourse with the greater number of them had been formal and conventional; upon very few had he ever had any special claim for sympathy or interest.