Duncan Polite, the Watchman of Glenoro

by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor

The Methodist Church was a substantial brick building, set picturesquely on the slope of the northern hill. Duncan went hesitatingly in and took a seat near the door. He found it quite a roomy place and well filled. There was much more ornamentation here than in his own place of worship; the walls were papered, the pulpit platform was covered with a gay carpet, two shining brass chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling, the windows were frosted glass with a row of lurid blue and red panes around each, and behind the minister was the centre of attraction and cynosure of all eyes, the choir and the organ.

Duncan felt a return of his misgivings when he recognised many members of his own church in that institution; for, such was the chaos of these new times that the Methodist services were attended regularly by nearly all the young Presbyterians. And, indeed, matters had come to such a pitch that the choir was conducted by no less a person than young Andrew Johnstone himself, much to the wrath and shame of his pious father.

That choir was at once the delight and torment of its members. The hopes and fears, the triumphs and despairs that surged within the little railing, would have been sufficient to swamp the congregation, could they have broken loose. But the enjoyment outweighed the pain; there was choir practise once a week and sometimes they were invited to furnish the music at a neighbouring tea-meeting and both these were unmixed joys. Then, too, they were permitted to sing quite alone at the regular church services, while the collection was being taken up; and sometimes they even ventured to sing an anthem, though the evening they sang one with a tenor solo by Sylvanus Todd, they were considered to have gone a little too far, by even the most liberal minded, and the offence was not repeated until more enlightened times.

Mr. Ansdell, the Methodist minister, was a benign old gentleman with an angelic face and a heart to match. He noted the mingling of the different religious sects in Glenoro with humble joy, and regarded the fact that a Presbyterian elder's son should lead the singing in the Methodist church as a mark of the broad and kindly spirit of the age and one of the potent signs of the millennium.

He was just the sort of man to appeal to Duncan Polite's heart. His sermon was like himself, gentle, loving and overflowing with goodwill to all men. Duncan sat and drank it in with deepest joy; surely his covenant was in no great danger with such a man as Mr. Ansdell in his glen!

Thereafter, in spite of old Andrew's opposition, he could not resist the pleasure of an occasional Sabbath evening service. He did not always have the privilege of listening to his new friend, however. Mr. Ansdell had another field and preached only on alternate Sabbaths in his Glenoro pulpit. On the occasions of his absence the service was generally taken by a student or a lay preacher from some place in the vicinity. Sometimes the preacher was anything but a man of parts, and was too often a source of merriment to the frivolous row of young men in the back seats. The big college student with the long, fair hair, who raved and foamed and battered all the fringe off the pulpit cushion in a gallant attempt to prove that the Bible is true, a fact which, until then, no Glenorian would have dreamed of calling in question; the poor, halting farmer who tacked a nervous syllable to occasional words, making his text read: "All-um we like sheep-um have gone astray-um;" the giant from the Irish Flats who roared out a long prayer in a manner that terrified his hearers and set all the babies crying and then ended his bellowings with "Lord, hear our feeble breathings," all these were a joy to the back row and the cause of much irreverent giggling in the choir.

But whether the sermon was delivered by minister, layman or divinity student, Duncan Polite always found something spiritually uplifting in the service; and, indeed, so did many another, for if the preacher sometimes lacked in oratory, he made up for it in piety, and if he failed to shine in the pulpit, his life was nearly always a sermon strong and convincing.

Even on the rare occasions when old Silas Todd led the service, the time was not misspent, in the opinion of the Watchman. Silas Todd was one of the pillars of the church and when the local preacher failed to appear, which contingency sometimes arose in the season of bad roads, the duty of preaching a sermon generally devolved upon him. He was a pious little man, bent and thin, with a marked Cockney accent. He had mild pale blue eyes and a simple, almost seraphic smile which scarcely ever left his countenance and which was the index to his character. His wife was small and pious like himself, and had the same accent and the same benevolent expression. They always sat close together on the front seat like a pair of shy children, he in his rough, loose homespun, she in her grey wincey, a neatly folded Paisley shawl and a brown bonnet with a pink feather—this last ornament being the pride of Silas' heart and the one bit of finery his wife permitted herself. They shared one hymn book and Bible, no matter how many there might be scattered around them, and both sang in a high ecstatic key, a measure behind the choir. They swayed to and fro, quite carried away by the music, and as Silas stood with his head thrown back and his eyes shut, and his wife kept her eyes modestly upon her book, they very often collided, to the great detriment of the singing and the disturbing of the pink feather. But the only sign their frequent collisions called forth was a smile of perfect accord and redoubled energy in the singing and swaying.

Silas was modest and never shouldered the task of leading the service until all hope of the preacher's appearing had been given up. On such occasions the congregation would assemble and sit quietly expectant; even the back row, who waited at the church shed until they were in sufficient numbers to brave an entry into the church, having flopped noisily into their places. The choir would whisper and the organist nervously turn over the leaves of the hymn book. Then the fathers of the church would confer, look through the window or tip-toe to the door, confer again, and once more gaze anxiously in the direction from which the preacher was expected to appear.

At this point there would arise from the Todd pew such a fluttering and twittering as can be heard in the nest when the mother-bird is encouraging her little ones to fly. Mrs. Todd, acting as monitor, would give Silas many pushes and nudges which he modestly resisted, until her efforts were augmented by those of his brother officials, when, yielding at last to their importunities, he would slowly rise and go shyly and lingeringly up to the pulpit desk. And the congregation would settle back with a resigned air to listen to the simple, good old fellow give a long and tedious recital of his spiritual experiences, punctuated by many sighs and tearful "Amens" from beneath the sympathetic Paisley shawl.