At last, moved by a constraining principle of love to the great and Divine shepherd of all Christian flocks, and by a pure love to the souls of the people, Noble came forward with lowliness and composure, and told the clerk quietly that, being himself an ordained minister, he did not feel it right to let the people go empty away, without offering in such manner as he could to feed them; and that if there was no objection he was ready to go up into the pulpit. To this arrangement there was an immediate assent from the nobleman, to whom the clerk referred it; and old Noble, for the first time since the day when he was driven from Cheddar with blows and insults, found himself in the place and office of an ambassador for Christ.

He was manifestly supported in this moment by the spirit of power, love, and of a sound mind. His prayer was serious, simple, and plain as the utterance of a child. Out of the abundance of his heart he offered up his petitions with reverent fervency and confiding love. The chapter which he selected for reading was the fourth chapter of the first Epistle of John; and, taking the tenth verse of this chapter for his text, he declared fully and freely that blessed message of pardon, reconciliation, and peace, which it is the most precious privilege of the Christian minister to deliver, and to deliver which is a duty of sacred and perpetual obligation. Mercy and grace fell softly from his lips, and distilled like the gentle dew upon the hearts of all his hearers.

The poorest and least instructed could understand every thing he said; the most learned and advanced among them found a master in Israel, walking with a secure footing on the very summits of the mount of God. Unseen by Noble, the young minister entered, when he was in the middle of his discourse, and stood with rapt, devout, and breathless attention to its close. The rugged old warlike nobleman had early risen, and leaned over his pew with eyes fixed upon the preacher, and half the congregation were in the like posture of attention. Of all this Noble was utterly unconscious: his own gaze was perfectly abstracted; he saw nothing, he thought of nothing but the Divine love. He magnified it; he set it forth in the chaste radiance and the heavenly light of Scripture language and Scripture imagery. He commended it to the hearts of all around him, by speaking of it experimentally, gratefully. He showed what the world and society would be if subjected to its influence: drew the mournful contrast daily presented to the eye; and, towards the close, he drew aside, as it were, the curtains of the skies, and displayed the world of light, and the redeemed of the Lord walking, as angels, in an air of glory. When he had concluded, he kneeled down to pray: his few first words, though not quite so loud as his sermon, which had been preached in very subdued and quiet tones, were distinctly audible; but, then, they became faint and unintelligible, his grey head bowed down upon his pale hands, and both rested without motion upon the dark cushion of the pulpit.

The young minister was the first to perceive his condition, and the first to run to his succour. With the aid of Peter, he brought him down and out into the summer air, and laid him on the grass, and loosened his vest; but the body itself was no longer any thing but a put-off garment:—the spirit was far off, breathing already the air of that Eden which is above.

The young minister accompanied Peter back to the cottage with the precious remains, and, leaving them at a few yards’ distance, entered first, and broke the loss to his aged partner. She felt it deeply: but as all the circumstances attending it were truly and tenderly related, the grief of the woman yielded to the faith of the Christian; and, while tears rolled down her withered cheeks, she was enabled to bless and praise her God.

From that day, to the hour of her death, that youthful minister took her to his own home, and was to her as a son.

The very same day which witnessed the sudden and solemn removal of the good old vicar of Cheddar brought a summons to his base and hypocritical successor in that vicarage. As the crafty and bitter bigot was crossing his yard with a more hasty step than usual, his foot tripped against the edge of the BROKEN FONT, which he had put in the ground near his ash-heap, to hold water for his fowls. He fell to the ground with such violence as to produce a compound fracture of his thigh; and, after the lingering torments of a very long confinement, died in the greatest agony of body, and in hopeless terror of mind.

While this unhappy wretch lay upon his bed, in the first week after his accident, the body of Noble was brought to Cheddar for interment by the young Puritan divine, of whom we have spoken in the foregoing part of the chapter. The whole village poured forth to meet the body: the large hearted young minister performed the funeral service; and, indifferent to what the rigid party might say or think, he read over the grave of the departed vicar that solemn and sweet office for the burial of the dead which was, in those days, a forbidden charity to men who had suffered cheerfully the loss of all things rather than give up the sacred ritual of their church, or take the covenant which the faction in authority would have tyrannically imposed upon their conscience. The dropping of a leaf might have been heard in the green churchyard as that service was read; and a crowd stood listening with bare heads and serious eyes. When the last rite was done, and the earth was filled into the grave, fresh and verdant sods, which had been most carefully cut in a neighbouring paddock, were placed over it orderly and firm, and these again were so thickly strewn over with the choicest summer flowers as to be almost concealed by the profusion, while a fragrant and grateful incense, more pleasant than “precious ointment poured out,” filled all the place with a sweet promise, that the name of the righteous should live.

THE END.

London:
Printed by A. Spottiswoode,
New-Street-Square.