“They were warned to quit at Martinmas, Martha. This man, Lord Gillravidge, has his eyes open to his own advantage. He has been advised, I hear, to make one great sheep-farm of these exposed hill-lands. The poor little clachan of Oranmore could not believe that those fearful notices were anything but threats to secure the payment of their rent; but now they promise to turn very sad earnest. I do not know what to do.”
“Eject them?” said Miss Lumsden, “bring one of those terrible Irish scenes to our very door—in our peaceable country? John, it’s not possible!”
Mr. Lumsden looked still more serious.
“I fear it is nearly certain, Martha. I met Big Duncan Macalpine on the road last night. He says Lord Gillravidge’s agent and that fellow with the moustache, have been in the glen several times of late; and the ejectment must be accomplished before their seed is sown. At least if they are permitted to remain till after seed-time, the man will not surely have the heart to remove them then. I do not know—it is a very sad business altogether; but we must try to do something better for them than sending them, friendless and penniless, to Canada. We get a trial of all businesses, we ministers, Martha—this is a new piece of work for me.”
The minister’s man stood at the door, holding the minister’s stout, gray pony. Mr. Lumsden left the room. “And a great comfort it is, John my man,” soliloquized his sister, “that your Master has made you able for them all.”
Oranmore was not in Mr. Lumsden’s parish. Mr. Lumsden was, what in those days was called a “Highflyer,” that is, a purely and earnestly evangelical minister—a man who dedicated his whole energies, not to any abstraction of merely beautiful morality—not to amiable respectability, nor temporal beneficence; but in the fullest sense of these solemn words, to the cause and service of Christ. In consequence, Mr. Lumsden was assailed with all the names peculiarly assigned to his class by common consent of the world: sour Presbyterian, gloomy Calvinist, narrow-minded bigot, illiberal Pharisee. The minister of Portoran, like his brethren in all ages, escaped thus the woe denounced by his Master against those of whom all men speak well.
He was a thorough Presbyterian, a sound Calvinist. Men who know, and may rationally judge of these two stately systems of discipline and doctrine, can decide best whether the frank and open pleasantness of Mr. Lumsden’s face belied his faith or no. He was a man of one idea—we confess to that; but the mightiness that filled his mind was great enough to overbrim a universe. It was the Gospel—the Gospel in its infinite breadth of lovingness—the Gospel no less in its restrictions and penalties. His hand did not willingly extend itself in fellowship to any man who dishonored the name of his Divine leader and King. His soul was not sufficiently indifferent to prophesy final blessedness to those who contemned and set at nought the everlasting love of God—so far he was narrow-minded and illiberal, a bigot and a Pharisee.
But it happened that Mr. Lumsden’s co-presbyters on every side were men called, in the emphatic ecclesiastical phraseology of Scotland, “Moderates;” men who wrote sermons and preached them because it was a necessity of their office, not because they had a definite message to deliver from a Lord and Master known and beloved; men who tolerated profanity, and hushed uncomfortable fears, and were themselves so very moderately religious, as to give no manner of offence to that most narrow-minded and illiberal of all bigots, the irreligious world. We mention this, in explanation of a foible of Mr. Lumsden’s, particularly alluded to in the letter of Lord Gillravidge, and the cause of much skirmishing in the Presbytery of Strathoran. Mr. Lumsden had an especial knack of preaching in other people’s parishes.
Not to the neglect of his own—of all kinds of dishonor or ill-fame, Mr. Lumsden held none so grievous as the neglecting or slight performance of any part of that honorable and lofty work of his. Dearly as he loved extraneous labor, the minutest of his own especial parochial duties were looked to first. But all his round of toil gone through; his sermons prepared; his examinations held; himself, heart and mind, at the constant service of his people, Mr. Lumsden thought it no longer necessary to confine his marvellous appetite for work within the limits of Portoran.—There was a heathenish village yonder, growing up in all the rude brutality of rural vice, untaught and uncared for. What matter that the privilege of instructing it belonged to the Reverend Michael Drowsihed? The Reverend Michael awoke out of his afternoon sleep one day in wrath and consternation. Mr. Lumsden, of Portoran, had established a fortnightly sermon, and threatened to set down a daily school, in his own neglected village. What matter, that the half-Gaelic colony of Oranmore, belonged of right to Mr. Bairnsfather? The warm heart of the Minister of Portoran was laboring in the cause of the Macalpines, while Mr. Bairnsfather was “sheughing kail and laying leeks,” in his own Manse garden.
In consequence of which propensity, Mr. Lumsden made a mighty commotion in that ecclesiastical district. Gratefully to his ears, as he wended homeward, came the voice of psalms from peasant-households, whom his faithful service had brought back to the devout and godly habits of their forefathers. Pleasantly before him stood, in rustic bashfulness, the ruddy village children, for whom his care and labors had procured an education of comparative purity; but by no means either grateful or pleasant were those endless battles convulsing his presbytery, shaking study chairs in drowsy Manses, and sweeping in a perfect whirlwind of complaint and reprimand through the Presbytery House of Portoran.