“Listen to what he’s playin’ the noo,” said Carr quietly. As he spoke the rippling dance of the spring music had given place to the simple strains of an old-fashioned “bairns’ hymn.” As the three men stood listening, each became aware of the subtle changes in the faces of the others, but they knew not how upon their own faces were registered emotions which they would have hid from all the world.
The lines of stern disapproval in Sandy’s face softened into those of tender reminiscence. John Carr’s placid face became gravely sad, as his eyes wandered to a far corner of the churchyard. While Tom Powers turned abruptly toward the church door, whither Sandy had led the way. Over and over again the bairns’ hymn stole like a far-away echo over the congregation in major and minor keys, then glided into the more stately and solemn cadences of the great Psalms and hymns of the Church Universal.
One by one the people about the door passed quietly into their places in the beautiful little church, and there sat listening till the minister appeared. It was one of the great hours in Paul’s life, restored to him again after months of absence from church. As the minister bowed his head in silent prayer the piano began, in tones tremulously sweet, the minor strains of that most poignantly penitential air of all Scottish psalmody, Old Coleshill, a fitting prelude to the ritual, tender, solemn, moving, of the ancient Scottish Communion Service.
The sermon was less profoundly theological than usual. The theme, as ever on a Sacrament Sunday, was one of the great doctrines of the Cross, “Forgiveness, Its Ground and Its Fruits.” And while the preacher revelled in the unfolding of the mysteries the congregation, according to their mental and spiritual predilections and training, followed with keen appreciation or with patient endurance till the close.
To the superficial and non-understanding observer the Scot “enjoys” his religion sadly. His doctrinal furnishing is too profoundly logical and his moral sense too acutely developed to permit him any illusions as to his standing before his own conscience and before the bar of Eternal Righteousness, and while in other departments of life his native consciousness of merit in comparison with that of inferior races renders him impervious to the criticism of other people—for how can they be expected to know?—and alleviates to a large extent even his own self-condemnation at times, when it comes to “matters of the soul” he passes into a region where he stands alone with his God in an ecstasy of self-abasement which may in moments of supreme exaltation be merged into an experience of solemn and holy joy. But these moments are never spoken of. They become part of his religious experience, never to be revealed.
By the gleam in Sandy Campbell’s deep blue eyes the expert might have been able to gather that Sandy was on the way to ecstasy. Gaspard, though not of Sandy’s mystic type, had in him enough of his Highland blood strain to respond to the Celtic fervour of Donald Fraser proclaiming the mystery of the vicarious passion of the Cross. Today the usual commercialised aspect of the great doctrine was overwhelmed in the appeal of the Divine compassion to wayward and wandering children. The minister was more human, less academic, in his treatment of his great theme than was his wont. Paul, seated at the piano, was apparently quite undisturbed by the profundities of the minister’s discourse. To him the refinements and elaborations of theological propositions were so much waste of words. Sin, judgment, repentance, forgiveness, were simple and easily understood ideas. They had entered into his daily experience in his earlier days with his mother. With God it was just the same thing. Why fuss about what was so abundantly plain that any child might take it in? Today he was watching his father’s face and Sandy Campbell’s. He was interested in their interest and enjoying their enjoyment. His face reflected their moods and emotions. The minister’s eye was caught and held by the boy’s face, and all unconsciously his sermon took tone and colour from what he found there.
The communion hymn was followed by an abbreviated—for time pressed—but none the less soul-searching address, known in old-time Presbyterian parlance as the “Fencing of the Table.” This part of the communion “Exercises,” however necessary in communities only nominally religious and in times when “coming forward” had come to be regarded as a purely formal duty associated with the attaining of “years of discretion” rather than with any particular religious experience, the minister during his years in the valley had come to touch somewhat lightly. Among the people of the valley there was little need of a “fence” to warn back the rashly self-complacent from “unworthily communing.” Yet custom dies hard in matters religious, and in consequence the “Fencing of the Table” could not be neglected. Encouraged by the invitation to the holy ordinance given with a warmth and breadth of appeal to “all who desired to remember with grateful and penitent heart the Lord Who had given His life for them,” Paul, without much previous thought and moved chiefly by the desire quite unusual at such a moment to share in the solemn service with his father, who apparently had suddenly resolved to renew his relation to his faith and to his Church today, had slipped from the piano seat to his father’s side. During the “fencing” process, Paul’s mind, borne afar upon the spiritual tides released by the whole service and its environment and quite oblivious to the argument and appeal in the words of the address, was suddenly and violently arrested by a phrase, “You must forgive him who has wronged you, else you dare not partake.” As the idea was elaborated and enforced with all the fervent passion of the minister’s Highland soul the boy’s whole mental horizon became blocked with one terrible and forbidding object, the face of Asa Sleeman. The sin of the unforgiving soul daring to enter into communion with the forgiving Lord was pressed with relentless logic upon the boy’s conscience. An overwhelming horror fell upon him. Forgive him who had uttered the foul lie about his father? The thing was simply a moral impossibility. The whole moral order of his Universe would in that case come tumbling in ruins about him. The thing called for judgment, not forgiveness—judgment and condign punishment. Wrong things and wrong people must be punished, else what was hell for? Yet, “forgive him who has wronged you,” the minister was saying, “else you cannot be forgiven.” Clearly there was no hope for him. His whole theory of forgiveness and restoration was rudely shattered. Asa and his father might possibly escape hell after all. It was a disturbing thought. At any rate, the communion was not for him. He glanced hastily at his father.
“I am going out a bit,” he whispered.
“Are you ill?” inquired his father, startled at the pallor in his face.
“No, I’m all right,” he replied, and rising quietly he passed out and through the open door of the church.