“Oh, well—”
“And has there ever been anything like the Old Book for bringing lost souls home to happiness? Hasn’t it worked?”
In Andrew Pengilly’s solacing presence these seemed authentic arguments, actual revelations; Bruno Zechlin was far off and gray; and Frank was content.
Equally did Mr. Pengilly console him about the intelligent workmen who would have none of the church. The old man simply laughed.
“Good Heavens, boy! What do you expect, as a preacher? A whole world that’s saved, and nothing for you to do? Reckon you don’t get much salary, but how do you expect to earn that much? These folks don’t go to any Christian church? Huh! When the Master started out, wa’n’t anybody going to a Christian church! Go out and get ’em!”
Which seemed disastrously reasonable to the shamed Frank; and he went out to get ’em, and didn’t do so, and continued in his ministry.
He had heard in theological seminary of the “practise of the presence of God” as a papist mystery. Now he encountered it. Mr. Pengilly taught him to kneel, his mind free of all worries, all prides, all hunger, his lips repeating “Be thou visibly present with me”—not as a charm but that his lips might not be soiled with more earthly phrases—and, when he had become strained and weary and exalted, to feel a Something glowing and almost terrifying about him, and to experience thus, he was certain, the actual, loving, proven nearness of the Divinity.
He began to call his mentor Father Pengilly, and the old man chided him only a little . . . presently did not chide him at all.
For all his innocence and his mysticism, Father Pengilly was not a fool nor weak. He spoke up harshly to a loud-mouthed grocer, new come to town, who considered the patriarch a subject for what he called “kidding,” and who shouted, “Well, I’m getting tired of waiting for you preachers to pray for rain. Guess you don’t believe the stuff much yourselves!” He spoke up to old Miss Udell, the purity specialist of the town, when she came to snuffle that Amy Dove was carrying on with the boys in the twilight. “I know how you like a scandal, Sister,” said he. “Maybe ’tain’t Christian to deny you one. But I happen to know all about Amy. Now if you’d go out and help poor old crippled Sister Eckstein do her washing, maybe you’d keep busy enough so’s you could get along without your daily scandal.”
He had humor, as well, Father Pengilly. He could smile over the cranks in the congregation. And he liked the village atheist, Doc Lem Staples. He had him at the house, and it healed Frank’s spirit to hear with what beatific calm Father Pengilly listened to the Doc’s jibes about the penny-pinchers and the sinners in the church.