Jake led us forward, and stationed us in posts of honor before the crowd of auditors.
Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had made of himself. He was clean shaved; clean shaving is a favorite coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons were thrust into boots with the maker’s name (Abel Cushing, Lynn, Mass.) stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct go-to-meetin’ costume,—a Chadband of the plains.
He took his stand, and began to fulmine over the assemblage. His manner was coarse and overbearing, with intervals of oily persuasiveness. He was a big, powerful man, without one atom of delicacy in him,—a fellow who never could take a flower or a gentle heart into his hand without crushing it by a brutal instinct. A creature with such an amorphous beak of a nose, such a heavy-lipped mouth, and such wilderness of jaw, could never perceive the fine savor of any delicate thing. Coarse joys were the only joys for such a body; coarse emotions, the pleasures of force and domination, the only emotions crude enough for such a soul.
His voice was as repulsive as his mien and manner. That badly modelled nose had an important office in his oratory. Through it he hailed his auditors to open their hearts, as a canal-boatman hails the locks with a canal horn of bassoon calibre. But sometimes, when he wished to be seductive, his sentences took the channel of his mouth, and his great lips rolled the words over like fat morsels. Pah! how the recollection of the fellow disgusts me! And yet he had an unwholesome fascination, which compelled us to listen. I could easily understand how he might overbear feeble minds, and wheedle those that loved flattery. He had some education. Travel had polished his base metal, so that it shone well enough to deceive the vulgar or the credulous. He did not often allow himself the broad coarseness of his brother preachers in the church.
Shall I let him speak for himself? Does any one wish to hear the inspirations of the last faith humanity has chosen for its guide?
No. Such travesty of true religion is very sorry comedy, very tragical farce. Vulgar rant and cant, and a muddle of texts and dogmas, are disgusting to hear, and would be weariness to repeat.
Sizzum’s sermon suited his mixed character. He was Aaron and Joshua, high-priest and captain combined. He made his discourse bulletin for to-day, general orders for to-morrow. He warned against the perils of disobedience. He raved of the joys and privileges of Latter-Day Saintship on earth and in heaven. He heaped vindictive and truculent anathemas upon Gentiles. He gave his audience to understand that he held the keys of the kingdom; if they yielded to him without question, they were safe in life and eternity; if they murmured, they were cast into outer darkness. It was terrible to see the man’s despotism over his proselytes. A rumble of Amens from the crowd greeted alike every threat and every promise.
Sizzum’s discourse lasted half an hour. He dismissed his audience with an Amen, and an injunction to keep closer to the train on the march to-morrow, and not be “rabbling off to catch grasshoppers because they were bigger and handsomer than the Lancashire kind.”
“And this is one of the religions of the nineteenth century, and such a man is its spokesman,” said Brent to me, as the meeting broke up, and we strolled off alone to inspect the camp.
“It is a shame to all churches that they have not trained men to judge of evidence, and so rendered such a delusion impossible.”