But the accident of his evening's occupation having been scrutinised by the clergyman had not yet expended its influence on Joe's thoughts and feelings. On the first ensuing visit made by Dame Deborah to pay her tithes, she was solemnly admonished to forbid her godson's unprofitable studies, and to interdict his future association with the tailor. The good dame's reverence for her spiritual guide inclined her, at once, to yield obedience to his recommendation; more especially as she had for some time noted that the boy did not, as formerly, eagerly resort, at every leisure opportunity, to the old family Bible.
Accordingly, on her return home, she sharply reproved him for his neglect of the sacred book, and insisted that he should discontinue his communings at the tailor's cottage, and read no more of his books. Joe returned not a word in answer to the reproof of his aged mistress, for mingled gratitude, under a sense of her tender kindness, and reverence for her authority, rendered him incapable of disobeying her orders. He returned, dutifully, to the perusal of his first book; but though the rich variety of its histories, and the sublime interest of its matchless poetry, did not fail to keep alive his attention while he bent over its pages, yet, in the long hours of daily labour, his desire strongly thirsted for the more exciting intellectual draught of which he had lately partaken, and a dreary and monotonous feeling of weariness consumed his spirit. Dame Deborah little knew the evil she was doing when she bereaved her foster-child of his innocent pleasures. In the lapse of a few weeks she became sensible that it was not always wise to pursue the counsel even of the village parson too strictly.
Among the visiters to the dame's domicile, there had long been some who professed the tenets of Wesley,—the great heresiarch who drew his first breath in the Isle of Axholme. Of the peculiar doctrines set forth by this celebrated religious teacher, Joe, like Deborah herself, knew nought, save that the parson said they were "heresies." The sturdy intelligence of Dame Deborah led her to turn a deaf ear to all innovations in religion. She had been bred a strict church-woman, and never conceived the slightest idea of the fallibility of the orthodox and established Protestant faith. Her apprentices were not permitted to attend meeting or conventicle; and she steadfastly repelled and discouraged all attempts, on the part of her visiters, to introduce religious novelties in their daily gossip. But the restlessness and disquietude of his mind, now its faculties were once more without a fixed object of attachment, impelled Joe to discard, imperceptibly at first, the rules on religious matters, which had been tacitly observed by every member of the dame's household ever since he had entered it. With those who manifested a disposition to enlarge on the merits of the new religious system, he entered eagerly into discussion; and the result was, a determination to pay a secret attendance on one of the meetings of the sect, and thus form a judgment for himself.
A preacher of considerable rhetorical powers occupied the meeting-house pulpit, during his first stolen visits; and the skill with which passages from the book which had been his first source of instruction were quoted and applied, rivetted his attention and inflamed his fancy. The speaker gave illustrations of some of the patriarchal histories, and founded on them, and upon the sacrifices under the Mosaic law, such hypotheses as were exactly calculated to awe, and yet to lead captive, Joe's active imagination. To tell, in one sentence, the history of numberless hours of mental revolution, Joe brooded over these theories and their consequences while engaged at his daily labour, and repeated his secret visits to the meeting-house, until his young and earnest mind was filled with the one pervading idea that the only true happiness for the human soul was to be found in some sudden and ecstatic change to be received by what his new teachers called "an act of faith in the atonement."
From the period in which this conviction took entire hold of his judgment, the alteration in Joe's conduct was so decided as to become serious cause of alarm, even to the firm common-sense of Dame Deborah. He spurned the thought of any longer concealing his attendance at the sectarian meeting-house; and at every brief cessation from labour, as well as at prolonged hours in the night, and early in the morning, he was overheard in a weeping agony of prayer. His humble bed-room, an out-house, or the corner of a field, served the young devotee alike, for a place of "spiritual wrestling;" and whoever gave him an opportunity was sure to receive from Joe an earnest warning to "flee from the wrath to come!" Days,—weeks rolled on,—and the ardour of the lad's enthusiasm was approaching its meridian,—for he had given up himself so completely to its power, that not only did he consume the night more fully in prolonged acts of ascetic and almost convulsive devotion,—but his mind was so entirely wrapt up in the effort to "pray without ceasing,"—that he was scarcely conscious of what passed in the dame's cottage during the hours of work.
The visit of a "Revivalist" to the new religious community at Haxey thus found Joe fully prepared to hail the event as one fraught with unspeakable benefits. The narrow meeting-house was crammed with villagers attracted by the loud and unusual noises, and affected by the agonised looks and gestures, of their neighbours. Many of these stray visiters, in the language of the initiated, "came to scoff, but remained to pray." The "Revivalist" crept from form to form,—for the humble meeting-house was unhonoured with a pew,—urging the weeping and kneeling penitents to "press into mercy;" and pouring forth successive petitions for their salvation until the perspiration dropped from his brows like rain.
Joe was too intensely absorbed in the burning desire to obtain the immediate purification of his nature to be able to reflect, for a moment, on the question,—whether, in all this boisterous procedure, there was not an appalling violation of every principle of worship. And when the preacher approached the form at which he was kneeling, the workings of his spirit shook his whole frame with expectation. The preacher, at length, addressed him:—
"Believe, my young brother," said he, in a voice
naturally musical, and rendered wonderfully influential by enthusiasm,—"believe, for the pardon of your sins!"
"Oh! I would believe in a moment, if I felt they were pardoned!" cried Joe, in all the earnestness of excitement.
"Nay, but you must believe first!" rejoined the preacher; "only believe that your sins are pardoned, and you will feel your burden gone!"