During the remainder of his stay, Corny balanced between joy and his selfishness in being joyful, in a manner sufficiently ludicrous,—breaking out one moment in the most extravagant demonstration, to be twitched from it the next by a penitential spasm. As for Drake, hardly yet clear of the shadows that haunted his fever, he but mistily comprehended the change that was before him; and it will need weeks and perhaps months of home-nursing and watching before body and mind can win back their former strength and tone.
Meanwhile, people of the North, what of the poor boys left behind at Andersonville, starving, as Corny said, by inches, with the winter before them, and their numbers swelled by the hundreds that a late Rebel paper gleefully announces to be on their way from more Northern prisons?
DOCTOR JOHNS.
VII.
It was not easy in that day to bring together the opinions of a Connecticut parish that had been jostled apart by a parochial quarrel, and where old grievances were festering. Indeed, it is never easy to do this, and unite opinions upon a new comer, unless he have some rare gift of eloquence, which so dazes the good people that they can no longer remember their petty griefs, or unless he manage with rare tact to pass lightly over the sore points, and to anoint them by a careful hand with such healing salves as he can concoct out of his pastoral charities. Mr. Johns had neither art nor eloquence, as commonly understood; yet he effected a blending of all interests by the simple, earnest gravity of his character. He ignored all angry disputation; he ignored its results. He came as a shepherd to a deserted sheepfold; he came to preach the Bible doctrines in their literalness. He had no reproofs, save for those who refused the offers of God's mercy,—no commendation, save for those who sought His grace whose favor is life everlasting. There were no metaphysical niceties in his discourses, athwart which keen disputants might poise themselves for close and angry conflict; he recognized no necessities but the great ones of repentance and faith; and all the mysteries of the Will he was accustomed to solve by grand utterance of that text which he loved above all others,—however much it may have troubled him in his discussion of Election,—"whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely."
Inheriting as he did all the religious affinities of his mother, these were compacted and made sensitive by years of silent protest against the proud worldly sufficiency of his father, the Major. Such qualities and experience found repose in the unyielding dogmas of the Westminster divines. At thirty the clergyman was as aged as most men of forty-five,—seared by the severity of his opinions, and the unshaken tenacity with which he held them. He was by nature a quiet, almost a timid man; but over the old white desk and crimson cushion, with the choir of singers in his front and the Bible under his hand, he grew into wonderful boldness. He cherished an exalted idea of the dignity of his office,—a dignity which he determined to maintain to the utmost of his power; but in the pulpit only did the full measure of this exaltation come over him. Thence he looked down serenely upon the flock of which he was the appointed guide, and among whom his duty lay. The shepherd leading his sheep was no figure of speech for him; he was commissioned to their care, and was conducting them—old men and maidens, boys and gray-haired women—athwart the dangers of the world, toward the great fold. On one side always the fires of hell were gaping; and on the other were blazing the great candlesticks around the throne.
But when, on some occasion, he had, under the full weight of his office, inveighed against a damning evil, and, as he fondly hoped by the stillness in the old meeting-house, wrought upon sinners effectually, it was disheartening to be met by some hoary member of his flock, whom perhaps he had borne particularly in mind, and to be greeted cheerfully with, "Capital sermon, Mr. Johns! those are the sort that do the business! I like those, parson!" The poor man, humiliated, would bow his thanks. He lacked the art (if it be an art) to press the matter home, when he met one of his parishioners thus. Indeed, his sense of the importance of his calling and his extreme conscientiousness gave him an air of timidity outside the pulpit, which offered great contrast to that which he wore in the heat of his sermonizing. Not that he forgot the dignity of his position for a moment, but he wore it too trenchantly; he could never unbend to the free play of side-talk. Hence he could not look upon the familiar spirit of badinage in which some of his brethren of the profession indulged, without serious doubts of their complete submission to the Heavenly King. Always the weight of his solemn duties pressed sorely on him; always amid pitfalls he was conducting his little flock toward the glories of the Great Court. There is many a man narrowed and sharpened by metaphysical inquiry to such a degree as to count the indirection and freedom of kindly chat irksome, and the occasion of a needless blunting of that quick mental edger with which he must scathe all he touches. But the stiffness of Mr. Johns was not that of constant mental strain; he did not refine upon his dogmas; but he gave them such hearty entertainment, and so inwrapped his spirit with their ponderous gravity, that he could not disrobe in a moment, or uncover to every chance comer.
It is quite possible that by reason of this grave taciturnity the clergyman won more surely upon the respect of his people. "He is engrossed," said they, "with greater matters; and in all secular affairs he recognizes our superior discernment." Thus his inaptitude in current speech was construed by them into a delicate flattery. They greatly relished his didactic, argumentative sermonizing, since theirs was a religion not so much of the sensibilities as of the intellect. They agonized toward the truth, if not by intense thinking, yet by what many good people are apt to mistake for it,—immense endurance of the prolix thought of others.
If the idea of universal depravity had been ignored,—as it sometimes is in these latitudinarian days,—or the notion of any available or worthy Christian culture, as distinct from a direct and clearly defined agency, both as to time and force, of the Spirit, had been entertained, he would have lost half of the elements by which his arguments gained logical sequence. But, laboring his way from stake to stake of the old dogmas of the Westminster divines, he fastened to them stoutly, and swept round from each as a centre a great scathing circle of deductions, that beat wofully upon the heads of unbelievers. And if a preacher attack only unbelievers, he has the world with him, now as then; it is only he who has the bad taste to meddle with the caprices of believers who gets the raps and the orders of dismissal.