CHAPTER, XI.
The squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning. He was too
much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and he considered that he
had been personally insulted in the outrage offered to his recent
donation to the parish. His feelings, too, were hurt as well as his
pride. There was something so ungrateful in the whole thing, just after
he had taken so much pains, not only in the resuscitation but the
embellishment of the stocks. It was not, however, so rare an occurrence
for the squire to be ruffled as to create any remark. Riccabocca,
indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs. Hazeldean, as a wife, had the quick tact
to perceive that the host was glum and the husband snappish; but the one
was too discreet, and the other too sensible, to chafe the new sore,
whatever it might be, and shortly after breakfast the squire retired into
his study, and absented himself from morning service. In his delightful
"Life of Oliver Goldsmith," Mr. Forster takes care to touch our hearts by
introducing his hero's excuse for not entering the priesthood. "He did
not feel himself good enough." Thy Vicar of Wakefield, poor Goldsmith,
was an excellent substitute for thee; and Dr. Primrose, at least, will be
good enough for the world until Miss Jemima's fears are realized. Now,
Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience much less reasonable than
Goldsmith's. There were occasionally days in which he did not feel good
enough--I don't say for a priest, but even for one of the congregation,--
"days in which," said the squire in his own blunt way, "as I have never
in my life met a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I'll not carry
mine into the family pew. He sha'n't be growling out hypocritical
responses from my poor grandmother's prayer-book." So the squire and his
demon stayed at home. But the demon was generally cast out before the
day was over: and on this occasion, when the bell rang for afternoon
service, it may be presumed that the squire had reasoned or fretted
himself into a proper state of mind; for he was then seen sallying forth
from the porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the head of
his household. The second service was (as is commonly the case in rural
districts) more numerously attended than the first one; and it was our
parson's wont to devote to this service his most effective discourse.
Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep theology
nor the archaeological learning that distinguish the rising generation of
the clergy. I much doubt if he could have passed what would now be
called a creditable examination in the Fathers; and as for all the nice
formalities in the rubric, he would never have been the man to divide a
congregation or puzzle a bishop. Neither was Parson Dale very erudite in
ecclesiastical architecture. He did not much care whether all the
details in the church were purely Gothic or not; crockets and finials,
round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, on which he had never
troubled his head.
But one secret Parson Dale did possess, which is perhaps of equal
importance with those subtler mysteries,--he knew how to fill his church!
Even at morning service no pews were empty, and at evening service the
church overflowed.
Parson Dale, too, may be considered nowadays to hold but a mean idea of
the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to
dispute on its exact bearing with the State,--whether it was incorporated
with the State or above the State, whether it was antecedent to the
Papacy or formed from the Papacy, etc. According to his favourite maxim,
"Quieta non movere,"--["Not to disturb things that are quiet."]--I have
no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is provoked
upon such matters the better for both Church and laity. Nor had he ever
been known to regret the disuse of the ancient custom of excommunication,
nor any other diminution of the powers of the priesthood, whether
minatory or militant; yet for all this, Parson Dale had a great notion of
the sacred privilege of a minister of the gospel,--to advise, to deter,
to persuade, to reprove. And it was for the evening service that he
prepared those sermons which may be called "sermons that preach at you."
He preferred the evening for that salutary discipline, not only because
the congregation was more numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man
in his own innocent way, he knew that people bear better to be preached
at after dinner than before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the
heart when the stomach is at peace. There was a genial kindness in
Parson Dale's way of preaching at you. It was done in so imperceptible,
fatherly, a manner that you never felt offended. He did it, too, with so
much art that nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the
sinner he was exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached
at the squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock, the churchwarden,
as boldly as at Hodge the ploughman and Scrub the hedger. As for
Mr. Stirn, he had preached at him more often than at any one in the
parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the
grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson Dale's sermons something of
that boldness of illustration which would have been scholarly if he had
not made it familiar, and which is found in the discourses of our elder
divines. Like them, he did not scruple now and then to introduce an
anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scriptural
author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, or render an
argument more plain. And the good man had an object in this, a little
distinct from, though wholly subordinate to, the main purpose of his
discourse. He was a friend to knowledge,--but to knowledge accompanied
by religion; and sometimes his references to sources not within the
ordinary reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer's son,
with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the parson for further
explanation, and so to be lured on to a little solid or graceful
instruction, under a safe guide.
Now, on the present occasion, the parson, who had always his eye and
heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of
his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent
was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and
inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the
squire,--seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the
precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor,
meditated nothing less than a great Political Sermon,--a sermon that
should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue for the
wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his parish of
Hazeldean.
And thus ran--
THE POLITICAL SERMON OF PARSON DALE.
