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CHAPTER XIX.
Meanwhile the minister remained moody, apparently sunk in contemplation,
but in fact mostly brooding, and meditating neither form nor truth.
Sometimes he felt indeed as if he were losing altogether his power of
thinking--especially when, in the middle of the week, he sat down to find
something to say on the Sunday. He had greatly lost interest in the
questions that had occupied him while he was yet a student, and imagined
himself in preparation for what he called the ministry--never thinking how
one was to minister who had not yet learned to obey, and had never sought
anything but his own glorification! It was little wonder he should lose
interest in a profession, where all was but profession! What pleasure
could that man find in holy labour who, not indeed offered his stipend to
purchase the Holy Ghost, but offered all he knew of the Holy Ghost to
purchase popularity? No wonder he should find himself at length in lack of
talk to pay for his one thing needful! He had always been more or less
dependent on commentaries for the joint he provided--and even for the
cooking of it: was it any wonder that his guests should show less and less
appetite for his dinners?
The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed!
To have food to give them, he must think! To think, he must have peace! to
have peace, he must forget himself! to forget himself, he must repent, and
walk in the truth! to walk in the truth, he must love God and his
neighbour!--Even to have interest in the dry bone of criticism, which was
all he could find in his larder, he must broil it--and so burn away in the
slow fire of his intellect, now dull and damp enough from lack of noble
purpose, every scrap of meat left upon it! His last relation to his work,
his fondly cherished intellect, was departing from him, to leave him lord
of a dustheap! In the unsavoury mound he grubbed and nosed and scraped
dog-like, but could not uncover a single fragment that smelt of provender.
The morning of Saturday came, and he recognized with a burst of agonizing
sweat, that he dared not even imagine his appearance before his
congregation: he had not one written word to read to them; and extempore
utterance was, from conscious vacancy, impossible to him; he could not
even call up one meaningless phrase to articulate! He flung his
concordance sprawling upon the floor, snatched up his hat and clerical
cane, and, scarce knowing what he did, presently found himself standing at
the soutar's door, where he had already knocked, without a notion of what
he was come to seek. The old parson, generally in a mood to quarrel with
the soutar, had always walked straight into his workshop, and greeted him
crouched over his work; but the new parson always waited on the doorstep
for Maggie to admit him.
She had opened the door wide ere he knew why he had come, or could think of
anything to say. And now he was in greater uneasiness than usual at the
thought of the cobbler's deep-set black eyes about to be fixed upon him, as
if to probe his very thoughts.
"Do you think your father would have time," he asked humbly, "to measure me
for a pair of light boots?"
Mr. Blatherwick was very particular about his foot-gear, and had hitherto
always fitted himself at Deemouth; but he had at length learned that
nothing he could there buy approached in quality, either of material or
workmanship, what the soutar supplied to his poorest customer: he would
mend anything worth mending, but would never make anything inferior.
"Ye'll get what ye want at such and such place," he would answer, "and I
doobtna it'll be as guid as can be made at the siller; but for my ain
pairt, ye maun excuse me!"
"'Deed, sir, he'll be baith glad and prood to mak ye as guid a pair o'
beets as he can compass," answered Maggie. "Jist step in here, sir, and lat
him ken what ye want. My bairn's greitin, and I maun gang til 'im; it's
seldom he cries oot!"
The minister walked in at the open door of the kitchen, and met the eyes of
the soutar expectant.
"Ye're welcome, sir!" said MacLear, and returned his eyes to what he had
for a moment interrupted.
"I want you to make me a nice pair of boots, if you please," said the
parson, as cheerily as he could. "I am rather particular about the fit, I
fear!"
"And what for no, sir?" answered the soutar. "I'll do what I can onygait, I
promise ye--but wi' mair readiness nor confidence as to the fit; for I
canna profess assurance o' fittin' the first time, no haein the necessar
instinc' frae the mak' o' the man to the shape o' the fut, sir."
"Of course I should like to have them both neat and comfortable," said the
parson.
"In coorse ye wad, sir, and sae would I! For I confess I wad fain hae my
customers tak note o' my success in followin the paittern set afore me i'
the first oreeginal fut!"
"But you will allow, I suppose, that a foot is seldom as perfect now as
when the divine idea of the member was first embodied by its maker?"
rejoined the minister.
"Ow, ay; there's been mony an interferin circumstance; but whan His
kingdom's come, things 'll tak a turn for the redemption o' the feet as
weel as the lave o' the body--as the apostle Paul says i' the twenty-third
verse o' the aucht chapter o' his epistle to the Romans;--only I'm weel
aveesed, sir, 'at there's no sic a thing as adoption mintit at i' the
original Greek. That can hae no pairt i' what fowk ca's the plan o'
salvation--as gien the consumin fire o' the Love eternal was to be ca'd a
plan! Hech, minister, it scunners me! But for the fut, it's aye perfec'
eneuch to be my pattern, for it's the only ane I hae to follow! It's
Himsel sets the shape o' the shune this or that man maun weir!"
"That's very true--and the same applies to everything a man cannot help. A
man has both the make of his mind and of his circumstances to do the best
he can with, and sometimes they don't seem to fit each other--so well as, I
hope, your boots will fit my feet."
"Ye're richt there, sir--only that no man's bun' to follow his inclinations
or his circumstances, ony mair than he's bun' to alter his fut to the shape
o' a ready-made beet!--But hoo wull ye hae them made, sir?--I mean what
sort o' butes wad ye hae me mak?"
"Oh, I leave that to you, Mr. MacLear!--a sort of half Wellington, I
suppose--a neat pair of short boots."
"I understand, sir."
"And now tell me," said the minister, moved by a sudden impulse, coming he
knew not whence, "what you think of this new fad, if it be nothing worse,
of the English clergy--I mean about the duty of confessing to the priest.--
I see they have actually prevailed upon that wretched creature we've all
been reading about in the papers lately, to confess the murder of her
little brother! Do you think they had any right to do that? Remember the
jury had acquitted her."
"And has she railly confessed? I am glaid o' that! I only wuss they could
get a haud o' Madeline Smith as weel, and persuaud her to confess! Eh,
the state o' that puir crater's conscience! It 'maist gars me greit to
think o' 't! Gien she wad but confess, houp wad spring to life in her
sin-oppressed soul! Eh, but it maun be a gran' lichtenin to that puir
thing! I'm richt glaid to hear o' 't."
"I didn't know, Mr. MacLear, that you favoured the power and influence of
the priesthood to such an extent! We Presbyterian clergy are not in the way
of doing the business of detectives, taking upon us to act as the agents of
human justice! There is no one, guilty or not, but is safe with us!"
"As with any confessor, Papist or Protestant," rejoined the soutar. "If I
understand your news, sir, it means that they persuaded the poor soul to
confess her guilt, and so put herself safe in the hands of God!"
"And is not that to come between God and the sinner?"
"Doubtless, sir--in order to bring them together; to persuade the sinner to
the first step toward reconciliation with God, and peace in his own mind."
"That he could take without the intervention of the priest!"
"Yes, but not without his own consenting will! And in this case, she would
not, and did not confess without being persuaded to it!"
"They had no right to threaten her!"
"Did they threaten her? If they did, they were wrong.--And yet I don't
know! In any case they did for her the very best thing that could be done!
For they did get her, you tell me, to confess--and so cast from her the
horror of carrying about in her secret heart the knowledge of an unforgiven
crime! Christians of all denominations hold, I presume, that, to be
forgiven, a sin must be confessed!"
"Yes, to God--that is enough! No mere man has a right to know the sins of
his neighbour!"
"Not even the man against whom the sin was committed?"
"Suppose the sin has never come abroad, but remains hidden in the heart, is
a man bound to confess it? Is he, for instance, bound to tell his neighbour
that he used to hate him, and in his heart wish him evil?"
"The time micht come whan to confess even that would ease a man's hert! but
in sic a case, the man's first duty, it seems to me, would be to watch for
an opportunity o' doin that neebour a kin'ness. That would be the deid blow
to his hatred! But where a man has done an act o' injustice, a wrang to his
neebour, he has no ch'ice, it seems to me, but confess it: that neebour is
the one from whom first he has to ask and receive forgiveness; and that
neebour alone can lift the burden o' 't aff o' him! Besides, the confession
may be but fair, to baud the blame frae bein laid at the door o' some
innocent man!--And the author o' nae offence can affoord to forget," ended
the soutar, "hoo the Lord said, 'There's naething happit-up, but maun come
to the licht'!"
It seems to me that nothing could have led the minister so near the
presentation of his own false position, except the will of God working in
him to set him free. He continued, driven by an impulse he neither
understood nor suspected--
"Suppose the thing not known, however, or likely to be known, and that the
man's confession, instead of serving any good end, would only destroy his
reputation and usefulness, bring bitter grief upon those who loved him, and
nothing but shame to the one he had wronged--what would you say then?--You
will please to remember, Mr. MacLear, that I am putting an entirely
imaginary case, for the sake of argument only!"
"Eh, but I doobt--I doobt yer imaiginary case!" murmured the soutar to
himself, hardly daring even to think his thought clearly, lest somehow it
might reveal itself.
"In that case," he replied, "it seems to me the offender wad hae to cast
aboot him for ane fit to be trustit, and to him reveal the haill affair,
that he may get his help to see and do what's richt: it maks an unco differ
to luik at a thing throuw anither man's een, i' the supposed licht o'
anither man's conscience! The wrang dune may hae caused mair evil, that is,
mair injustice, nor the man himsel kens! And what's the reputation ye speak
o', or what's the eesefu'ness o' sic a man? Can it be worth onything? Isna
his hoose a lee? isna it biggit upo the san'? What kin' o' a usefulness
can that be that has hypocrisy for its fundation? Awa wi' 't! Lat him cry
oot to a' the warl', 'I'm a heepocrit! I'm a worm, and no man!' Lat him
cry oot to his makker, 'I'm a beast afore thee! Mak a man o' me'!"
As the soutar spoke, overcome by sympathy with the sinner, whom he could
not help feeling in bodily presence before him, the minister, who had risen
when he began to talk about the English clergy and confession, stood
hearing with a face pale as death.
"For God's sake, minister," continued the soutar, "gien ye hae ony sic
thing upo yer min', hurry and oot wi' 't! I dinna say to me, but to
somebody--to onybody! Mak a clean breist o' 't, afore the Adversary has ye
again by the thrapple!"
But here started awake in the minister the pride of superiority in station
and learning: a shoemaker, from whom he had just ordered a pair of boots,
to take such a liberty, who ought naturally to have regarded him as
necessarily spotless! He drew himself up to his lanky height, and made
reply--
"I am not aware, Mr. MacLear, that I have given you any pretext for
addressing me in such terms! I told you, indeed, that I was putting a case,
a very possible one, it is true, but not the less a merely imaginary one!
You have shown me how unsafe it is to enter into an argument on any
supposed case with one of limited education! It is my own fault, however;
and I beg your pardon for having thoughtlessly led you into such a
pitfall!--Good morning!"
As the door closed behind the parson, he began to felicitate himself on
having so happily turned aside the course of a conversation whose dangerous
drift he seemed now first to recognize; but he little thought how much he
had already conveyed to the wide-eyed observation of one well schooled in
the symptoms of human unrest.
"I must set a better watch over my thoughts lest they betray me!" he
reflected; thus resolving to conceal himself yet more carefully from the
one man in the place who would have cut for him the snare of the fowler.
"I was ower hasty wi' 'im!" concluded the soutar on his part. "But I think
the truth has some grup o' 'im. His conscience is waukin up, I fancy, and
growlin a bit; and whaur that tyke has ance taen haud, he's no ready to
lowsen or lat gang! We maun jist lie quaiet a bit, and see! His hoor 'ill
come!"
The minister being one who turned pale when angry, walked home with a face
of such corpse-like whiteness, that a woman who met him said to herself,
"What can ail the minister, bonny laad! He's luikin as scared as a corp! I
doobt that fule body the soutar's been angerin him wi' his havers!"
The first thing he did when he reached the manse, was to turn,
nevertheless, to the chapter and verse in the epistle to the Romans, which
the soutar had indicated, and which, through all his irritation, had,
strangely enough, remained unsmudged in his memory; but the passage
suggested nothing, alas! out of which he could fabricate a sermon. Could it
have proved otherwise with a heart that was quite content to have God no
nearer him than a merely adoptive father? He found at the same time that
his late interview with the soutar had rendered the machinery of his
thought-factory no fitter than before for weaving a tangled wisp of loose
ends, which was all he could command, into the homogeneous web of a sermon;
and at last was driven to his old stock of carefully preserved
preordination sermons; where he was unfortunate enough to make choice of
the one least of all fitted to awake comprehension or interest in his
audience.
His selection made, and the rest of the day thus cleared for inaction, he
sat down and wrote a letter. Ever since his fall he had been successfully
practising the art of throwing a morsel straight into one or other of the
throats of the triple-headed Cerberus, his conscience--which was more
clever in catching such sops, than they were in choking the said howler;
and one of them, the letter mentioned, was the sole wretched result of his
talk with the soutar. Addressed to a late divinity-classmate, he asked in
it incidentally whether his old friend had ever heard anything of the
little girl--he could just remember her name and the pretty face of her--
Isy, general slavey to her aunt's lodgers in the Canongate, of whom he was
one: he had often wondered, he said, what had become of her, for he had
been almost in love with her for a whole half-year! I cannot but take the
inquiry as the merest pretence, with the sole object of deceiving himself
into the notion of having at least made one attempt to discover Isy. His
friend forgot to answer the question, and James Blatherwick never alluded
to his having put it to him.
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