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THE OLD CHURCH.
The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the threshold--an
awe I never fail to feel--heightened in many cases, no doubt, by the sense
of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I have felt all the same in
crossing the threshold of an old Puritan conventicle, as the place where
men worship and have worshipped the God of their fathers, although for art
there was only the science of common bricklaying, and for beauty staring
ugliness. To the involuntary fancy, the air of petition and of holy need
seems to linger in the place, and the uncovered head acknowledges the
sacred symbols of human inspiration and divine revealing. But this was no
ordinary church into which I followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As
entering I turned my eyes eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them
from the chancel, all the windows of which were of richly stained glass,
and the roof of carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this
chancel, and thence about chancels generally which may appear in another
part of my story. Now I have to do only with the church, not with the
cogitations to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my reader with
even what I could tell him of the blending and contradicting of styles
and modes of architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the work of
contesting human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As nature
brings into harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive
intrusions upon her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense of
the word, so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of that
which in itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various architecture
of this building had been gone over after the builders by the musical hand
of Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one
could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at work
informing the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the sharpness,
and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the gentle
flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion vanished
under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the hand of
the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and gently, and
wherein it had erred, the same influences of nature, though as yet their
effects were invisible, were already at work--of the many making one. I
will not trouble my reader, I say, with any architectural description,
which, possibly even more than a detailed description of natural beauty
dissociated from human feeling, would only weary him, even if it were not
unintelligible. When we are reading a poem, we do not first of all examine
the construction and dwell on the rhymes and rhythms; all that comes after,
if we find that the poem itself is so good that its parts are therefore
worth examining, as being probably good in themselves, and elucidatory of
the main work. There were carvings on the ends of the benches all along
the aisle on both sides, well worth examination, and some of them even
of description; but I shall not linger on these. A word only about the
columns: they supported arches of different fashion on the opposite
sides, but they were themselves similar in matter and construction, both
remarkable. They were of coarse granite of the country, chiselled, but very
far from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was a single stone with
chamfered sides.
Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many thoughts
that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length into the
tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body of the
church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above, for
bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend Shepherd. And
as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful it would be if
in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was precious; so that
when it came to the minister of his people--a fresh vision of his glory, a
discovery of his meaning--he might make haste to the church, and into the
tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the deepest-toned bell of all,
and constrain it by the force of strong arms to utter its voice of call,
"Come hither, come hear, my people, for God hath spoken;" and from the
streets or the lanes would troop the eager folk; the plough be left in the
furrow, the cream in the churn; and the crowding people bring faces into
the church, all with one question upon them--"What hath the Lord spoken?"
But now it would be answer sufficient to such a call to say, "But what will
become of the butter?" or, "An hour's ploughing will be lost." And the
clergy--how would they bring about such a time? They do not even believe
that God has a word to his people through them. They think that his word is
petrified for use in the Bible and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old
heard so much of the word of God, and have so set it down, that there is
no need for any more words of the Lord coming to the prophets of a land;
therefore they look down upon the prophesying--that is, the preaching
of the word--make light of it, the best of them, say these prayers are
everything, or all but everything: their hearts are not set upon hearing
what God the Lord will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people
again. Therefore it is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to
the clock, are no longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have
nothing to do in telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little of
this part of their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must remain
such as they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers which are
the word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when the prophets
see no vision, how should they have any word to speak?
These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my guide.
She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I thought,
or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had taken her
stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting busily. How her
needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however, but, fixed on the
slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from her feet, seemed to be
gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite objectless outlook. To try
her, I took for the moment the position of an accuser.
"So you don't mind working in church?" I said.
When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far sea-waves
to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she answered--
"The church knows me, sir."
"But what has that to do with it?"
"I don't think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you
know, sir."
"Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be
diligent somewhere else, couldn't you?"
As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But she
only smiled and said, "It won't hurt she, sir; and my good man, who does
all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I don't keep
he warm he'll be laid up, and then the church won't be kep' nice, sir, till
he's up again."
I was tempted to go on.
"But you could have sat down outside--there are some nice gravestones
near--and waited till I came out."
"But what's the church for, sir? The sun's werry hot to-day, sir; and Mr.
Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the sun, instead of
comin' in here to the cool o' the shadow, I wouldn't be takin' the church
at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old church, sir. There's
a something do seem to come out o' the old walls and settle down like the
cool o' the day upon my old heart that's nearly tired o' crying, and would
fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o' the journey. My old man's stockin'
won't hurt the church, sir, and, bein' a good deed as I suppose it is, it's
none the worse for the place. I think, if He was to come by wi' the whip o'
small cords, I wouldn't be afeared of his layin' it upo' my old back. Do
you think he would, sir?"
Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted
with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.
"Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or
ill-done work that the church's Master drives away. All our work ought to
be done in the shadow of the church."
"I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir," she said, smiling her
sweet old smile. "Nobody knows what this old church is to me."
Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had
left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I
thought.
"You have had a family?" I said, interrogatively.
"I've had thirteen," she answered. "Six bys and seven maidens."
"Why, you are rich!" I returned. "And where are they all?"
"Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one be
down in the mill, there."
"And your boys?"
"One of them be lyin' beside his sisters--drownded afore my eyes, sir.
Three o' them be at sea, and two o' them in it, sir."
At sea! I thought. What a wide where! As vague to the imagination,
almost, as in the other world. How a mother's thoughts must go roaming
about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find them!
As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.
"It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with my
knitting. Many's the stormy night, when my husband couldn't keep still, but
would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good in life, but
just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see by the white of
them, with the balls o' foam flying in his face in the dark--many's the
such a night that I have left the house after he was gone, with this
blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church here, and sat down
where I'm sittin' now--leastways where I was sittin' when your reverence
spoke to me--and hearkened to the wind howling about the place. The church
windows never rattle, sir--like the cottage windows, as I suppose you know,
sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the church."
"But if you had sons at sea," said I, again wishing to draw her out, "it
would not he of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they
were in danger."
"O! yes, it be, sir. What's the good of feeling safe yourself but it let
you know other people be safe too? It's when you don't feel safe yourself
that you feel other people ben't safe."
"But," I said--and such confidence I had from what she had already uttered,
that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one--"some of your sons
were drowned for all that you say about their safety."
"Well, sir," she answered, with a sigh, "I trust they're none the less safe
for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me, well-nigh
threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being drownded. Why,
they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted to skin an' bone,
and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they set out with.
Wouldn't that ha' been worse than being drownded right off? And that
wouldn't ha' been the worst, either. The church she seem to tell me all the
time, that for all the roaring outside, there be really no danger after
all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What is the bottom of the sea,
sir? You bein' a clergyman can tell that, sir. I shouldn't ha' known it if
I hadn't had bys o' my own at sea, sir. But you can tell, sir, though you
ain't got none there."
And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that
returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to his
instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.
"The hollow of his hand," I said, and said no more.
"I thought you would know it, sir," she returned, with a little glow of
triumph in her tone. "Well, then, that's just what the church tells me when
I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too, sir, for
I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when they come
home, if they do come home, they're none the worse that I went to the old
church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them poor dears, all
out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone almost in the
quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come across me, sir,
that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing all the noise
and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about in the world,
watching it all, letting it drown some o' them and take them back to him,
and keeping it from going too far with others of them that are not quite
ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see, sir, though I be an old
woman; and not nice to look at."
I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert would
leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life is God's
school, and they that will listen to the Master there will learn at God's
speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious of Shepherd,
and repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such glorious
old stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal upon my
light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling lasted but for a
moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed and the true light
shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it. Why should not Shepherd
have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd was more of what would
now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought my doctrine simpler and
therefore better than his; but was this any reason why I should have all
the grand people to minister to in my parish! Recovering myself, I found
her last words still in my ears.
"You are very nice to look at," I said. "You must not find fault with the
work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty than to
be as you now are. Time and time's rents and furrows are all his making and
his doing. God makes nothing ugly."
"Are you quite sure of that, sir?"
I paused. Such a question from such a woman "must give us pause." And, as I
paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I could not
insist that God had never made anything ugly.
"No. I am not sure of it," I answered. For of all things my soul recoiled
from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know seemed to
me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master, whose servants
we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and self-seeking.
"But if he does," I went on to say, "it must be that we may see what it is
like, and therefore not like it."
Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the
question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes
had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of stool
or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was some kind
of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much like the
ends of the benches and book-boards.
"What is that you were sitting on?" I asked. "A chest or what?"
"It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years
agone, sir. But what it be, you'll be better able to tell than I be, sir."
"Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time," I said. "But
how should it then come to be banished to the tower?"
"No, sir; it can't be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I be
thinking."
I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ. With
some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of huge keys,
fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one after another,
but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and once down, so they
mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there was any sign of a
bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive kind of reed-instrument,
like what we call a seraphine or harmonium now-a-days. But there was no
hole through which there could have been any communication with or from a
bellows, although there might have been a small one inside. There were,
however, a dozen little round holes in the fixed part of the top, which
might afford some clue to the mystery of its former life. I could not find
any way of reaching the inside of it, so strongly was it put together;
therefore I was left, I thought, to the efforts of my imagination alone
for any hope of discovery with regard to the instrument, seeing further
observation was impossible. But here I found that I was mistaken in two
important conclusions, the latter of which depended on the former. The
first of these was that it was an instrument: it was only one end of an
instrument; therefore, secondly, there might be room for observation
still. But I found this out by accident, which has had a share in most
discoveries, and which, meaning a something that falls into our hands
unlocked for, is so far an unobjectionable word even to the man who
does not believe in chance. I had for the time given up the question as
insoluble, and was gazing about the place, when, glancing up at the holes
in the ceiling through which the bell-ropes went, I spied two or three
thick wires hanging through the same ceiling close to the wall, and right
over the box with the keys. The vague suspicion of a discovery dawned upon
me.
"Have you got the key of the tower?" I asked.
"No, sir. But I'll run home for it at once," she answered. And rising, she
went out in haste.
"Run!" thought I, looking after her. "It is a word of the will and the
feeling, not of the body." But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had no
sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she felt
that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I was on
the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her from hurting
herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to be as good as mine
in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her seat, awaited her
reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either saw or imagined I saw
signs of openings corresponding in number and position with those in the
lid under me. In about three minutes the old woman returned, panting but
not distressed, with a great crooked old key in her hand. Why are all the
keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask her that question, though. What
I said to her, was--
"You shouldn't run like that. I am in no hurry."
"Be you not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a
longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you
see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she'd
smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old
tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the
fresh air which there always be up there, sir,--it du always be fresh up
there, sir," she repeated, "I come back down again blessing the old church
for its tower."
As she spoke she was toiling up the winding staircase after me, where there
was just room enough for my shoulders to get through by turning themselves
a little across the lie of the steps. They were very high, but she kept
up with me bravely, bearing out her statement that she was no stranger to
them. As I ascended, however, I was not thinking of her, but of what she
had said. Strange to tell, the significance of the towers or spires of our
churches had never been clear to me before. True, I was quite awake to
their significance, at least to that of the spires, as fingers pointing
ever upwards to
"regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
Which men call Earth;"
but I had not thought of their symbolism as lifting one up above the
church itself into a region where no church is wanted because the Lord God
almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
Happy church indeed, if it destroys the need of itself by lifting men up
into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived pervaded
with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We need the
church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church below
are from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the church,
worshipping over the graves and believing in death--or at least in the
material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the church, even
in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending us up her towers
and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the air of truth: that
her form too must pass away, while the truth that is embodied in her lives
beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining as the stars for ever and
ever. He whom the church does not lift up above the church is not worthy to
be a doorkeeper therein.
Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord--not for his
church-tower, but for his sexton's wife. The old woman was a jewel. If her
husband was like her, which was too much to expect--if he believed in her,
it would be enough, quite--then indeed the little child, who answered on
being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would say, that the three orders
of ministers in the church were the parson, clerk, and sexton, might not be
so far wrong in respect of this individual case. So in the ascent, and the
thinking associated therewith, I forgot all about the special object for
which I had requested the key of the tower, and led the way myself up to
the summit, where stepping out of a little door, which being turned only
heavenwards had no pretence for, or claim upon a curiously crooked key,
but opened to the hand laid upon the latch, I thought of the words of the
judicious Hooker, that "the assembling of the church to learn" was "the
receiving of angels descended from above;" and in such a whimsical turn as
our thoughts will often take when we are not heeding them, I wondered for
a moment whether that was why the upper door was left on the latch,
forgetting that that could not be of much use, if the door in the basement
was kept locked with the crooked key. But the whole suggested something
true about my own heart and that of my fellows, if not about the church:
Revelation is not enough, the open trap-door is not enough, if the door of
the heart is not open likewise.
As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the other
side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of green,
its heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales--there was not much
wood--its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted and shadowed by
the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of Dartmoor. And over
all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the life-bearing spirit of
the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman stood beside me, silently
enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that seemed to say in kindly
triumph, "Was I not right about the tower and the wind that dwells among
its pinnacles?" I drank deep of the universal flood, the outspread peace,
the glory of the sun, and the haunting shadow of the sea that lay beyond
like the visual image of the eternal silence--as it looks to us--that
rounds our little earthly life.
There were a good many trees in the church-yard, and as I looked down, the
tops of them in their richest foliage hid all the graves directly below me,
except a single flat stone looking up through an opening in the leaves,
which seemed to have been just made for it to let it see the top of the
tower. Upon the stone a child was seated playing with a few flowers she had
gathered, not once looking up to the gilded vanes that rose from the four
pinnacles at the corners of the tower. I turned to the eastern side, and
looked over upon the church roof. It lay far below--looking very narrow and
small, but long, with the four ridges of four steep roofs stretching away
to the eastern end. It was in excellent repair, for the parish was almost
all in one lord's possession, and he was proud of his church: between them
he and Mr. Shepherd had made it beautiful to behold and strong to endure.
When I turned to look again, the little child was gone. Some butterfly
fancy had seized her, and she was away. A little lamb was in her place,
nibbling at the grass that grew on the side of the next mound. And when I
looked seaward there was a sloop, like a white-winged sea-bird, rounding
the end of a high projecting rock from the south, to bear up the little
channel that led to the gates of the harbour canal. Out of the circling
waters it had flown home, not from a long voyage, but hardly the less
welcome therefore to those that waited and looked for her signal from the
barrier rock.
Reentering by the angels' door to descend the narrow cork-screw stair, so
dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light that
came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny maiden-hair
fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said to the old woman--
"I have a sick daughter at home, or I wouldn't rob your tower of this
lovely little thing."
"Well, sir, what eyes you have! I never saw the thing before. Do take it
home to miss. It'll do her good to see it. I be main sorry to hear you've
got a sick maiden. She ben't a bedlar, be she, sir?"
I was busy with my knife getting out all the roots I could without hurting
them, and before I had succeeded I had remembered Turner's using the word.
"Not quite that," I answered, "but she can't even sit up, and must be
carried everywhere."
"Poor dear! Everyone has their troubles, sir. The sea's been mine."
She continued talking and asking kind questions about Connie as we went
down the stair. Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in ascending
the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging in silent power
in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully, for there were
only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one's feet from going through
the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself that my conjecture
about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods I had seen from
beneath hung down from this place. There were more of them hanging shorter
above, and there was yet enough of a further mechanism remaining to prove
that those keys, by means of the looped and cranked rods, had been in
connection with hammers, one of them indeed remaining also, which struck
the bells, so that a tune could be played upon them as upon any other keyed
instrument. This was the first contrivance of the kind I had ever seen,
though I have heard of it in other churches since.
"If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now," I said to
myself, "I would get this all repaired, so that it should not interfere
with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and yet Shepherd
could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he pleased." For
Shepherd was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of time to the
organ. "It's a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in the gloom,
with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence he sends
forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people, while they are
mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad over the stormy
ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. 'There's the parson at his bells,' they
would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase might sink into their
hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to some hope or faint
aspiration. I will see what can be done." Having come to this conclusion, I
left the abode of the bells, descended to the church, bade my conductress
good morning, saying I would visit her soon in her own house, and bore home
to my child the spoil which, without kirk-rapine, I had torn from the wall
of the sanctuary. By this time the stormy veil had lifted from the horizon,
and the sun was shining in full power without one darkening cloud.
Ere I left the churchyard I would have a glance at the stone which ever
seemed to lie gazing up at the tower. I soon found it, because it was the
only one in that quarter from which I could see the top of the tower. It
recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been married fifty
years, concluding with the couplet--
"A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we."
The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was not
good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life probably
without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten them, and I
daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had put into their
dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of quarrel with the
poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the verses in when he made
his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having learnt this one by heart, I
went about looking for anything more in the shape of sepulchral flora that
might interest or amuse my crippled darling; nor had I searched long before
I found one, the sole but triumphant recommendation of which was the
thorough "puzzle-headedness" of its construction. I quite reckoned on
seeing Connie trying to make it out, looking as bewildered over its
excellent grammar, as the poet of the other ought to have looked over his
rhymes, ere he gave in to the use of the nominative after a preposition.
"If you could view the heavenly shore,
Where heart's content you hope to find,
You would not murmur were you gone before,
But grieve that you are left behind."
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