CHAPTER XVI CRA THE CHURCH MEETING RAIG forbade all mention, by Barnaby and Miss "It is my province, as pastor, to deal with it," he said. "There are two offenders against the Church, and both shall be punished." Barnaby ventured to suggest an appeal to the law. "The appeal will be to the Law," Craig answered; "but to the Law of God, not of man. 'Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's and unto God the things which are God's.' The Church is complete within itself to deal with her offenders. The priest who is not judge is less than priest." Nevertheless, rumour refused to be stripped of her rights, and whisperings of trouble between Ashgrave and the clergyman got abroad, the more tantalising in that they refused to take definite form. The sole foundation was that the clergyman was known to have visited Ashgrave, and to have appeared very much shaken and quite nervous on his return home that evening. Blanket, when appealed to, covered his ignorance by ridiculing the whole story, and it was felt that there could be little of interest in an affair of which Blanket had not even heard. On the succeeding Sabbath, after the morning preaching, Craig asked the church members to remain. When the small non-professing part of the congregation had retired, he came down from the pulpit and, standing by the communion table, offered a brief prayer for guidance and wisdom. Then he called on Deacon Buffington to act as moderator, and taking his place in the congregation said: "I have failed in my duty as a clergyman and a Christian, in that I have allowed myself, under provocation, to attempt to strike a brother. As it is doubly incumbent on him who is set in authority to exercise that authority with moderation and wisdom, so is the offence doubly great when he becomes a brawler, dragging his high office into the mire and dirt. Of this fault I accuse myself. It is for the brethren to name the penalty." With these words he left the meeting and went to the tiny study at the rear of the pulpit. The church members, dumb with surprise, looked into each other's faces, as if to ask what manner of thing was this that had fallen upon them. In the two years of Craig's pastorate, they had seen many things undreamed of before, at some of which they had begun by smiling, secretly. They were long past that. Whatever else they might think of their clergyman, all had come to believe in his sincerity. As a man, they knew him quiet and unassuming, living in humble poverty, and content where his humblest parishioner might have been rebellious. As a minister of God, he abated no tittle of the respect due him or the authority resting upon him. They knew that when he spoke, every word had been weighed, and they would offend if they treated it less seriously. At the very first words spoken by Craig, Ashgrave felt that it would be a lighter punishment if the ground opened and swallowed him. He had never dreamed for a moment that he was to go unpunished; but in all the dreaming done in the lone dreariness of his home, he had never pictured a scene like this. He had come to meeting that morning expecting to be arraigned and, perhaps, held for church trial, and he had come prepared to brazen the affair through, with a show of indifference and pride. Indeed, his very coming was to him the outward manifestation of the contempt with which he was prepared to meet accusation and accuser; and this was the actual fact! There ran through the meeting a sense of the deeper meaning of the affair, elucidated as it was by the vague rumours that had spread during the week, and more than one inquiring, and potentially accusing, glance was turned toward Ashgrave. Under these he hardened. The manly shame which the scene was calculated to arouse was choked down, and by the time speaking began he was carrying his air of ignorance with the best of them. "Kin eny brother or sister tell us the rights o' this thing?" asked the moderator, when the silence that followed the clergyman's withdrawal became oppressive. Again glances sought Ashgrave, and again he met them with a heart steeled to indifference. Yet he knew that near him sat Amanda Seagrave, and that she was looking at him with a silent demand for him to act the manly part and make his confession. Would she, if he did not, tell the tale? It was a queer coil, he felt, that she should be the one of all others who could betray him. His affianced wife, his in the fellowship of their common sin, was the keeper of his secret! There was a grimness about it that, in the humour he was in, gave it an attraction for which he would have been at a loss to account in a saner mood. Again the moderator appealed for enlightenment, adding: Sartain, the brother he tried to hit must know. Hain't he goin' to tell us?" When it was apparent that no one was to speak, he asked Farmer Seagrave to "plead with us fur guidance to the throne of heavenly grace," and after the homely prayer rose and said: "The pahson 's young and arnest, an' he 's a high idee o' his duty as a min'ster. We've hed him in an' out amongst us now fur more 'n two year; we've summered him and wintered him, an' we begin to know the kind of critter he is. He's straight an' squar an' thar hain't no man amongst us kin say otherwise. But he's a man. He's got blood an' grit, as well as spirit an' faith, an' ef his dander has riz an' got the better o' him, I hain't goin' to think none the wuss o' him, an' I don't b'lieve thar 's anybody here what is. I hain't furgot thet Christ druv the money-changers out o' the temple, an' I'd a plaguy sight ruther hev a min'ster what remembers sometimes he's a man than hev a brother what furgets he is, an' sets still an' ses nothin' at a time like this. Ef you think like me, you'll call him back and tell him to go on the way he 's ben doin' the last two year, an' he 'll get thar all right in the eend, even ef he does meet some hubbles on the way." A chorus of "amens" evidenced the accord of the meeting with the speaker, who, after waiting in vain for any expression of dissent, asked a brother to invite the clergyman to return. Craig came in and stood before the moderator's table, awaiting his sentence. The deacon reached up to the pulpit and lifting down the great Bible read from the sixth chapter of Paul's letter to the Galatians: Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. On the dreary practicability of this Yankee deacon had shone this touch of Hebrew mysticism, leading him to the indirect communication of the church's judgment, where every one had expected the bluntness of inarticulousness or the garrulity of inexperience. The poetic strain in the act was wholly lost on the clergyman, whose imaginative powers demanded the accessories of a large stage on which to disport itself. The lack of imagination was, however, in part supplied by the faculty of reverence aroused by the appeal to the Scriptures, and he accepted the judgment to which possibly he would have taken exception if announced in ordinary language by the presiding deacon. "Authority is in the voice of the Church," he said, "even when it speaks in mercy. If they who are set as teachers fail, their sin is the greater, because to them is given power that carries with it responsibility. Pray for me, brethren and sisters, that I may have strength to resist temptation and be worthy of the high calling wherewith God has called me to the work of His vineyard." Resuming his place as pastor, he said: "On the first Sabbath morning of next month, ye are called to eat of the Last Supper, in solemn commemoration of the night when, with his band of faithful disciples, the Son of Man ate the Passover. He also who was to betray him was present and dipped his hand with Him in the dish. Verily I say unto you that whoso, repenting not of the sin he has sinned, eateth this supper as one of the disciples, betrays again the Master and is guilty of His death. Therefore, if there be any here who is conscious of sin, I call upon him to make confession thereof or else take not upon himself the greater damnation that fell upon him who betrayed the innocent blood." |