But Methodist--no! People who don't belong won't come near the Methodist church here so long as there's any other place with a roof on it to go to.Give a dog a bad name, you know.Well, the Methodists here have got a bad name;and if you could preach like Henry Ward Beecher himself you wouldn't change it, or get folks to come and hear you.""I see what you mean," Theron responded."I'm not particularly surprised myself that Octavius doesn't love us, or look to us for intellectual stimulation.
I myself leave that pulpit more often than otherwise feeling like a wet rag--utterly limp and discouraged.
But, if you don't mind my speaking of it, YOU don't belong, and yet YOU come."It was evident that the lawyer did not mind.He spoke freely in reply."Oh, yes, I've got into the habit of it.
I began going when I first came here, and--and so it grew to be natural for me to go.Then, of course, being the only lawyer you have, a considerable amount of my business is mixed up in one way or another with your membership;you see those are really the things which settle a man in a rut, and keep him there.""I suppose your people were Methodists," said Theron, to fill in the pause, "and that is how you originally started with us."Levi Gorringe shook his head.He leaned back, half closed his eyes, put his finger-tips together, and almost smiled as if something in retrospect pleased and moved him.
"No," he said; "I went to the church first to see a girl who used to go there.It was long before your time.
All her family moved away years ago.You wouldn't know any of them.I was younger then, and I didn't know as much as Ido now.I worshipped the very ground that girl walked on, and like a fool I never gave her so much as a hint of it.
Looking back now, I can see that I might have had her if I'd asked her.But I went instead and sat around and looked at her at church and Sunday-school and prayer-meetings Thursday nights, and class-meetings after the sermon.
She was devoted to religion and church work; and, thinking it would please her, I joined the church on probation.
Men can fool themselves easier than they can other people.
I actually believed at the time that I had experienced religion.
I felt myself full of all sorts of awakenings of the soul and so forth.But it was really that girl.You see I'm telling you the thing just as it was.I was very happy.
I think it was the happiest time of my life.I remember there was a love-feast while I was on probation; and I sat down in front, right beside her, and we ate the little square chunks of bread and drank the water together, and Iheld one corner of her hymn-book when we stood up and sang.
That was the nearest I ever got to her, or to full membership in the church.That very next week, I think it was, we learned that she had got engaged to the minister's son--a young man who had just become a minister himself.
They got married, and went away--and I--somehow I never took up my membership when the six months' probation was over.
That's how it was."
"It is very interesting," remarked Theron, softly, after a little silence--"and very full of human nature.""Well, now you see," said the lawyer, "what I mean when Isay that there hasn't been another minister here since, that I should have felt like telling this story to.
They wouldn't have understood it at all.They would have thought it was blasphemy for me to say straight out that what I took for experiencing religion was really a girl.But you are different.I felt that at once, the first time I saw you.In a pulpit or out of it, what I like in a human being is that he SHOULD be human.""It pleases me beyond measure that you should like me, then"returned the young minister, with frank gratification shining on his face."The world is made all the sweeter and more lovable by these--these elements of romance.
I am not one of those who would wish to see them banished or frowned upon.I don't mind admitting to you that there is a good deal in Methodism--I mean the strict practice of its letter which you find here in Octavius--that is personally distasteful to me.I read the other day of an English bishop who said boldly, publicly, that no modern nation could practise the principles laid down in the Sermon on the Mount and survive for twenty-four hours.""Ha, ha! That's good!" laughed the lawyer.
"I felt that it was good, too," pursued Theron."I am getting to see a great many things differently, here in Octavius.
Our Methodist Discipline is like the Beatitudes--very helpful and beautiful, if treated as spiritual suggestion, but more or less of a stumbling-block if insisted upon literally.
I declare!" he added, sitting up in his chair, "I never talked like this to a living soul before in all my life.
Your confidences were contagious."
The Rev.Mr.Ware rose as he spoke, and took up his hat.
"Must you be going?" asked the lawyer, also rising.
"Well, I'm glad I haven't shocked you.Come in oftener when you are passing.And if you see anything I can help you in, always tell me."The two men shook hands, with an emphatic and lingering clasp.
"I am glad," said Theron, "that you didn't stop coming to church just because you lost the girl."Levi Gorringe answered the minister's pleasantry with a smile which curled his mustache upward, and expanded in little wrinkles at the ends of his eyes.
"No," he said jestingly."I'm death on collecting debts;and I reckon that the church still owes me a girl.
I'll have one yet."
So, with merriment the echoes of which pleasantly accompanied Theron down the stairway, the two men parted.
