Duncan Polite, the Watchman of Glenoro. Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
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Duncan Polite's valley was slowly disappearing in the shadows of evening when he stepped from his gate and somewhat hesitatingly turned down into its purple depths. He was experiencing a strange, almost uncanny feeling, for, not only was he going to church alone, but he was actually on his way to worship with the Methodists! He had a vague fear that he must be doing wrong. But indeed, he was going merely in the hope that he might hear some comforting words from the Methodist minister; and Duncan was sadly in need of comfort.
In the long months since Mr. Cameron's death, his days had been filled with anxiety and fear for his covenant. When the first sharpness of grief at the loss of his old friend had passed, the Watchman slowly awakened to the knowledge that he was living among a strange people. Under Mr. Cameron's wise, loving rule all classes in the congregation had been unanimous; the elder folk believed him perfect and the younger respected him too deeply to disagree with him. But when the bond of union was severed, a new party with alarmingly progressive ideas, suddenly came to life. They were fain to introduce many improvements into the church service which the fathers of the sanctuary considered unsound and irreverent. They wanted a choir and an organ like the Methodists; they desired to sing hymns as did their sister congregation over on the Tenth; and, most of all, they considered it imperative that they should stand to sing and sit to pray, as did all respectable people.
Andrew Johnstone, who represented the old school and its traditions, stood at the head of the ancient party as immovable as the church foundations. Some of the elders might counsel yielding, or at least compromising, but not Splinterin' Andra. He regarded all these youthful aspirations as signs of the degeneracy of the times and a decay of spiritual life and, therefore, to be immediately quenched.
So the two parties stood arrayed against each other and the chief cause of their dissension was the choice of a new minister. The more youthful party wanted a young man, or at least one who was "lively," while old Glenoro held to its ideal—a man as much as possible like Hector Cameron, or, if it were not looking for too much on this earth, a second John McAlpine. But the young people of the congregation had never heard Mr. McAlpine preach, and, like the Egyptians, who did not know Joseph, they had not the proper respect for that great leader, and they also considered Gaelic sermons, two-hour discourses and half-hour prayers as belonging to a past generation.
All these trials, youthful frivolity, the lack of a Gaelic service and old Andrew Johnstone's storms, Duncan Polite had borne patiently; but to-day's sermon had been almost too much for even his optimism, for that morning a smart probationer had stood up in Mr. Cameron's sacred pulpit and delivered a twenty-minute address on the Beauties of Nature! Even the young people had been shocked, and Andrew Johnstone had, for once, voiced the sentiments of the whole congregation as he gave his opinion of the young man to Duncan Polite on their homeward walk. "It's a guid thing Maister Cameron's gone till his rest," he remarked sombrely. "If he'd a lived to see his pulpit filled by a bit buddie that couldna' hang on till his taxt for half an' 'oor, he'd never a held up his heid again!"
And so Duncan had been driven to the extremity of seeking comfort in the Methodist Church and was on his way thither, in some doubt as to the wisdom of such a strange proceeding, and in much fear that Andrew would disapprove.
The Methodist Church was a substantial brick building, set picturesquely on the slope of the northern hill. Duncan went hesitatingly in and took a seat near the door. He found it quite a roomy place and well filled. There was much more ornamentation here than in his own place of worship; the walls were papered, the pulpit platform was covered with a gay carpet, two shining brass chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling, the windows were frosted glass with a row of lurid blue and red panes around each, and behind the minister was the centre of attraction and cynosure of all eyes, the choir and the organ.
Duncan felt a return of his misgivings when he recognised many members of his own church in that institution; for, such was the chaos of these new times that the Methodist services were attended regularly by nearly all the young Presbyterians. And, indeed, matters had come to such a pitch that the choir was conducted by no less a person than young Andrew Johnstone himself, much to the wrath and shame of his pious father.
That choir was at once the delight and torment of its members. The hopes and fears, the triumphs and despairs that surged within the little railing, would have been sufficient to swamp the congregation, could they have broken loose. But the enjoyment outweighed the pain; there was choir practise once a week and sometimes they were invited to furnish the music at a neighbouring tea-meeting and both these were unmixed joys. Then, too, they were permitted to sing quite alone at the regular church services, while the collection was being taken up; and sometimes they even ventured to sing an anthem, though the evening they sang one with a tenor solo by Sylvanus Todd, they were considered to have gone a little too far, by even the most liberal minded, and the offence was not repeated until more enlightened times.
Mr. Ansdell, the Methodist minister, was a benign old gentleman with an angelic face and a heart to match. He noted the mingling of the different religious sects in Glenoro with humble joy, and regarded the fact that a Presbyterian elder's son should lead the singing in the Methodist church as a mark of the broad and kindly spirit of the age and one of the potent signs of the millennium.
He was just the sort of man to appeal to Duncan Polite's heart. His sermon was like himself, gentle, loving and overflowing with goodwill to all men. Duncan sat and drank it in with deepest joy; surely his covenant was in no great danger with such a man as Mr. Ansdell in his glen!
Thereafter, in spite of old Andrew's opposition, he could not resist the pleasure of an occasional Sabbath evening service. He did not always have the privilege of listening to his new friend, however. Mr. Ansdell had another field and preached only on alternate Sabbaths in his Glenoro pulpit. On the occasions of his absence the service was generally taken by a student or a lay preacher from some place in the vicinity. Sometimes the preacher was anything but a man of parts, and was too often a source of merriment to the frivolous row of young men in the back seats. The big college student with the long, fair hair, who raved and foamed and battered all the fringe off the pulpit cushion in a gallant attempt to prove that the Bible is true, a fact which, until then, no Glenorian would have dreamed of calling in question; the poor, halting farmer who tacked a nervous syllable to occasional words, making his text read: "All-um we like sheep-um have gone astray-um;" the giant from the Irish Flats who roared out a long prayer in a manner that terrified his hearers and set all the babies crying and then ended his bellowings with "Lord, hear our feeble breathings," all these were a joy to the back row and the cause of much irreverent giggling in the choir.
But whether the sermon was delivered by minister, layman or divinity student, Duncan Polite always found something spiritually uplifting in the service; and, indeed, so did many another, for if the preacher sometimes lacked in oratory, he made up for it in piety, and if he failed to shine in the pulpit, his life was nearly always a sermon strong and convincing.
Even on the rare occasions when old Silas Todd led the service, the time was not misspent, in the opinion of the Watchman. Silas Todd was one of the pillars of the church and when the local preacher failed to appear, which contingency sometimes arose in the season of bad roads, the duty of preaching a sermon generally devolved upon him. He was a pious little man, bent and thin, with a marked Cockney accent. He had mild pale blue eyes and a simple, almost seraphic smile which scarcely ever left his countenance and which was the index to his character. His wife was small and pious like himself, and had the same accent and the same benevolent expression. They always sat close together on the front seat like a pair of shy children, he in his rough, loose homespun, she in her grey wincey, a neatly folded Paisley shawl and a brown bonnet with a pink feather—this last ornament being the pride of Silas' heart and the one bit of finery his wife permitted herself. They shared one hymn book and Bible, no matter how many there might be scattered around them, and both sang in a high ecstatic key, a measure behind the choir. They swayed to and fro, quite carried away by the music, and as Silas stood with his head thrown back and his eyes shut, and his wife kept her eyes modestly upon her book, they very often collided, to the great detriment of the singing and the disturbing of the pink feather. But the only sign their frequent collisions called forth was a smile of perfect accord and redoubled energy in the singing