The squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning. He was too much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and he considered that he had been personally insulted in the outrage offered to his recent donation to the parish. His feelings, too, were hurt as well as his pride. There was something so ungrateful in the whole thing, just after he had taken so much pains, not only in the resuscitation but the embellishment of the stocks. It was not, however, so rare an occurrence for the squire to be ruffled as to create any remark. Riccabocca, indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs. Hazeldean, as a wife, had the quick tact to perceive that the host was glum and the husband snappish; but the one was too discreet, and the other too sensible, to chafe the new sore, whatever it might be, and shortly after breakfast the squire retired into his study, and absented himself from morning service. In his delightful “Life of Oliver Goldsmith,” Mr. Forster takes care to touch our hearts by introducing his hero’s excuse for not entering the priesthood. “He did not feel himself good enough.” Thy Vicar of Wakefield, poor Goldsmith, was an excellent substitute for thee; and Dr. Primrose, at least, will be good enough for the world until Miss Jemima’s fears are realized. Now, Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience much less reasonable than Goldsmith’s. There were occasionally days in which he did not feel good enough—I don’t say for a priest, but even for one of the congregation,—“days in which,” said the squire in his own blunt way, “as I have never in my life met a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I’ll not carry mine into the family pew. He sha’n’t be growling out hypocritical responses from my poor grandmother’s prayer-book.” So the squire and his demon stayed at home. But the demon was generally cast out before the day was over: and on this occasion, when the bell rang for afternoon service, it may be presumed that the squire had reasoned or fretted himself into a proper state of mind; for he was then seen sallying forth from the porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the head of his household. The second service was (as is commonly the case in rural districts) more numerously attended than the first one; and it was our parson’s wont to devote to this service his most effective discourse.
Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep theology nor the archaeological learning that distinguish the rising generation of the clergy. I much doubt if he could have passed what would now be called a creditable examination in the Fathers; and as for all the nice formalities in the rubric, he would never have been the man to divide a congregation or puzzle a bishop. Neither was Parson Dale very erudite in ecclesiastical architecture. He did not much care whether all the details in the church were purely Gothic or not; crockets and finials, round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, on which he had never troubled his head.
But one secret Parson Dale did possess, which is perhaps of equal importance with those subtler mysteries,—he knew how to fill his church! Even at morning service no pews were empty, and at evening service the church overflowed.
Parson Dale, too, may be considered nowadays to hold but a mean idea of the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to dispute on its exact bearing with the State,—whether it was incorporated with the State or above the State, whether it was antecedent to the Papacy or formed from the Papacy, etc. According to his favourite maxim, “Quieta non movere,”—[“Not to disturb things that are quiet.”]—I have no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is provoked upon such matters the better for both Church and laity. Nor had he ever been known to regret the disuse of the ancient custom of excommunication, nor any other diminution of the powers of the priesthood, whether minatory or militant; yet for all this, Parson Dale had a great notion of the sacred privilege of a minister of the gospel,—to advise, to deter, to persuade, to reprove. And it was for the evening service that he prepared those sermons which may be called “sermons that preach at you.” He preferred the evening for that salutary discipline, not only because the congregation was more numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man in his own innocent way, he knew that people bear better to be preached at after dinner than before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the heart when the stomach is at peace. There was a genial kindness in Parson Dale’s way of preaching at you. It was done in so imperceptible, fatherly, a manner that you never felt offended. He did it, too, with so much art that nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the sinner he was exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached at the squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock, the churchwarden, as boldly as at Hodge the ploughman and Scrub the hedger. As for Mr. Stirn, he had preached at him more often than at any one in the parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson Dale’s sermons something of that boldness of illustration which would have been scholarly if he had not made it familiar, and which is found in the discourses of our elder divines. Like them, he did not scruple now and then to introduce an anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scriptural author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, or render an argument more plain. And the good man had an object in this, a little distinct from, though wholly subordinate to, the main purpose of his discourse. He was a friend to knowledge,—but to knowledge accompanied by religion; and sometimes his references to sources not within the ordinary reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer’s son, with an evening’s leisure on his hands, to ask the parson for further explanation, and so to be lured on to a little solid or graceful instruction, under a safe guide.
Now, on the present occasion, the parson, who had always his eye and heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the squire,—seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor, meditated nothing less than a great Political Sermon,—a sermon that should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue for the wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his parish of Hazeldean.
And thus ran—
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