Читать книгу John Ward, Preacher - Margaret Wade Campbell Deland - Страница 7

Helen shook her head. "I didn't mean that, John. I was thinking of the beauty of holiness." And then she added, with a smile, "I hope you don't preach any awful doctrines?"

"Sometimes the truth is terrible, dear," he said gently.

But when she had left him to write his sermon, he sat a long while thinking. Surely she was not ready yet to hear such words as he had meant to speak. He would put this sermon away for some future Sunday, when the truth would be less of a shock to her. "She must come to the knowledge of God slowly," he thought. "It must not burst upon her; it might only drive her further from the light to hear of justice as well as mercy. She is not able to bear it yet."

So he took some fresh paper, and wrote, instead of his lurid text from Hebrews, "Ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

But when Helen went out of the study, she thought very little of sermons or doctrines. John filled her mind, and she had no room for wondering about his beliefs; he could believe anything he chose; he was hers—that was enough.

She went into her small kitchen, the smile still lingering upon her lips, and through its open doorway saw her little maid, Alfaretta, out in the sunny garden at the back of the house. She had an armful of fresh white tea-towels, which had been put out to dry on the row of gooseberry bushes at the end of the garden, and was coming up the path, singing cheerily, with all the force of her strong young lungs. Helen caught the words as she drew near:—

"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,

Damnation and the dead.

What horrors seize the guilty soul,

Upon the dying bed!

"Where endless crowds of sinners lie,

And darkness makes their chains,

Tortured with keen despair they cry,

Yet wait for fiercer pains!"

"Oh, Alfaretta!" her mistress cried, in indignant astonishment. "How can you say such terrible words!" Alfaretta stood still, in open-mouthed amazement, an injured look in her good-natured blue eyes. The incongruity of this rosy-faced, happy girl, standing in the sunshine, with all the scents and sounds of a July day about her, and singing in her cheerful voice these hopeless words, almost made Helen smile; but she added gravely, "I hope you will not sing that again. I do not like it."

"But ma'am—but Mrs. Ward," said the girl, plainly hurt at the reproof, "I was practicing. I belong to the choir."

Alfaretta had dropped the tea-towels, hot with sunshine and smelling of clover-blossoms, upon her well-scoured dresser, and then turned and looked at her mistress reproachfully. "I don't know what I am going to do if I can't practice," she said.

"You don't mean to say you sing that in church?" cried Helen. "Where do you go?"

"Why, I go to your church," said the still injured Alfaretta—"to Mr. Ward's. We're to have that hymn on Sabbath"—

"Oh, there must be some mistake," remonstrated Helen. "I'm sure Mr. Ward did not notice that verse."

"But it's all like that; it says"—

"Don't tell me any more," Helen said. "I've heard enough. I had no idea such awful words were written." Then she stopped abruptly, feeling her position as the preacher's wife in a way of which she had never thought.

Alfaretta's father was an elder in John's church, which gave her a certain ease in speaking to her mistress that did not mean the slightest disrespect.

"Is it the words of it you don't like?" said Alfaretta, rather relieved, since her singing had not been criticised.

"Yes," Helen answered, "it is the words. Don't you see how dreadful they are?"

Alfaretta stood with her plump red hands on her hips, and regarded Mrs. Ward with interest. "I hadn't ever thought of 'em," she said. "Yes, ma'am. I suppose they are awful bad," and swinging back and forth on her heels, her eyes fixed meditatively on the ceiling, she said—

"'Then swift and dreadful she descends

Down to the fiery coast,

Amongst abominable fiends'—

Yes, that does sound dreadful. Worst of it is, you get used to 'em, and don't notice 'em much. Why, I've sung that hymn dozens of times in church, and never thought of the meanin'. And there's Tom Davis: he drinks most of the time, but he has sung once or twice in the choir (though he ain't been ever converted yet, and he is really terrible wicked; don't do nothin' but swear and drink). But I don't suppose he noticed the words of this hymn—though I know he sung it—for he keeps right on in his sin; and he couldn't, you know, Mrs. Ward, if that hymn was true to him."

Helen left Alfaretta to reflect upon the hymn, and went back to the study; but the door was shut, and she heard the scratching of her husband's pen. She turned away, for she had lived in a minister's household, and had been brought up to know that nothing must disturb a man who was writing a sermon. But John had hurriedly opened the door.

"Did you want to speak to me, dearest?" he said, standing at the foot of the stairs, his pen still between his fingers. "I heard your step."

"But I must not interrupt you," she answered, smiling at him over the balusters.

"You never could interrupt me. Come into the study and tell me what it is."

"Only to ask you about a hymn which Alfaretta says is to be sung on Sunday," Helen said. "Of course there is some mistake about it, but Alfaretta says the choir has been practicing it, and I know you would not want it."

"Do you remember what it was, dear?"

"I can't quote it," Helen answered, "but it began something about 'damnation and the dead.'"

"Oh, yes, I know;" and then he added, slowly, "Why don't you like it, Helen?"

She looked at him in astonishment. "Why, it's absurd; it's horrible."

John was silent for a few moments, and then he sighed: "We will not sing it, dear."

"But, John," she cried, "how could such a hymn ever have been printed? Of course I know people used to think such things, but I had no idea anybody thought of hell in that literal way to-day, or that hell itself was a real belief to very many people; however, I suppose, if such hymns are printed, the doctrine is still taught?"

"Yes," John said, "it is as real to-day as God himself—as it always has been and must be; and it is believed by Christians as earnestly as ever. We cannot help it, Helen."

Helen looked at him thoughtfully. "It is very terrible; but oh, John, what sublime faith, to be able to believe God capable of such awful cruelty, and yet to love and trust Him!"

John's face grew suddenly bright. "'Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,'" he said, with the simplicity of assurance. But when he went back again to his sermon, he was convinced that he had been wise to put off for a little while the instruction in doctrine of which his wife's soul stood in such sore need.

"I was right," he thought; "the Light must come gradually, the blaze of truth at once would blind her to the perfection of justice. She would not be able to understand there was mercy, too."

So the choir was told the hymn would be "Welcome, sweet day of rest," which, after all, was much better suited to the sermon.