Around The Tea-Table Part 8

Whenever we see a professed minister of religion lacking in frankness of soul, deceitful in his friendship, shaking hands heartily when you meet him, but in private taking every possible opportunity of giving you a long, deep scratch, or in public newspapers giving you a sly dig with the claw of his pen, we say: "Another cat in the pulpit!"

Once a year let all our churches be cleaned with soap, and sand, and mop, and scrubbing brush, and the s.e.xton not forget to give one turn of his broom under the pastor's chair. Would that with one bold and emphatic "scat!" we could drive the last specimen of deceitfulness and skulking from the American pulpit!

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE WAY TO KEEP FRESH.

How to get out of the old rut without twisting off the wheel, or snapping the shafts, or breaking the horse's leg, is a question not more appropriate to every teamster than to every Christian worker. Having once got out of the old rut, the next thing is to keep out. There is nothing more killing than ecclesiastical humdrum. Some persons do not like the Episcopal Church because they have the same prayers every Sabbath, but have we not for the last ten years been hearing the same prayers over and over again, the product of a self-manufactured liturgy that has not the thousandth part of the excellency of those pet.i.tions that we hear in the Episcopal Church?

In many of our churches sinners hear the same exhortations that they have been hearing for the last fifteen years, so that the impenitent man knows, the moment the exhorter clears his throat, just what is going to be said; and the hearer himself is able to recite the exhortation as we teach our children the multiplication table forward or backward. We could not understand the doleful strain of a certain brother's prayer till we found out that he composed it on a fast day during the yellow fever in 1821, and has been using it ever since.

There are laymen who do not like to hear a sermon preached the second time who yet give their pastors the same prayer every week at the devotional meeting--that is, fifty-two times the year, with occasional slices of it between meals. If they made any spiritual advancement, they would have new wants to express and new thanksgivings to offer. But they have been for a decade of years stuck fast in the mud, and they splash the same thing on you every week. We need a universal church cleaning by which all canting and humdrum shall be scrubbed out.

If we would keep fresh, let us make occasional excursions into other circles than our own. Artists generally go with artists, farmers with farmers, mechanics with mechanics, clergymen with clergymen, Christian workers with Christian workers. But there is nothing that sooner freshens one up than to get in a new group, mingling with people whose thought and work run in different channels. For a change put the minister on the hay rack and the farmer in the clergyman's study.

Let us read books not in our own line. After a man has been delving in nothing but theological works for three months, a few pages in the Patent-office Report will do him more good than Doctor d.i.c.k on "The Perseverance of the Saints." Better than this, as a diversion, is it to have some department of natural history or art to which you may turn, a case of sh.e.l.ls or birds, or a season ticket to some picture gallery. If you do nothing but play on one string of the ba.s.s viol, you will wear it out and get no healthy tune. Better take the bow and sweep it clear across in one grand swirl, bringing all four strings and all eight stops into requisition.

Let us go much into the presence of the natural world if we can get at it.

Especially if we live in great thoroughfares let us make occasional flight to the woods and the mountains. Even the trees in town seem artificial.

They dare not speak where there are so many to listen, and the hyacinth and geranium in flower pots in the window seem to know they are on exhibition. If we would once in a while romp the fields, we would not have so many last year's rose leaves in our sermons, but those just plucked, dewy and redolent.

We cannot see the natural world through the books or the eyes of others.

All this talk about "babbling brooks" is a stereotyped humbug. Brooks never "babble." To babble is to be unintelligent and imperfect of tongue. But when the brooks speak, they utter lessons of beauty that the dullest ear can understand. We have wandered from the Androscoggin in Maine to the Tombigbee in Alabama, and we never found a brook, that "babbled." The people babble who talk about them, not knowing what a brook is. We have heard about the nightingale and the morning lark till we tire of them.

Catch for your next prayer meeting talk a chewink or a brown thresher. It is high time that we hoist our church windows, especially those over the pulpit, and let in some fresh air from the fields and mountains.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHRISTMAS BELLS.

The s.e.xton often goes into the tower on a sad errand. He gives a strong pull at the rope, and forth from the tower goes a dismal sound that makes the heart sink. But he can now go up the old stairs with a lithe step and pull quick and sharp, waking up all the echoes of cavern and hill with Christmas bells. The days of joy have come, days of reunion, days of congratulation. "Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all people."

First, let the bells ring at the birth of Jesus! Mary watching, the camels moaning, the shepherds rousing up, the angels hovering, all Bethlehem stirring. What a night! Out of its black wing is plucked the pen from which to write the brightest songs of earth and the richest doxologies of heaven.

Let camel or ox stabled that night in Bethlehem, after the burden-bearing of the day, stand and look at Him who is to carry the burdens of the world.

Put back the straw and hear the first cry of Him who is come to a.s.suage the lamentation of all ages.

Christmas bells ring out the peace of nations! We want on our standards less of the lion and eagle and more of the dove. Let all the cannon be dismounted, and the war horses change their gorgeous caparisons for plough harness. Let us have fewer bullets and more bread. Life is too precious to dash it out against the brick cas.e.m.e.nts. The first Peace Society was born in the clouds, and its resolution was pa.s.sed unanimously by angelic voices, "Peace on earth, good-will to men."

Christmas bells ring in family reunions! The rail trains crowded with children coming home. The poultry, fed as never since they were born, stand wondering at the farmer's generosity. The markets are full of ma.s.sacred barnyards. The great table will be spread and crowded with two, or three, or four generations. Plant the fork astride the breast bone, and with skillful twitch, that we could never learn, give to all the hungry lookers-on a specimen of holiday anatomy. Mary is disposed to soar, give her the wing. The boy is fond of music, give him the drum stick. The minister is dining with you, give him the parson's nose. May the joy reach from grandfather, who is so dreadful old he can hardly find the way to his plate, down to the baby in the high chair with one smart pull of the table cloth upsetting the gravy into the cranberry. Send from your table a liberal portion to the table of the poor, some of the white meat as well as the dark, not confining your generosity to gizzards and sc.r.a.ps. Do not, as in some families, keep a plate and chair for those who are dead and gone.

Your holiday feast would be but poor fare for them; they are at a better banquet in the skies.

Let the whole land be full of chime and carol. Let bells, silver and brazen, take their sweetest voice, and all the towers of Christendom rain music.

We wish all our friends a merry Christmas. Let them hang up their stockings; and if Santa Claus has any room for us in his sleigh, we will get in and ride down their chimney, upsetting all over the hearth a thousand good wishes.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

POOR PREACHING.

There never was a time when in all denominations of Christians there was so much attractive sermonizing as to-day. Princeton, and Middletown, and Rochester, and New Brunswick, are sending into the ministry a large number of sharp, earnest, consecrated men. Stupidity, after being regularly ordained, is found to be no more acceptable to the people than before, and the t.i.tle of Doctorate cannot any longer be subst.i.tuted for brains.

Perhaps, however, there may get to be a surfeit of fine discourses. Indeed, we have so many appliances for making bright and incisive preachers that we do not know but that after a while, when we want a sleepy discourse as an anodyne, we shall have to go to the ends of the earth to find one; and dull sermons may be at a premium, congregations of limited means not being able to afford them at all; and so we shall have to fall back on chloral or morphine.

Are we not, therefore, doing a humanitarian work when we give to congregations some rules by which, if they want it, they may always have poor preaching?

First. Keep your minister poor. There is nothing more ruinous than to pay a pastor too much salary. Let every board of trustees look over their books and see if they have erred in this direction; and if so, let them cut down the minister's wages. There are churches which pay their pastors eight hundred dollars per annum. What these good men do with so much money we cannot imagine. Our ministers must be taken in. If by occasional fasting for a day our Puritan fathers in New England became so good, what might we not expect of our ministers if we kept them in perpetual fast? No doubt their spiritual capacity would enlarge in proportion to their shrinkage at the waistcoat. The average salary of ministers in the United States is about six hundred dollars. Perhaps by some spiritual pile-driver we might send it down to five hundred dollars; and then the millennium, for the lion by that time would be so hungry he would let the lamb lie down inside of him. We would suggest a very economical plan: give your spiritual adviser a smaller income, and make it up by a donation visit. When everything else fails to keep him properly humble, that succeeds. We speak from experience.

Fourteen years ago we had one, and it has been a means of grace to us ever since.

Secondly. For securing poor preaching, wait on your pastor with frequent committees. Let three men some morning tie their horses at the dominie's gate, and go in and tell him how to preach, and pray, and visit. Tell him all the disagreeable things said about him for six months, and what a great man his predecessor was, how much plainer his wife dressed, and how much better his children behaved. Pastoral committees are not like the small-pox--you can have them more than once; they are more like the mumps, which you may have first on one side and then on the other. If, after a man has had the advantage of being manipulated by three church committees, he has any pride or spirit left, better give him up as incorrigible.

Thirdly. To secure poor preaching, keep the minister on the trot. Scold him when he comes to see you because he did not come before, and tell him how often you were visited by the former pastor. Oh, that blessed predecessor!

Strange they did not hold on to the angel when they had him. Keep your minister going. Expect him to respond to every whistle. Have him at all the tea parties and "the raisings." Stand him in the draught of the door at the funeral--a frequent way of declaring a pulpit vacant. Keep him busy all the week in out-door miscellaneous work; and if at the end of that time he cannot preach a weak discourse, send for us, and we will show him how to do it. Of course there are exceptions to all rules; but if the plan of treatment we have proposed be carried out, we do not see that any church in city or country need long be in want of poor preaching.

CHAPTER XXIX.

SHELVES A MAN'S INDEX.

In Chelsea, a suburb of London, and on a narrow street, with not even a house in front, but, instead thereof, a long range of brick wall, is the house of Thomas Carlyle. You go through a narrow hall and turn to the left, and are in the literary workshop where some of the strongest thunderbolts of the world have been forged. The two front windows have on them scant curtains of reddish calico, hung at the top of the lower sash, so as not to keep the sun from looking down, but to hinder the street from looking in.

The room has a lounge covered with the same material, and of construction such as you would find in the plainest house among the mountains. It looks as if it had been made by an author not accustomed to saw or hammer, and in the interstices of mental work. On the wall are a few wood-cuts in plain frames or pinned against the wall; also a photograph of Mr. Carlyle taken one day, as his family told us, when he had a violent toothache and could attend to nothing else, it is his favorite picture, though it gives him a face more than ordinarily severe and troubled.

In long shelves, unpainted and unsheltered by gla.s.s or door, is the library of the world-renowned thinker. The books are worn, as though he had bought them to read. Many of them are uncommon books, the t.i.tles of which we never saw before. American literature is almost ignored, while Germany monopolizes many of the s.p.a.ces. We noticed the absence of theological works, save those of Thomas Chalmers, whose name and genius he well-nigh worshiped. The carpets are old and worn and faded--not because he cannot afford better, but because he would have his home a perpetual protest against the world's sham. It is a place not calculated to give inspiration to a writer. No easy chairs, no soft divans, no wealth of upholstery, but simply a place to work and stay. Never having heard a word about it, it was nevertheless just such a place as we expected.

We had there confirmed our former theory of a man's study as only a part of himself, or a piece of tight-fitting clothing. It is the sh.e.l.l of the tortoise, just made to fit the tortoise's back. Thomas Carlyle could have no other kind of a workshop. What would he do with a damask-covered table, or a gilded inkstand, or an upholstered window? Starting with the idea that the intellect is all and the body naught but an adjunct or appendage, he will show that the former can live and thrive without any approval of the latter. He will give the intellect all costly stimulus, and send the body supperless to bed. Thomas Carlyle taken as a premise, this shabby room is the inevitable conclusion. Behold the principle.

We have a poetic friend. The backs of his books are scrolled and transfigured. A vase of j.a.ponicas, even in mid-winter, adorns his writing desk. The hot-house is as important to him as the air. There are soft engravings on the wall. This study-chair was made out of the twisted roots of a banyan. A dog, sleek-skinned, lies on the mat, and gets up as you come in. There stand in vermilion all the poets from Homer to Tennyson. Here and there are chamois heads and pressed seaweed. He writes on gilt-edged paper with a gold pen and handle twisted with a serpent. His inkstand is a mystery of beauty which unskilled hands dare not touch, lest the ink spring at him from some of the open mouths, or sprinkle on him from the bronze wings, or with some unexpected squirt dash into his eyes the blackness of darkness.

We have a very precise friend. Everything is in severe order. Finding his door-k.n.o.b in the dark, you could reason out the position of stove, and chair, and table; and placing an arrow at the back of the book on one end of the shelf, it would fly to the other end, equally grazing all the bindings. It is ten years since John Milton, or Robert Southey, or Sir William Hamilton have been out of their places, and that was when an ignoramus broke into the study. The volumes of the encyclopedias never change places. Ma.n.u.scripts unblotted, and free from interlineation, and labeled. The spittoon knows its place in the corner, as if treated by tobacco chewers with oft indignity. You could go into that study with your eyes shut, turn around, and without feeling for the chair throw yourself back with perfect confidence that the furniture would catch you. No better does a hat fit his head, or shoe his foot, or the glove his hand, than the study fits his whole nature.

We have a facetious friend. You pick off the corner of his writing table "Noctes Ambrosianae" or the London "Punch." His chair is wide, so that he can easily roll off on the floor when he wants a good time at laughing. His inkstand is a monkey, with the variations. His study-cap would upset a judge's risibilities. Sc.r.a.p books with droll caricatures and facetiae. An odd stove, exciting your wonder as to where the coal is put in or the poker thrust for a shaking. All the works of Dougla.s.s Jerrold, and Sydney Smith, and Sterne, the scalawag ecclesiastic. India-rubber faces capable of being squashed into anything. Puzzles that you cannot untangle. The four walls covered with cuts and engravings sheared from weekly pictorials and recklessly taken from parlor table books. Prints that put men and women into hopeless satire.

We have a friend of many peculiarities. Entering his house, you find nothing in the place where you expected it. "Don Quixote," with, all its windmills mixed up with "Dr. d.i.c.k on the Sacraments," Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog," and "Charnock on the Attributes." Pa.s.sing across the room, you stumble against the ma.n.u.script of his last lecture, or put your foot in a piece of pie that has fallen off the end of the writing table. You mistake his essay on the "Copernican System" for blotting paper. Many of his books are bereft of the binding; and in attempting to replace the covers, Hudibras gets the cover which belongs to "Barnes on the Acts of the Apostles." An earthquake in the room would be more apt to improve than to unsettle. There are marks where the inkstand became unstable and made a handwriting on the wall that even Daniel could not have interpreted. If, some fatal day, the wife or housekeeper come in, while the occupant is absent, to "clear up," a damage is done that requires weeks to repair. For many days the question is, "Where is my pen? Who has the concordance? What on earth has become of the dictionary? Where is the paper cutter?" Work is impeded, patience lost, engagements are broken, because it was not understood that the study is a part of the student's life, and that you might as well try to change the knuckles to the inside of the hand, or to set the eyes in the middle of the forehead, as to make the man of whom we speak keep his pen on the rack, or his books off the floor, or the blotting paper straight in the portfolio.

The study is a part of the mental development. Don't blame a man for the style of his literary apartments any more than you would for the color of his hair or the shape of his nose. If Hobbes carries his study with him, and his pen and his inkstand in the top of his cane, so let him carry them.

If Lamartine can best compose while walking his park, paper and pencil in hand, so let him ramble. If Robert Hall thinks easiest when lying flat on his back, let him be prostrate. If Lamasius writes best surrounded by children, let loose on him the whole nursery. Don't criticise Charles d.i.c.kens because he threw all his study windows wide open and the shades up.