St. Cuthbert's Part 11

The old precentor's box beneath the pulpit was still St. Cuthbert's only choir loft. Many years back, the iconoclasts among them had managed to gather a few of the most songful ones together in a front pew, demurely sitting as part of the congregation, but concentrated for purposes of leaders.h.i.+p. This proved, however, more than St. Cuthbert's could abide, and its mal-odour of "High Church" alarmed the Scottish Presbyterians.

Going down the aisle, Saunders M'Tavish voiced the general alarm in sententious tones--

"The thin end o' the wedge," he warningly exclaimed, "and it's no' a far cry noo to the candles an' the incense. They'll be bringin' ower the pope next," and the kirk session, convening the next night, soon stopped that leakage in their ancestral d.y.k.e.

Since then the precentor's box had preserved its lonely splendour.

Within it, in the far-back thunderous days of their great Boanerges, the precentor stood to lead the swelling psalm as it rose from the seated mult.i.tude--for they stood to pray, but sat to sing. From the fast-gathering mists that now threaten those receding years, surviving ones still rescue images of the precentor's ruffled locks, swept by the pentecostal swirl--so seemed it to his wors.h.i.+ppers--of Dr. Grant's Geneva gown. And in this same box Sabbath after Sabbath appeared the stalwart form of Archie M'Cormack, modern in nothing but his years.

His was a conservatism of the intense and pa.s.sionate sort; not the choice of his judgment, but the deepest element of his life. He no more chose old ways, old paths, or the spirit of earlier times, than the trout chooses water or the Polar bear its native snows. He was born not among them, but of them, and remained till death their incarnate descendant. No mere Scotch kirkman was Archie, but a prehistoric Calvinist, a Presbyterian by the act of G.o.d and an elder from all eternity. Even his youthful thoughts and imaginations adjusted themselves to the scope of the Westminster Confession, abhorring any horizon unillumined by the gray light which flowed in mathematical exact.i.tude from a hypothetical heart in the Shorter Catechism.

Although, strangely enough, Archie could never master the catechism. A random question was his doom. Catechise him straight through, and his response was swift and accurate. No thrust availed against him, a knight invincible in his well-pieced coat of mail, a very dragon of orthodoxy from whose lips there issued clouds of Calvinism, till the minister himself was often well-nigh obscured thereby. But once dip Archie into the middle of its mighty bosom to search an answer there, and he would never reappear, or, if he haply might, it would be with sorry fragments of divers answers in his hands, incongruous to absurdity. Is not the same true of babbling guides in old cathedrals?

"What is sin?" the minister once suddenly asked Archie in the course of catechetical visitation, the district being a.s.sembled at one central house. Archie's answer, being a mosaic, is still quoted by those who heard it, terror-stricken where they sat.

"Sin," replied the wide-gleaning man, "is an act of G.o.d's free grace, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in its full purpose of and endeavour after new obedience."

This terrible and miscellaneous eruption was the more lamentable from the fact that his poor wife heard this blare of discordant dogmas with unbelieving ears, while even little Kirsty gasped, exclaiming above her breath, "Ye're sair muddled, faither."

Archie looked vacantly from wife to daughter, like one who has let something drop. Then gazing despondently at the minister's struggling face, he said, "I'm feart that's no' jist richt in a' its parteeklars."

The epilogue was worse than the tragedy. A grim Presbyterian smile went round, more vocal than the echoing laughter of less silent sects, and it smote on Archie's ears like the scorners' bray. Forward went the catechism, a penitential gloom succeeding the sinful indulgence. The Scottish sun dips suddenly.

Sober enough now are the faces from which all merriment has fled, forgetting the precentor's discomfiture, and looking only to their own deliverance from the guns now turned against themselves. But Archie did not forget--into a secret Scottish place he had retreated, his hot, burning heart forging some weapon of revenge. It was ready in due time.

An hour after, just before the armistice which the benediction alone made sure, he turned upon the honest rustics with a look of belated triumph in his face, and slew them with the retort which long travail had brought forth.

"A'm no' sae gleg on the subject o' sin as some fowk I ken."

The minister, by aid of special grace, said nothing. Archie, although he held solemnly on his way through the benediction, as became a precentor, yet chuckled exultantly all the homeward road. At evening wors.h.i.+p he selected the Twenty-seventh Psalm and sang the second verse with rejoicing unction--

"Whereas mine enemies and foes, Most wicked persons all, To eat my flesh against me rose, They stumbled and did fall,"

and the honest rustics, as they sought the cover of their homes with emanc.i.p.ated feet, p.r.o.nounced one to the other that most Scotch of all Scottish verdicts, half of eulogy and half of condemnation: "He's a lad, is Airchie. Ay, Airchie's a lad to be sure."

What sleuth-hounds women are in matters of the heart! How quickly they take the scent of any path, virgin though it be, if that path hath been touched by the very feet of love, tracing its devious course with pa.s.sionate inerrancy.

I thought the news trifling, when I told my wife that Angus and our Margaret had appeared before St. Cuthbert's session to present a certain prayer. My mind was taken up exclusively with the request they proffered. But Margaret's mother was unconcerned with their plea. Of the pleaders she thought alone. Divers questions she flung forth at me, furtive all, their author in ambush all the while.

"Did they seem interested in each other?" was the burden of them all; for, though she avoided plainness of speech, I could yet detect her hidden fear.

But I must turn from this and tell of the enterprise in whose interest Margaret and Angus bearded the lions of St. Cuthbert's in their den.

They represented the Young People's Guild, and presented the startling request that the old kirk should henceforth employ an organ to aid the service of praise on the Sabbath day. And they further asked for the introduction of the hymns. This implied a revolution, for St.

Cuthbert's, up to this time, had resolutely resisted all attempts to hallow such profanities.

For the youthful pair of revolutionists I felt a decided sympathy, such as pervades every generous heart when it beholds the dauntless approach of David towards Goliath. Such citadels of orthodoxy, such Gibraltars of conservatism as Archie was, were almost all the elders of St.

Cuthbert's. And against them all united did Angus and Margaret dare to turn their poor artillery of persuasion.

The session received them cordially, having all goodwill towards them personally, hating the sin but loving the sinners, to employ a good old theological phrase. Angus began, adroitly enough, with a eulogy of the psalms and paraphrases, defining them as the mountain peaks of song in all ages and in every tongue.

"In far-distant Scotland my mother is singing them to-night," he said, "and I catch the glow and the sweetness of the heather when the kirk rings with their high refrain ilka Sabbath day. But we feel that the hymns, even if they be inferior, will add richness and variety to the service of our beloved kirk."

As for the organ, he contended that it was only a means towards an end, man-made though it was; for these stern men were rigid in their distinction between things made with hands and things inspired.

Angus quoted Scripture on behalf of the organ plea, recalling David's use of instrumental music and quoting the Ninety-second Psalm--

"Upon a ten-stringed instrument And on the psaltery, Upon the harp with solemn sound And grave, sweet melody."

I then called upon Margaret, and my heart misgave me as I spoke her name, for she was full of pathetic hopefulness, and seemed to think that Angus's argument had settled things beyond appeal. But I knew better than she what spray could do with frowning rocks. The elders, too, smiled tenderly upon her, for they were chivalrous in their solemn way, and besides, she was what you might call the church's first-born child, the story of which I have already told. But theirs was a kind of executioners' smile, for they were iron-blooded men, who felt that they had heard but now the trumpeting of the enemy at the gate.

Margaret timidly expressed the view that she need, and would, add nothing more, "for," she concluded, "Mr. Strachan has covered the ground completely." This phrase "covered the ground" I do not believe she had ever used before, but every true child of the manse and the kirk is born its legitimate heir. "The previous question" is another matter, and can be acquired only through laborious years. It takes even a moderator all his time to explain it; before most Presbyteries quite master it, death moves it--and then they understand.

Poor Margaret seemed to think that Angus had made out a case which no elder could successfully a.s.sail. She knew not that there are some matters which Scotch elders consider it impious even to discuss, holding in scorn the flaccid axiom that there are two sides to every question.

The youthful pet.i.tioners withdrew, and the session indulged itself in a long silence, their usual mode of signifying that important business was before them.

The first to speak was Ronald M'Gregor: "We'll no' be needin' a motion,"

he said, by way of indicating that there could be no two opinions on the matter in hand.

"We'll hae to move that the peteetion be rejeckit," said Elder M'Tavish, nodding his head to signify his agreement with Ronald's main contention.

"The puir bodies mean richt," he added, being distinguished for Christian charity.

The motion was as good as agreed to, silent consent appearing upon every face, when Michael Blake arose.

"I move in amendment, that the young people's request be referred to a committee, with a view to its favourable consideration."

"I second that," said Sandy Grant, the session clerk, "not thereby committin' masel' to its spirit, but to bring it afore the court in regular order."

"What for div we need anither motion?" said Thomas Laidlaw, evidently perplexed. "There's nane o' us gaun to gie in to thae man-made hymes--an' their kist o' whustles wad be fair redeek'lus."

"Let us hear what they have to say in its behalf," said Mr. Blake.

"Every honest man should be open to conviction."

"We're a' honest men," replied Thomas, "an' we're a' open to conviction, but I houp nane o' us'll be weak eneuch to be convickit. Oor faithers wadna hae been convickit."

"It'll dae nae harm to hear the argyments," said Andrew Hogg, the silent member of the session.

At this juncture, fearing what Saunders M'Tavish had long ago called the thin edge o' the wedge, Archie M'Cormack, the precentor, came forward in hot alarm, championing the hosts of orthodoxy.

"The session'll mebbe listen to me, for I've been yir precentor these mony years. We'll hae nae mair o' thae havers. Wha wants their hymes?

Naebody excep' a wheen o' gigglin' birkies. Gie them the hymes, an'

we'll hear Martyrdom nae mair, an' Coles.h.i.+ll an' Duke Street'll be by.

For what did oor faithers dee if it wasna for the psalms o' Dauvit? An'

they dee'd to the tunes I've named to ye."

"But Mr. M'Cormack will admit," said Mr. Blake, "that many of G.o.d's people wors.h.i.+p to profit with the hymns. There is the Episcopal church across the way. Last Sabbath I am told their soprano sang 'Lead, kindly Light,' and it was well received."

"Wha receivit it?" thundered Archie. "Tell me that, sir. Wha receivit it? Was it Almichty G.o.d, or was it the itchin' lugs o' deein' men, aye hearkenin' to thae skirlin' birkies wi' their men-made hymes?"

"Mr. M'Cormack is severe," replied Michael Blake serenely, "but I think he is unnecessarily alarmed; we must keep our service up to date. As the session knows, I have always been in favour, for instance, of the modern fas.h.i.+on of special services at Christmas, Eastertide, and kindred seasons. And at such times we ought to have a little special music."