_ CHAPTER V. PEEWEE PREACHING
Upon the following Sunday the Rev. Amos Peewee, D.D., made a suitable improvement of the melancholy event of the week. He enlarged upon the uncertainty of life. He said that in the midst of life we are in death. He said that we are shadows and pursue shades. He added that we are here to-day and gone to-morrow.
During the long prayer before the sermon a violent thunder-gust swept from the west and dashed against the old wooden church. As the Doctor poured forth his petitions he made the most extraordinary movements with his right hand. He waved it up and down rapidly. He opened his eyes for an instant as if to find somebody. He seemed to be closing imaginary windows--and so he was. It leaked out the next day at Mr. Gray's that Dr. Peewee was telegraphing the sexton at random--for he did not know where to look for him--to close the windows. Nobody better understood the danger of draughts from windows, during thunder-storms, than the Doctor; nobody knew better than he that the lightning-rod upon the spire was no protection at all, but that the iron staples with which it was clamped to the building would serve, in case of a bolt's striking the church, to drive its whole force into the building. As a loud crash burst over the village in the midst of his sermon, and showed how frightfully near the storm was, his voice broke into a shrill quaver, as he faltered out, "Yes, my brethren, let us be calm under all circumstances, and Death will have no terrors."
The Rev. Amos Peewee had been settled in the village of Delafield since a long period before the Revolution, according to the boys. But the parish register carried the date only to the beginning of this century. He wore a silken gown in summer, and a woolen gown in winter, and black worsted gloves, always with the middle finger of the right-hand glove slit, that he might more conveniently turn the leaves of the Bible, and the hymn-book, and his own sermons.
The pews of the old meeting-house were high, and many of them square. The heads of the people of consideration in the congregation were mostly bald, as beseems respectable age, and as the smooth, shiny line of pates appeared above the wooden line of the pews they somehow sympathetically blended into one gleaming surface of worn wood and skull, until it seemed as if the Doctor's theological battles were all fought upon the heads of his people.
But the Doctor was by no means altogether polemical. After defeating and utterly confounding the fathers who fired their last shot a thousand years ago, and who had not a word to say against his remaining master of the field, he was wont to unbend his mind and recreate his fancy by practical discourses. His sermons upon lying were celebrated all through the village. He gave the insidious vice no quarter. He charged upon it from all sides at once. Lying couldn't stand for a moment. White lies, black lies, blue lies, and green lies, lies of ceremony, of charity, and of good intention disappeared before the lightning of his wrath. They are all children of the Devil, with different complexions, said Dr. Peewee.
But if lying be a vice, surely, said he, discretion is a virtue. "My dear Mr. Gray," said Dr. Peewee to that gentleman when he was about establishing his school in the village, and was consulting with the Doctor about bringing his boys to church--"my dear Mr. Gray," said the Doctor, putting down his cigar and stirring his toddy (he was of an earlier day), "above all things a clergyman should be discreet. In fact, Christianity is discretion. A man must preach at sins, not sinners. Where would society be if the sins of individuals were to be rudely assaulted?--one more lump, if you please. A man's sins are like his corns. Neither the shoe nor the sermon must fit too snugly. I am a clergyman, but I hope I am also a man of common sense--a practical man, Mr. Gray. The general moral law and the means of grace, those are the proper themes of the preacher. And the pastor ought to understand the individual characters and pursuits of his parishioners, that he may avoid all personality in applying the truth."
"Clearly," said Mr. Gray.
"For instance," reasoned the Doctor, as he slowly stirred his toddy, and gesticulated with one skinny forefinger, occasionally sipping as he went on, "if I have a deacon in my church who is a notorious miser, is it not plain that, if I preach a strong sermon upon covetousness, every body in the church will think of my deacon--will, in fact, apply the sermon to him? The deacon, of course, will be the first to do it. And then, why, good gracious! he might even take his hat and cane and stalk heavily down the broad aisle, under my very nose, before my very eyes, and slam the church door after him in my very face! Here at once is difficulty in the church; hard feeling; perhaps even swearing. Am I, as a Christian clergyman, to give occasion to uncharitable emotions, even to actual profanity? Is not a Christian congregation, was not every early Christian community, a society of brothers? Of course they were; of course we must be. Little children, love one another. Let us dwell together, my brethren, in amity," said the Doctor, putting down his glass, and forgetting that he was in Mr. Gray's study; "and please give me your ears while I show you this morning the enormity of burning widows upon the funeral pyres of their husbands."
This was the Peewee Christianity; and after such a sermon the deacon has been known to say to his wife--thin she was in the face, which had a settled shade, like the sober twilight of valleys from which the sun has long been gone, though it has not yet set--
"What shocking people the Hindoos are! They actually burn widows! My dear, how grateful we ought to be that we live in a Christian country where wives are not burned!--Abraham! if you put another stick of wood into that stove I'll skin you alive, Sir. Go to bed this instant, you wicked boy!--It must be bad enough to be a widow, my dear, let alone the burning. Shall we have evening prayers, Mrs. Deacon?"
In the evening of the day on which the Doctor improved the drowning, and exhorted his hearers to be brave, Mr. Gray asked Gabriel Bennet, "Where was the text?"
"I don't know, Sir," replied Gabriel. As he spoke there was the sound of warm discussion on the other side of the dining-room, in which the boys sat during the evening.
"What is it, Gyles?" asked Mr. Gray.
"Why, Sir," replied he, "it's nothing. We were talking about a ribbon, Sir."
"What ribbon?"
"A ribbon we saw at church, Sir."
"Well, whose was it?" asked Mr. Gray.
"I believe it was Miss Hope Wayne's."
"You believe, Gyles? Why don't you speak out?"
"Well, Sir, the fact is that Abel Newt says she had a purple ribbon on her bonnet--"
"She hadn't," said Gabriel, breaking in, impetuously. "She had a beautiful blue ribbon, and lilies of the valley inside, and a white lace vail, and--"
Gabriel stopped and turned very red, for he caught Abel Newt's eyes fixed sharply upon him.
"Oh ho! the text was there, was it?" asked Mr. Gray, smiling.
But Abel Newt only said, quietly:
"Oh well! I guess it
was a blue ribbon after all." _