All He Knew(@@) by John Habberton (ebooks online reader TXT) 📕

Never before had he been absent, unless sick, from any special effort of his church to persuade the sinners to flee from the wrath to come; but when Dr. Guide announced that he should ask Sam Kimper to assist him in the special meetings, the deacon's conscience bade him halt and consider. Dr. Guide was wrong,--there could be no doubt of that: would it be right, then, merely for the sake of apparent peace and unity, for him, the deacon, to seem to agree with his pastor's peculiar views? The deacon made it a matter of prayer, and the result was that he remained at home.

That Reynolds Bartram had been the first-fruits of the new special effort was a statement which the deacon denied as soon as he heard it. Frequent repetition of the annoying story soon began to impress him with its probability, and finally a brother deacon, who had been present, set all doubt at rest by the assertion that Bartram had not only been converted, but was assisting at the meetings. When, however, the attending deacon went on to inform his absentee brother that Bartram had attributed his awakening and conversion to the influence of Sam Kimper, Deacon Quickset lost his temper, and exclaimed,--

"It's all a confounded lie! It's a put-up job!"

"Brother Quickset!" exclaimed the astonished associate, with a most reproving look.

"Oh, I don't mean that you lie," explained the angry defender of the faith. "If you heard Bartram say it, he did say it, of course. But there's something wrong somewhere. The minister's rather lost his head over Sam Kimper, just because the wretch isn't back in his old ways again, and he's got a new notion in his head about how the gospel ought to be preached. New notions have been plenty enough ever since true religion started; there's always some man or men thinking out things for themselves and forgetting everything else on account of them. There were meddlers of that kind back to the days of the apostles, and goodness knows the history of the church is full of them. They've been so set in their ways that no sort of discipline would cure them; they've even had to be hanged or burned, to save the faith from being knocked to pieces."

"But, brother Quickset," pleaded the other deacon, "every one knows our pastor isn't that sort of a person. He is an intelligent, thoughtful, unexcitable man, that--"

"That's just the kind that always makes the worst heretics," roared the deacon. "Wasn't Servetus that kind of a person? And didn't Calvin have to burn him at the stake? I tell you, deacon, it takes a good deal of the horror out of those times when you have a case of the kind come right up before your eyes."

"What? Somebody being burned?" exclaimed the other deacon, raising his hands in horror.

"No, no," testily replied the defender of the faith. "Only somebody that ought to be."

"But where does the lying come in, that you were talking about?"

"I tell you just what I believe," said Deacon Quickset, dropping his voice and drawing closer to his associate; "I believe Dr. Guide believes just what he says,--of course nobody's going to doubt that he's sincere,--but when it's come to the pinch he's felt a little shaky. What does any other man do when he finds himself shaky about an important matter of opinion? Why, he consults a lawyer, and gets himself pulled through."

"But you don't mean to say that you think Dr. Guide would go to a rank, persistent disbeliever in anything--but himself--like Ray Bartram, do you, in a matter of this kind?"

"Why not? Ministers have often got lawyers to help them when they've been muddled on points of orthodoxy. What the lawyer believes or don't believe hasn't got anything to do with it: it's his business to believe as his client does, and make other folks believe so, too. Ray Bartram is just the sort of a fellow a man would want in such a case. He's got that way of looking as if he knew everything, just like his father had before him, that makes folks give in to him in spite of themselves. Besides, he'll say or do anything to carry his point."

"Isn't that putting it rather strong, Brother Quickset?"

"Of course it isn't. Don't I know, I should like to ask? Don't I always hire him myself?"

"Oh!" That was the only word the other deacon spoke, but his eyes danced, and he twisted his lips into an odd grin.

"Oh, get out!" exclaimed the pillar of orthodoxy. "You needn't take it that way. Of course what I ask him to do is only right: if I didn't think so, I wouldn't ask him."

"Of course not, brother. But think a moment: do you really believe that any form of professional pride would persuade that young man--proud as Lucifer, and just as conceited and headstrong, a young man who always has argued against religion and against every belief you and I hold dear--to rise for prayers in an inquiry meeting, and afterwards say it was the Christian life of Sam Kimper,--a man whom a high-born fellow like Bartram must believe as near the animals as humanity ever is,--to say it was the Christian life of Sam Kimper that convinced him of the supernatural origin and saving power of Christianity?"

"I can't believe he put it that way: there must be something else behind it. I'm going to find out for myself and do it at once, too. This sort of nonsense must be stopped. Why, if men go to taking everything Jesus Christ said just as He said it, everything in the world in the way of business is going to be turned upside down."

Away went Deacon Quickset to Bartram's office, and was so fortunate as to find the lawyer in. He went right at his subject:

"Well, young man, you've been in nice business, haven't you?--trying to go up to the throne of grace right behind a jail-bird, while the leaders and teachers whom the Lord has selected have been spurned by you for years!"

Reynolds Bartram was too new a convert to have changed his old self and manner to any great extent: so he flushed angrily, and retorted,--

"One thief is about as good as another, Deacon Quickset."

Then it was the deacon's turn to look angry. The two men faced each other for a moment with flashing eyes, lowering brows, and hard-set jaws.

The deacon was the first to recover himself: he took a chair, and said,--

"Maybe I haven't heard the story rightly. What I came around for was to get it from first hands. Would you mind telling me?"

"I suppose you allude to my conversion?"

"Yes," said the deacon, with a look of doubt, "I suppose that's what we will have to call it, for want of a better word."

"It is a very short story," said Bartram, now entirely calm, as he leaned against his desk and folded his arms. "Like every other man with any brains, I've always been interested in religion, intellectually, and have had to believe that if it was right, as I heard it talked, it had sometimes got away from its Founder in a manner for which there seemed to be no excuse. Everything was being taught by the servants, nothing by the Master. When I want to know your wishes, deacon, about any matter in which we are mutually interested, I do not go to your back door and inquire of your servants: I go to you, direct. But when people--you among the number--have talked to me about religion, they've always talked Peter and Paul and James and John,--never Jesus."

"The Apostle Paul--" began the deacon, but the lawyer snatched the words from his lips, and continued:

"The Apostle Paul was the ablest lawyer that ever lived. I've studied him a good deal, in past days, for style."

"Awful!" groaned the deacon.

"Not in the least," said the lawyer, with fine earnestness. "He was just the man for his place and his time; 'twas his business to explain the new order of things to the hard-headed Jews, of whom he had been so notable a representative, that to convert him it was necessary that he should be knocked senseless and remain so for the space of three days: you remember the circumstance? He was just the man, too, to explain the new religion to the heathens and pagans of his day, for those Greeks and Romans were a brainy lot of people. But why should he have been quoted to me, or any other man in the community? We don't have to be convinced that Jesus lived: we believe it already. The belief has been born in us; it has run through our blood for hundreds of years.