Smyrna times., 1874-08-12
The Old ParSon.

Most of us who go to church tomorrow, if
we are where we can have the chance of choice
as during the Winter months, will choose to
hear the man In our sect who ranks highest as
preacher; the strongest logician or the master
of the emotional nature, or the eager pleader
for Christ who has entered deepest into the
joy and pain, the sins and temptation of men
about him in his everyday life, and who can so
bring them closest to that Elder Brother and
Helper. Nowadays in towns the crowd follows,
and the high salary is given to learning and
eloquence, sustained, as is taken for granted,
by corresponding plety. The dull young fell
low who goes into the ministry, no matter from
what earnest motive, and betrays his dullness,
soon drops quietly into some obscure pul pit |
where the congregation is small and the strug-
gle against starvation hard, and there wears
out the rest OF his days, uncertain whether he |
indeed ever heard heavenly voice calling him |
to this work. so doubtful are his fellow men
about it, and so meager are the fruits of his |
labor. Yet in his devotion to that work, in
the ardOr, the PAIN and passion of his love for
his God, he is akin perhaps to some of those
famed old fathers of the church to whom the
world was not held to be worthy. He may have,
too, what they had not, a strange nearnesS to
all other men, kindred blood, magnetism. call
| it what you please, but something OF strength
and tenderness which they lack and which fits
him more than any other to stand at their bed
siGe in death, to bring their innocent children
into the church Of Christ, to carry Gods bleS
sing into the best hours of their lives But he
has no knack at turning period readily, and
in city congregations the paster is not expected
to become even personal acquaintance of his
flock, it being sheer impossbility for him to
visit or return visits with the great mass of
human beings to whom he deals out vital truths
Sunday after Sunday.
Yet some nearing middle age can remember
old fashioned pastors whose duties were as
onerOus and important as those of the Sunday
adviser of any city congregation, yet whose
place the dull young man might we'll have
filed. Going slowly through the dusty streets
tomorrow in the glare of the August sunshine,
the sound of the bells-for church going bells
are all alike carrying a Sunday greeting all
} through our lves-may bring back to us the
little villages and queer old towns where these
old men lived and worked. There is aSpanish
! bell over a little chapel down in the city which
! has the precise tone of one which swung over
cool old church in a manufacturing town
which we once knew. With the first ring of
it come back the rows of faded green seats
the rows of wooden pillars, gray for want Of
paint; the trees on the hill without; the bald
| old warden chanting the Gloria in cracked
voice, that drowned choir and organ, and the
old preacher in the pulpit. A man of most
weak and insignificant presence there, short
finical in his gestures, with piping feminine
. voice and manneriSms in accent Of great
English college, retained since boyhoOd. There
: was the same weakness in the matter as in the
manner of his sermons, too, the same pitiul
, consciousness of weakness and Straining for
effect The older members of the congrega
t ton 1ozed compOsedty until the sermon was
t over the young men and women smiled with
: complacent superiority at the poor little meta
t phors, or looked stealthily at each other.
, II = l. a Al.
5 upon himself new character. AS he went up
, and down the streets of the smoky town-hiS
fat neat little figure attired in spotiess black.
, his gold headed cane carried behind him, the
white hair and black eye brows making fram-
D ing for his mild, round face, under its broad
| trimmed hat-the coarSest and most brutal, as
well as the wisest, stood aside respectfully to
) make way for the old ParsOn." He had
a christened and married the oldest members of
: his flock, 50 that it was natural they and their
! children should regard him lovingly as father
but outsiders the men who never 60 to church,
: the women thrust without the camp by other
: women, knew him for their best friend. 1t
J. was he who was the only visitor at the Jail and
/ the aims house every day his boysh, gentle
l. face was seen at the door of some rum. shop OF
o house of worse infamy; it was Parson" who
d took Bill Horn home, they said, in one Of his
fits of dclirum tremens nursed, tended, kept
ulul III HIS OWN nOuSe IOT uOUtUS, anu SeIiI ull
Is out sober man for life. "Weak as water, y
y Bill, who was a shrewd fellow said "but the
C Lord goes with him steady" The little plump
CHEEKY soul had the pluck, too, without which
70 Bill and his class are not easily held. Wher
e the great Whyte murder took place, and the
e hanging followed, at which it was known
le rescue would be attempted by the friends o.
N the prisoner, the Parson was the only clergy
r men who would go with him to the gallows
D. and sat on the cart beside him unmoved, while
the bullets few thick around, comforting thu
to terror stricken wretch
e Afterward the cholera came; One-half tht
H. inhabitants of the town were dying or dead
and all who were able to leave it fed for thei
is lives; but when not priest of any churcl
was found, the little man went quietly ant
O. cheerfully from one plague-stricken house t
G. another, at once doctor and nurse-sometimes
j." it was said, burying the dead with his ow
hand.
I'd Men do not forget such sermons. The oil
= church, with its faded seats and furnished pi
lars, years sinced was razed to the ground; tn
ur bell, like many an eloquent, loud soundin
Mt word, is hushed and forgotten; the gray
at haired Parson long ago dropped into silence
but his memory fingers in the old town still,
'st living presence, helpful, tender, Christlike.