Year: 1874

TIE OLD PARSON


Most Of us who go to church to morrow, II
we are where we can have the chance OF choice
as during the Winter months, will choose 10
hear the man in our sect who ranks highest as
preacher the strongest lOgcian or the master
of the emotional nature, or the eager pieader
for Christ who has entered deepest into the
Joy and pam, the sins aud 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 learn
Ing and eloauence, sustained as is taken for
granted by corresponding pety. The dull
young fellow who goes into the ministry, no
matter from what earnest motive, and betrays
his dizziness, soon drops quietly into some OBJ
scure pulpit where the congregation Is small
and the struggle against starvation hard, ana
there wears out the rest of his days, uncer-
tain 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 ariOr, the pain, and pas
sion of his love for his God, he Is akin perhaps
to some of those famed old fathers ot the
church to whom the world was not held to be
worthy. He may have, too, what they mad
not, q strange nearness to all other men,
kindred blood, magnetism, call 1t what you
please, but n something OF strength and ten
derness which they lack and which fits him
more than any other to stand at their bedside
in death, to bring their innocent children into
the church of Christ, to carry Gods blessing
into the best hours of their lives. But he has
no knack at turning period readily, and in
city congregations the pastor is not expected
to become even personal acquaintance OF his
flock, it being sheer impOssibility 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 Sun
day adviser of any city congregation, yet
whose place the dull young man might we'll
have filled. Going slowly through the dusty
streets tomorrow in the glare of the August
sunshine, the sound of the bells-fOr church-go-
ing bells are all alike carrying Sunday greet
ing all through our lives-may bring back to us
the little villages and queer old towns where
these old men lived and worked. There is
Spanish bell over little chapel down in the
city which has the precise tone Of one which
swung over cool old church In manufac
turing 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 with
out the bald old warden chanting the Gloria
in a cracked voice. that drowned choir and
organ, and the old preacher in the pulpit.
man Of most weak and Insignificant presence
there, short, fnical in his gestures, with a
piping feminine voice and the mannersms in
accent of great English college, retained
since boyhOod. There was the same weak
ness in the matter as in the manner of his
sermons, too, the same pitiful consciousness of
weakness and straining for effect. The older
members of the congregation dozed COM
posedly until the sermon was over the young
men and women smiled with complacent su-
periority at the poor little metaphors, or
looked stealthily at each other.


But outside of the pulpit the old man took
upon himself q new character. AS he went
up and down the streets of the smoky town
his fat, neat little figure attired in spotless
black, his gold-headed cane carried behind
him, the white hair and black -brOws
making framing 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 Par
"son." He had christened and married the
oldest members of his flock, so that it was
natural they and their children should regard
him lovingly as a father; but outsiders, the
men who never go to church, the women
thrust without the camp by other women.
knew him for their best friend. 1t was he
who was the only visitor at the Jail and the
alms-house every day his boyish, gentle
face was seen at the door of some rum-shop
or house Of worse infamy; it was Parsonn
who took Bill Horn home, they said, in one
OF his fits of delirium trenens nursed, tended,
kept him in his own house for months, and
sent him out sobered man for life. "Weak
"as water,o Bill, who was q shrewd fellow,
said "but the Lord goes with HIM steady.n
The little plump, CHEEKY soul had tho pluck,
too. without which Bill aud bis class ere not