第12章 SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE(5)

But I did sometimes gaze more earnestly than was polite at a dear,demure little lady who sat in the corner of the pew next ours,her downcast eyes shaded by a green calash,and her hidden right hand gently swaying a long-handled Chinese fan.She was the deacon's wife,and I felt greatly interested in her movements and in the expression of her face,because I thought she represented the people they called "saints,"who were,as I supposed,about the same as first cousins to the angels.

The third figure in sight was the minister.I did not think he ever saw me;he was talking to the older people,--usually telling them how wicked they were.He often said to them that there was not one good person among them;but I supposed he excepted himself.He seemed to me so very good that I was very much afraid of him.I was a little afraid of my father,but then he sometimes played with us children:and besides,my father was only a man.

I thought the minister belonged to some different order of beings.Up there in the pulpit he seemed to me so far off--oh!a great deal farther off than God did.His distance made my reverence for him take the form of idolatry.The pulpit was his pedestal.If any one had told me that the minister ever did or thought anything that was wrong,I should have felt as if the foundations of the earth under me were shaken.I wondered if he ever did laugh.Perhaps it was wicked for a minister even to smile.

One day,when I was very little,I met the minister in the street;and he,probably recognizing me as the child of one of his parishioners,actually bowed to me!His bows were always ministerially profound,and I was so overwhelmed with surprise and awe that I forgot to make the proper response of a "curtsey,"but ran home as fast as I could go to proclaim the wonder.It would not have astonished me any more,if one of the tall Lombardy poplars that stood along the sidewalk had laid itself down at my feet.

I do not remember anything that the preacher ever said,except some words which I thought sounded well,--such as "dispensations,""decrees,""ordinances,""covenants,"--although I attached no meaning to them.He seemed to be trying to explain the Bible by putting it into long words.I did not understand them at all.It was from Aunt Hannah that I received my first real glimpses of the beautiful New Testament revelation.In her unconscious wisdom she chose for me passages and chapters that were like openings into heaven.They contained the great,deep truths which are simple because they are great.It was not explanations of those grand words that I required,or that anybody requires.In reading them we are all children together,and need only to be led to the banks of the river of God,which is full of water,that we may look down into its pellucid depths for ourselves.

Our minister was not unlike other ministers of the time,and his seeming distance from his congregation was doubtless owing to the deep reverence in which the ministerial office was universally held among our predecessors.My own graven-image worship of him was only a childish exageration of the general feeling of grown people around me.He seemed to us an inhabitant of a Sabbath-day sphere,while we belonged to the every-day world.I distinctly remember the day of my christening,when I was between three and four years old.My parents did not make a public profession of their faith until after the birth of all their children,eight of whom--I being my father's ninth child and seventh daughter--were baptized at one time.My two half-sisters were then grown-up young women.My mother had told us that the minister would be speaking directly to us,and that we must pay close attention to what he said.I felt that it was an important event,and I wished to do exactly what the minister desired of me.I listened eagerly while he read the chapter and the hymn.The latter was one of my favorites:--"See Israel's gentle Shepherd stands;"and the chapter was the third of St.Matthew,containing the story of our Lord's baptism.I could not make out any special message for us,until be came to the words,"Whose fan is in his hand."That must be it!I looked anxiously at my sisters,to see if they had brought their fans.It was warm weather,and I had taken a little one of my own to meeting.Believing that I was following a direct instruction,I clasped my fan to my bosom and held it there as we walked up the aisle,and during the ceremony,wondering why the others did not do so,too.The baby in my mother's arms--Octavia,the eighth daughter--shocked me by crying a little,but I tried to behave the better on that account.

It all seemed very solemn and mysterious to me.I knew from my father's and mother's absorbed manner then,and when we returned from church,that it was something exceedingly important to Them--something that they wished us neither to talk about nor to forget.

I never did forget it.There remained within me a sweet,haunting feeling of having come near the "gentle Shepherd"of the hymn,who was calling the lambs to his side.The chapter had ended with the echo of a voice from heaven,and with the glimpse of a descending Dove.And the water-drops on my forehead,were they not from that "pure river of water of life,clear as crystal,"that made music through those lovely verses in the last chapter of the good Book?

I am glad that I have always remembered that day of family consecration.As I look back,it seems as if the horizons of heaven and earth met and were blended then.And who can tell whether the fragrance of that day's atmosphere may not enter into the freshness of some new childhood in the life which is to come?