The dusk crept into the orchard like a dim, bewitching personality. You could see her — feel her — hear her. She tiptoed softly from tree to tree, ever drawing nearer. Presently her filmy wings hovered over us and through them gleamed the early stars of the autumn night.
The grown-ups rose reluctantly and strolled away; but we children lingered for a moment to talk over an idea the Story Girl broached — a good idea, we thought enthusiastically, and one that promised to add considerable spice to life.
We were on the lookout for some new amusement. Dream books had begun to pall. We no longer wrote in them very regularly, and our dreams were not what they used to be before the mischance of the cucumber. So the Story Girl’s suggestion came pat to the psychological moment.
‘I’ve thought of a splendid plan,” she said. “It just flashed into my mind when the uncles were talking about Uncle Edward. And the beauty of it is we can play it on Sundays, and you know there are so few things it is proper to play on Sundays. But this is a Christian game, so it will be all right.”
“It isn’t like the religious fruit basket game, is it?” asked
Cecily anxiously.
We had good reason to hope that it wasn’t. One desperate Sunday afternoon, when we had nothing to read and the time seemed endless, Felix had suggested that we have a game of fruit-basket; only instead of taking the names of fruits, we were to take the names of Bible characters. This, he argued, would make it quite lawful and proper to play on Sunday. We, too desirous of being convinced, also thought so; and for a merry hour Lazarus and Martha and Moses and Aaron and sundry other worthies of Holy Writ had a lively time of it in the King orchard. Peter having a Scriptural name of his own, did not want to take another; but we would not allow this, because it would give him an unfair advantage over the rest of us. It would be so much easier to call out your own name than fit your tongue to an unfamiliar one. So Peter retaliated by choosing Nebuchadnezzar, which no one could ever utter three times before Peter shrieked it out once.
In the midst of our hilarity, however, Uncle Alec and Aunt Janet came down upon us. It is best to draw a veil over what followed. Suffice it to say that the recollection gave point to Cecily’s question.
“No, it isn’t that sort of game at all,” said the Story Girl. “It is this; each of you boys must preach a sermon, as Uncle Edward used to do. One of you next Sunday, and another the next, and so on. And whoever preaches the best sermon is to get a prize.”
Dan promptly declared he wouldn’t try to preach a sermon; but
Peter, Felix and I thought the suggestion a very good one.
Secretly, I believed I could cut quite a fine figure preaching a
sermon.
“Who’ll give the prize?” asked Felix.
“I will,” said the Story Girl. “I’ll give that picture father sent me last week.”
As the said picture was an excellent copy of one of Landseer’s stags, Felix and I were well pleased; but Peter averred that he would rather have the Madonna that looked like his Aunt Jane, and the Story Girl agreed that if his sermon was the best she would give him that.
“But who’s to be the judge?” I said, “and what kind of a sermon would you call the best?”
“The one that makes the most impression,” answered the Story Girl promptly. “And we girls must be the judges, because there’s nobody else. Now, who is to preach next Sunday?”
It was decided that I should lead off, and I lay awake for an extra hour that night thinking what text I should take for the following Sunday. The next day I bought two sheets of foolscap from the schoolmaster, and after tea I betook myself to the granary, barred the door, and fell to writing my sermon. I did not find it as easy a task as I had anticipated; but I pegged grimly away at it, and by dint of severe labour for two evenings I eventually got my four pages of foolscap filled, although I had to pad the subject-matter not a little with verses of quotable hymns. I had decided to preach on missions, as being a topic more within my grasp than abstruse theological doctrines or evangelical discourses; and, mindful of the need of making an impression, I drew a harrowing picture of the miserable plight of the heathen who in their darkness bowed down to wood and stone. Then I urged our responsibility concerning them, and meant to wind up by reciting, in a very solemn and earnest voice, the verse beginning, “Can we whose souls are lighted.” When I had completed my sermon I went over it very carefully again and wrote with red ink — Cecily made it for me out of an aniline dye — the word “thump” wherever I deemed it advisable to chastise the pulpit.
I have that sermon still, all its red thumps unfaded, lying beside my dream book; but I am not going to inflict it on my readers. I am not so proud of it as I once was. I was really puffed up with earthly vanity over it at that time. Felix, I thought, would be hard put to it to beat it. As for Peter, I did not consider him a rival to be feared. It was unsupposable that a hired boy, with little education and less experience of church-going, should be able to preach better than could I, in whose family there was a real minister.
The sermon written, the next thing was to learn it off by heart and then practise it, thumps included, until I was letter and gesture perfect. I preached it over several times in the granary with only Paddy, sitting immovably on a puncheon, for audience. Paddy stood the test fairly well. At least, he made an adorable listener, save at such times as imaginary rats distracted his attention.
Mr. Marwood had at least three absorbed listeners the next Sunday morning. Felix, Peter and I were all among the chiels who were taking mental notes on the art of preaching a sermon. Not a motion, or glance, or intonation escaped us. To be sure, none of us could remember the text when we got home; but we knew just how you should throw back your head and clutch the edge of the pulpit with both hands when you announced it.
In the afternoon we all repaired to the orchard, Bibles and hymn books in hand. We did not think it necessary to inform the grown-ups of what was in the wind. You could never tell what kink a grown-up would take. They might not think it proper to play any sort of a game on Sunday, not even a Christian game. Least said was soonest mended where grown-ups were concerned.
I mounted the pulpit steps, feeling rather nervous, and my audience sat gravely down on the grass before me. Our opening exercises consisted solely of singing and reading. We had agreed to omit prayer. Neither Felix, Peter nor I felt equal to praying in public. But we took up a collection. The proceeds were to go to missions. Dan passed the plate — Felicity’s rosebud plate — looking as preternaturally solemn as Elder Frewen himself. Every one put a cent on it.
Well, I preached my sermon. And it fell horribly flat. I realized that, before I was half way through it. I think I preached it very well; and never a thump did I forget or misplace. But my audience was plainly bored. When I stepped down from the pulpit, after demanding passionately if we whose souls were lighted and so forth, I felt with secret humiliation that my sermon was a failure. It had made no impression at all. Felix would be sure to get the prize.
“That was a very good sermon for a first attempt,” said the Story Girl graciously. “It sounded just like real sermons I have heard.”
For a moment the charm of her voice made me feel that I had not done so badly after all; but the other girls, thinking it their duty to pay me some sort of a compliment also, quickly dispelled that pleasing delusion.
“Every word of it was true,” said Cecily, her tone unconsciously implying that this was its sole merit.
“I often feel,” said Felicity primly, “that we don’t think enough about the heathens. We ought to think a great deal more.”
Sara Ray put the finishing touch to my mortification.
“It was so nice and short,” she said.
“What was the matter with my sermon?” I asked Dan that night. Since he was neither judge nor competitor I could discuss the matter with him.
“It was too much like a reg’lar sermon to be interesting,” said
Dan frankly.
/> “I should think the more like a regular sermon it was, the better,” I said.
“Not if you want to make an impression,” said Dan seriously.
“You must have something sort of different for that. Peter, now,
HE’LL have something different.”
“Oh, Peter! I don’t believe he can preach a sermon,” I said.
“Maybe not, but you’ll see he’ll make an impression,” said Dan.
Dan was neither the prophet nor the son of a prophet, but he had the second sight for once; Peter DID make an impression.
CHAPTER XXVI.
PETER MAKES AN IMPRESSION
Peter’s turn came next. He did not write his sermon out. That, he averred, was too hard work. Nor did he mean to take a text.
“Why, who ever heard of a sermon without a text?” asked Felix blankly.
“I am going to take a SUBJECT instead of a text,” said Peter loftily. “I ain’t going to tie myself down to a text. And I’m going to have heads in it — three heads. You hadn’t a single head in yours,” he added to me.
“Uncle Alec says that Uncle Edward says that heads are beginning to go out of fashion,” I said defiantly — all the more defiantly that I felt I should have had heads in my sermon. It would doubtless have made a much deeper impression. But the truth was I had forgotten all about such things.
“Well, I’m going to have them, and I don’t care if they are unfashionable,” said Peter. “They’re good things. Aunt Jane used to say if a man didn’t have heads and stick to them he’d go wandering all over the Bible and never get anywhere in particular.”
“What are you going to preach on?” asked Felix.
“You’ll find out next Sunday,” said Peter significantly.
The next Sunday was in October, and a lovely day it was, warm and bland as June. There was something in the fine, elusive air, that recalled beautiful, forgotten things and suggested delicate future hopes. The woods had wrapped fine-woven gossamers about them and the westering hill was crimson and gold.
We sat around the Pulpit Stone and waited for Peter and Sara Ray. It was the former’s Sunday off and he had gone home the night before, but he assured us he would be back in time to preach his sermon. Presently he arrived and mounted the granite boulder as if to the manor born. He was dressed in his new suit and I, perceiving this, felt that he had the advantage of me. When I preached I had to wear my second best suit, for it was one of Aunt Janet’s laws that we should take our good suits off when we came home from church. There were, I saw, compensations for being a hired boy.
Peter made quite a handsome little minister, in his navy blue coat, white collar, and neatly bowed tie. His black eyes shone, and his black curls were brushed up in quite a ministerial pompadour, but threatened to tumble over at the top in graceless ringlets.
It was decided that there was no use in waiting for Sara Ray, who might or might not come, according to the humour in which her mother was. Therefore Peter proceeded with the service.
He read the chapter and gave out the hymn with as much SANG FROID as if he had been doing it all his life. Mr. Marwood himself could not have bettered the way in which Peter said,
“We will sing the whole hymn, omitting the fourth stanza.”
That was a fine touch which I had not thought of. I began to think that, after all, Peter might be a foeman worthy of my steel.
When Peter was ready to begin he thrust his hands into his pockets — a totally unorthodox thing. Then he plunged in without further ado, speaking in his ordinary conversational tone — another unorthodox thing. There was no shorthand reporter present to take that sermon down; but, if necessary, I could preach it over verbatim, and so, I doubt not, could everyone that heard it. It was not a forgettable kind of sermon.
“Dearly beloved,” said Peter, “my sermon is about the bad place — in short, about hell.”
An electric shock seemed to run through the audience. Everybody looked suddenly alert. Peter had, in one sentence, done what my whole sermon had failed to do. He had made an impression.
“I shall divide my sermon into three heads,” pursued Peter. “The first head is, what you must not do if you don’t want to go to the bad place. The second head is, what the bad place is like” — sensation in the audience—”and the third head is, how to escape going there.
“Now, there’s a great many things you must not do, and it’s very important to know what they are. You ought not to lose no time in finding out. In the first place you mustn’t ever forget to mind what grown-up people tell you — that is, GOOD grown-up people.”
“But how are you going to tell who are the good grown-up people?” asked Felix suddenly, forgetting that he was in church.
“Oh, that is easy,” said Peter. “You can always just FEEL who is good and who isn’t. And you mustn’t tell lies and you mustn’t murder any one. You must be specially careful not to murder any one. You might be forgiven for telling lies, if you was real sorry for them, but if you murdered any one it would be pretty hard to get forgiven, so you’d better be on the safe side. And you mustn’t commit suicide, because if you did that you wouldn’t have any chance of repenting it; and you mustn’t forget to say your prayers and you mustn’t quarrel with your sister.”
At this point Felicity gave Dan a significant poke with her elbow, and Dan was up in arms at once.
“Don’t you be preaching at me, Peter Craig,” he cried out. “I won’t stand it. I don’t quarrel with my sister any oftener than she quarrels with me. You can just leave me alone.”
“Who’s touching you?” demanded Peter. “I didn’t mention no names. A minister can say anything he likes in the pulpit, as long as he doesn’t mention any names, and nobody can answer back.”
“All right, but just you wait till to-morrow,” growled Dan, subsiding reluctantly into silence under the reproachful looks of the girls.
“You must not play any games on Sunday,” went on Peter, “that is, any week-day games — or whisper in church, or laugh in church — I did that once but I was awful sorry — and you mustn’t take any notice of Paddy — I mean of the family cat at family prayers, not even if he climbs up on your back. And you mustn’t call names or make faces.”
“Amen,” cried Felix, who had suffered many things because
Felicity so often made faces at him.
Peter stopped and glared at him over the edge of the Pulpit
Stone.
“You haven’t any business to call out a thing like that right in the middle of a sermon,” he said.
“They do it in the Methodist church at Markdale,” protested
Felix, somewhat abashed. “I heard them.”
“I know they do. That’s the Methodist way and it is all right for them. I haven’t a word to say against Methodists. My Aunt Jane was one, and I might have been one myself if I hadn’t been so scared of the Judgment Day. But you ain’t a Methodist. You’re a Presbyterian, ain’t you?”
“Yes, of course. I was born that way.”
“Very well then, you’ve got to do things the Presbyterian way.
Don’t let me hear any more of your amens or I’ll amen you.”
“Oh, don’t anybody interrupt again,” implored the Story Girl. “It isn’t fair. How can any one preach a good sermon if he is always being interrupted? Nobody interrupted Beverley.”
“Bev didn’t get up there and pitch into us like that,” muttered
Dan.
“You mustn’t fight,” resumed Peter undauntedly. “That is, you mustn’t fight for the fun of fighting, nor out of bad temper. You must not say bad words or swear. You mustn’t get drunk — although of course you wouldn’t be likely to do that before you grow up, and the girls never. There’s prob’ly a good many other things you mustn’t do, but these I’ve named are the most important. Of course, I’m not saying you’ll go to the bad place for sure if you do them. I only say you’re running a risk. The devil is looking out for the people who do these things and he�
��ll be more likely to get after them than to waste time over the people who don’t do them. And that’s all about the first head of my sermon.”
At this point Sara Ray arrived, somewhat out of breath. Peter looked at her reproachfully.
“You’ve missed my whole first head, Sara,” he said. “that isn’t fair, when you’re to be one of the judges. I think I ought to preach it over again for you.”
“That was really done once. I know a story about it,” said the
Story Girl.
“Who’s interrupting now?” aid Dan slyly.
“Never mind, tell us the story,” said the preacher himself, eagerly leaning over the pulpit.
“It was Mr. Scott who did it,” said the Story Girl. “He was preaching somewhere in Nova Scotia, and when he was more than half way through his sermon — and you know sermons were VERY long in those days — a man walked in. Mr. Scott stopped until he had taken his seat. Then he said, ‘My friend, you are very late for this service. I hope you won’t be late for heaven. The congregation will excuse me if I recapitulate the sermon for our friend’s benefit.’ And then he just preached the sermon over again from the beginning. It is said that that particular man was never known to be late for church again.”
“It served him right,” said Dan, “but it was pretty hard lines on the rest of the congregation.”
“Now, let’s be quiet so Peter can go on with his sermon,” said
Cecily.
Peter squared his shoulders and took hold of the edge of the pulpit. Never a thump had he thumped, but I realized that his way of leaning forward and fixing this one or that one of his hearers with his eye was much more effective.
“I’ve come now to the second head of my sermon — what the bad place is like.”
He proceeded to describe the bad place. Later on we discovered that he had found his material in an illustrated translation of Dante’s Inferno which had once been given to his Aunt Jane as a school prize. But at the time we supposed he must be drawing from Biblical sources. Peter had been reading the Bible steadily ever since what we always referred to as “the Judgment Sunday,” and he was by now almost through it. None of the rest of us had ever read the Bible completely through, and we thought Peter must have found his description of the world of the lost in some portion with which we were not acquainted. Therefore, his utterances carried all the weight of inspiration, and we sat appalled before his lurid phrases. He used his own words to clothe the ideas he had found, and the result was a force and simplicity that struck home to our imaginations.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 389