St. Paul's Church, Berganton, was a small, plain structure of brick and stone, rather prettily situated on the bank of the aforesaid creek, which flowed through the midst of the town. Its sole claim to exterior beauty must have rested on the thick vines which covered its walls, framed its windows, and climbed to the roof of its low, square tower; doing their best to atone for its many architectural deficiencies, its failure to present to the eye a certain material "beauty of holiness," in harmony with the spiritual loveliness of the unseen temple, of which it was the faint type.
Toward this church, on the morning after his visit to Oakstead, Bergan directed his steps. Meeting his uncle in the vestibule, he was soon seated in the square family pew, and had a few moments to look about him, before service.
In its small way, the church was almost as much a memorial of the House of Bergan as the old Hall itself. Sir Harry had been a fair sample of the average English Churchman of his day, with whom a certain amount of religious observance was deemed necessary and becoming, both by way of seemly garmenting for one's self, and good example for one's neighbors. If it did not reach very deep into the heart, it at least imparted a certain completeness and dignity to the outward life.
Moreover, family tradition was strongly in religion's favor. There had always been relations of a highly friendly and decorous sort between the house and the church; and to have turned his back disrespectfully upon the one, would have been to show himself a degenerate scion of the other. As a natural consequence, Sir Harry did not feel that he had done his whole duty to himself, or his posterity, until he had provided a fitting stage for the necessary family ceremonials of christening, marriage, and burial; as well as an appropriate spot for his own enjoyment of a respectable Sunday doze, under the soothing influence of an orthodox sermon, after having duly taken his share in the responses of the morning service. If this school of Churchmen had its faults, it also had its virtues. If its standard of religion was a low one, with a strong leaning toward human pride and selfish indulgence; it was better than the open irreverence and infidelity, the unblushing disregard of religious restraints and sanctions, of later generations.
Under Sir Harry's auspices, therefore, the foundations of St. Paul's were laid, and its walls arose, as a kind of necessary adjunct to Bergan Hall. And his successors, with rare exceptions, had felt it a duty to add to its interior attractions, as well as to make it a continuous family record, by memorial windows of stained glass, mural tablets of bronze or marble, and thank-offerings of font, communion plate, and other appliances and adornments. Some of these, no doubt, were merely self-laudatory, the fitful outgrowth of family pride; others might have sprung from a sense of what was beautiful and fitting,—which was a very good thing, as far as it went, though it went not much below the surface; but a few there were, doubtless, which had been consecrated to their use by heartfelt tears of sorrow, of penitence, or of gratitude. Be this as it may, they all helped (at least, in human eyes) to give the interior of St. Paul's a certain completeness, and even a degree of beauty and harmony.
Still, both in its size and its decorations, the church was far inferior to the Hall. There was a vast disproportion, both in amount and quality, between the space and the furniture set apart for the service and pleasure of a single household, and that consecrated to the worship of God, and the spiritual nurture of His people. But, in the matter of preservation, as well as in answering a definite end, the advantage was greatly on the side of the church and its appointments. Wherever the Bergan hands had grown slack, or had been withdrawn, in that work, others had taken it up, for the love of Christ, and carried it forward to completion, or kept it from lapsing back into chaos.
And so, Bergan—remembering how surely the merely secular memorials of Sir Harry and his successors had been overtaken by the slow feet of decay, while these others had been saved by their connection with an institution having a deeper and broader principle of life—was led into a natural enough, though for him a most unusual, train of thought. He asked himself if Sir Harry would not have done better, even for his own selfish end, to have given the larger share (or, at least, an equal one) of his time, care, and money, to the edifice which had the surest hold upon permanency, and was most likely to be sacredly kept for its original purpose. In our country, more than almost anywhere else, people build houses for other people to dwell in, and Time delights to blot family names from his roll, at least on the page where they were first written. All family mansions, however fair and proud, are surely destined to fall into stranger hands, or to be given over to the Vandal occupation of decay. All families, of however lofty position, are certain to sojourn, at times, in the valley of humiliation, if they do not lose themselves in the deeper valley of extinction. Would it not have been better, then, to have foregone somewhat of the frail and faithless magnificence of Bergan Hall, and linked the dear family name and memory more closely with the indestructible institution which belongs to the ages?
And, as he thus questioned, the narrow walls, the low roof, and the insignificant adornments of the little church seemed slowly to widen and lift themselves to the grand proportions of a vast, pillared temple; and the small chancel window—doing so little, nor doing that little well, to keep alive the fair memory of "Elizabeth, wife of Sir Harry"—became a great glory of pictured saints and angels, through whose diaphanous bodies the rainbow-light fell softly among a crowd of kneeling worshippers;—unto whom the sculptured mural tablets, the jewel-tinted glass, the stately walls, the soaring arch, told over and over again the lovely story, and held up to view the noble example, of a race whose labor and delight it had been to build strong and beautiful the walls of Zion; and which, in so doing, had raised up to itself the most enduring, as well as the most precious of earthly monuments. How much better this than the crumbling splendors of Bergan Hall, and the fading glory of an almost extinct name!
"The Lord is in His holy temple," was here breathed through Bergan's visioned fane, in appropriately awed and solemn tones. Nevertheless, they broke the slender thread of its being. As Bergan rose to his feet, with the rest of the congregation, its majestic vista, its pictured windows, and all its rich array, vanished like the filmy imagery of a dream, at the moment of awakening. But it was not without a keen sense of the contrast that he brought his mind back to the real St. Paul's, and the service going on under its lowlier roof.
Nothing remained but the harmonious voice, which had at once perfected and broken the spell. Glancing toward the chancel, Bergan saw a clergyman, with a face that would have been simply benignant, but for the vivid illumination of a pair of deep-set, dark-blue eyes,—a light never seen save where a great heart sends its warm glow through all the chambers of a grand intellect.
There is something marvellous in the inexhaustible adaptation of the Church service to the wants of the soul. At the same time that it is a miracle of fitness for the ends of public worship, it has its adequate word for every secret, individual need. Though Bergan had heard it hundreds of times before, and always with a hearty admiration of its beauty and comprehensiveness, never had its rhythmic sentences fallen upon his heart with such gracious and grateful effect. Doubtless, this was owing, in great measure, to the subdued frame of mind induced by the events of the last week; but it was also due, in some degree, to the perfection with which the service was rendered. It was neither hurried nor drawled, neither grumbled nor whined, neither a rasping see-saw nor a dull monotone. It was not overlaid with the arts of elocution; nor was it robbed of all life and warmth by the formal emphasis and intonation of the merely correct reader. But, in Mr. Islay's mouth, it became the living voice of living hearts. The dear old words, without losing one whit of the accumulated power, and the sacred associations, of long years of reverent use, came as freshly and as fervently from the speaker's lips, as if they were the heart-warm coinage of the moment.
As an inevitable consequence, Bergan's responses were uttered with answering fervor. And how perfectly they met his wants! How wonderfully they expressed his sense of weakness and failure, his depression and humiliation, his new-born self-distrust, his earnest desire and determination to be stronger against future temptations. In some sentences, there was a depth of meaning and of fitness, that seemed to have been waiting all these years for this moment of complete interpretation. Continually was he startled by subtile references to his peculiar circumstances, by the calm precision with which his sores were probed, and the tender skill which applied to them healing balm.
Especially was he struck by the Collect for the day,—so clearly did it express thoughts and feelings too vague in his own mind to have shaped themselves into words:—
"O Lord, we beseech Thee, absolve Thy people from their offences; that through Thy bountiful goodness, they may all be delivered from the bands of those sins which by their frailty they have committed."
Never before could he have so clearly understood what was meant by the "bands" of sins, committed, not of deliberate intent, but through frailty. How painfully he felt the pressure of those bands! how certainly they would cramp his efforts and hinder his progress! And how singularly distinct they had become to his sight, both in their nature and their effects, by means of that old, oft-repeated, yet ever new, Collect!
With a half-unconscious attempt at divination, Bergan turned over the leaves of his Prayer Book, during the short pause before the psalm, wondering what other mystic meanings were waiting under familiar words, for his future needs. It was not without a little chill at his heart that his eye caught the opening sentences of the burial anthem.
There could be no question about that. Whatever else might or might not be waiting for him, that was certain, some day, to be said over his dead body, and vainly to try to find entrance into his deaf ears. But when? At the end of a long life; in the midst of his days; or ere his work was scarce begun?
His work. What was it? To walk in a vain shadow? To disquiet himself in vain? To heap up riches for an unknown gatherer? To write his name high on the temple of Fame? To become a philanthropist, or a reformer? No; but to "apply his heart unto wisdom."
It was both a deep and a hard saying. Bergan felt that he could not fathom it, even while he saw how ruthlessly it struck at the roots of human pride, and lopped the boughs of personal ambition.
Meanwhile, the psalm had been sung, and with a rustling of leaves and garments, the congregation had settled themselves into their seats. Through the succeeding hush, Mr. Islay quietly sent the words of his text: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest."
It was the word in season!
Bergan left the church that day, not only with a deeper sense of his own mortality, and consequent weakness, than ever before; but also with a modified view of life's work and duty. In one sense, it was a narrower view,—with that narrowness which feels the need of some true, fixed centre, from which to work outward, with any degree of safety and system, and, consequently, of success. He began to see that he who would influence others for good, and through them the world, must first be certain of the point where his influence begins, and that toward which it tends.
Not that Bergan understood, or would ever be likely to understand, the full measure and real character of the change that had been wrought in him under that lowly church-roof. Up to this point, his life had been from without, inward; henceforth, it was to be from within outward. The inner life of the soul was really begun in him,—feebly, half-unconsciously, it is true,—yet possessing a hidden power of assimilation and growth, that would soon bend all things to itself. Storm and sunshine, darkness and light, success and failure, would alike minister to its wants, and help it to grow fair and strong. Things most inimical to it, at first sight, would but give it tougher fibre and lovelier grain; in the drought, it would but send its roots down deeper in pursuit of hidden wells; under the pruning-knife, it would but burst forth into fairer blossoms and richer fruit.
Yet it was no sudden change, for all his life had been a preparation for it. Oftenest the kingdom of God cometh without observation. The stones of the spiritual temple may be fashioned amid clamor and discord, but they are laid in their places with a silence that is full of meaning.