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CHAPTER VIII

THAT SUNDAY MORNING

IT is a day of special haste and worry. I have been driven hard with many things all the morning and now it is noon. One is getting flustered: and one's hand shakes. It comes to one, vividly, how Archbishop Tait, on an anxious morning, wrote, 'I will take an hour of prayer.' What the occasion was, you may read in his Life. Further: though he had come to an awful turningpoint, his mind was made up. He was not to pray to be guided. Only to be calmed. purpose to seek some soothing in writing these lines for many unknown friends. The Psalmist said, long ago, 'Return unto thy rest, O my soul.' People have divers ways of resting.

Now, for just an hour, I

I close my eyes for just a minute: the time it takes to say the Lord's Prayer. And I see, vividly as reality, a scene left but a few days behind me.

I see a great square tower, of white stone, rising above the terrace wall. I see it against the green country-side beyond the valley. A little red town lies amid green trees in the valley: but though one could throw a stone to its first houses, it is unseen now. From that tower of

its parish church eight fine bells are pealing for evening service they ring for half an hour, and in many divers ways. The surroundings are strange to me who abide on the Northern side of the Tweed. It is Sunday evening: the evening of Waterloo day and it is blazing summer. Some will long remember the miraculous gleam and glow. Two great Lebanon cedars are in front of these two garden-chairs on one of which I sit. Behind, rise, as they have risen for centuries, the ivied walls of a grand yet home-like dwelling. The slender figure that has risen from the chair beside me, and is moving about on the turf, with an anxious face, is the Bishop of one of the greatest Sees in this world. He has a little book in his hand, wherein he is at intervals writing down notes for a speech to be made to-morrow. The hop gardens are all about strange to a Scottish eye. And Charles Kingsley wrote that these gardens are the finest in England. We are going, in a little, to evening service in the chapel of this house: a service which must needs be of extreme interest to me, though I am to be no more than a worshipper.

But let me look back on the service of this morning: which was very singular and touching to me. I joined in it with a full heart: and yet, as it went on, I thought of friends at a distance, and felt I must tell them about it all. The writer is one of those human beings who cannot willingly keep any remarkable experience to themselves. We long for sympathy, which we do not always get.

The service was in a large but very plain hall. In it

were gathered, according to wont, the inmates of the PoorHouse of this district. Workhouse they call it here. Perhaps 200 or more. I see the worn old faces: the bent figures the shaky hands. Almost all seemed very old: this life had been too much for them: they had to find bread to eat and raiment to put on of public charity and all that remained now was to wait for the end. The old men, in white jackets, were on one's left: the old women, in neat uniform dresses, on the right: and just in front, two and two, were a good many old couples, who had climbed the hill together, who had tottered far down it: but who were not divided even here, and who in a very little would sleep together at the foot. I do not think I ever saw a congregation which touched one more to see. I confess the sight of it brought the tears to one's eyes. Yet they looked quietly cheery, the poor old souls. Many of them had learned, by overwhelming experience, how serious is the petition, 'Give us this day our daily bread.' And they were sure of that, here.

The worship was different from that which we know so well in Scotland. In a little, through the gleam of sunshine outside, came the chaplain in his white robe, and after him the Bishop of Winchester. Wolsey, Andrewes, Wilberforce, have sat in that chair. As the ministrants entered, the congregation rose up to welcome them ever to me a heart-warming sight: though I never saw it in Scotland save in the University Chapel at Glasgow and the College Chapel at St. Andrews. And I was informed that in the latter edifice it was done by mistake on that

particular day. I must not forget the parish church of Govan on the day of its consecration; nor the vast St. Then, with immense fervour, tune was that familiar here.

Cuthbert's in Edinburgh. came Rock of Ages: the And the service went on, given in a loud but solemn voice for many of those good folk were dull of hearing through their many years. I never heard responses rendered more heartily. The next hymn which came in its proper place, we should not have called a hymn for its first line was, 'All people that on earth do dwell.' And there it was to the famous old tune we sang in Kyle when I was a little child: the grand tune which all Christian people know. Finally, just before the sermon, 'Jesus, Lover of my soul.' Hymns must be very real for a congregation like that. Anything falsetto anything too sweet and pretty anything above the experience of simple folk is excluded here. And indeed reality is everything, lifting up heart and voice to God Almighty. The other day I received a written request to state what I held as the six best hymns in the language. answer was that it would have been far easier to name the fifty best. But I wrote my list of six. And those two hymns stood on it. A very great man had given his list and on both Rock of Ages stood first. But next to it he placed what I should not have numbered in the best fifty Sir Walter's attempt to translate some verses of the untranslatable Dies Irae. Very exceptional are the judgments of very exceptional men.

The

Then to the little desk, homely as that from which

I preached my very earliest sermon in a shabby schoolroom in a black Glasgow Wynd, the preacher quietly and modestly came. You may 'consecrate' a man: you may 'enthrone' a man: yet the genuine man abides the simple homely human being. Certain flowers in pots were indeed piled up in front of the little deal desk: the like of which were not in my father's parish long ago. And the farthest reach of my vesting for that great occasion in my little life was a white neckcloth while here were the beautiful robes of a prince of the Church, and round the neck the blue ribbon of the Garter, with the order. The good worshippers spent not a thought on these: but they knew perfectly what the Prelate of that famous company wears everywhere else: and they would have been mortified had less been made to serve here. The next day I stood beside the stately throne in the magnificent Winchester Cathedral but I thought its Bishop never looked better or happier than in this homely place. I had gone with him with special interest that Sunday morning: that I might listen to his message to a congregation so special. I have heard him preach times beyond my numbering, but never more heartily than here. Sense of what is fitting rarely fails men so placed. And one felt how fit it was that the sermon should be a plain, full, winning statement of Christ's comforting and saving gospel: clear and simple so that all could understand it: and just the message we all need so much to hear. Ay, as the good Kate Hankey says so wisely, 'Tell me the Story often: For I forget so soon!' But not by one syllable the