Chapter 30. The Revival

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_ CHAPTER XXX. THE REVIVAL

Before the close of the herring fishing, one of those movements of the spiritual waters, which in different forms, and under different names, manifest themselves at various intervals of space and of time, was in full vortex. It was supposed by the folk of Portlossie to have begun in the village of Scaurnose, but by the time it was recognized as existent, no one could tell whence it had come, any more than he could predict whither it was going. Of its spiritual origin it may be also predicated with confidence that its roots lay deeper than human insight could reach, and were far more interwoven than human analysis could disentangle.

One notable fact bearing on its nature was, that it arose amongst the people themselves, without the intervention or immediate operation of the clergy, who indeed to a man were set against it. Hence the flood was at first free from the results of one influence most prolific of the pseudo spiritual, namely, the convulsive efforts of men with faith in a certain evil system of theology, to rouse a galvanic life by working on the higher feelings through the electric sympathies of large assemblages, and the excitement of late hours, prolonged prayers and exhortations, and sometimes even direct appeal to individuals in public presence. The end of these things is death, for the reaction is towards spiritual hardness and a more confirmed unbelief: when the excitement has died away, those at least in whom the spiritual faculty is for the time exhausted, presume that they have tasted and seen, and found that nothing is there. The whole thing is closely allied to the absurdity of those who would throw down or who would accept the challenge to test the reality of answer to prayer by applying the force of a multitudinous petition to the will of the supposed divinity--I say supposed divinity, because a being whose will could be thus moved like a water wheel could not be in any sense divine. If there might be a religious person so foolish and irreverent as to agree to such a test--crucial indeed, but in a far other sense than that imagined --I would put it to him whether the very sense of experiment would not destroy in his mind all faculty of prayer, placing him in the position, no more of a son of God, but of one who, tempting the Lord his God, may read his rebuke where it stands recorded for the ages.

But where such a movement has originated amongst the people, the very facts adduced to argue its falsehood from its vulgarity, are to me so many indications on the other side; for I could ill believe in a divine influence which did not take the person such as he was; did not, while giving him power from beyond him, leave his individuality uninjured, yea intensify it, subjecting the very means of its purification, the spread of the new leaven, to the laws of time and growth. To look at the thing from the other side, the genuineness of the man's reception of it will be manifest in the meeting of his present conditions with the new thing--in the show of results natural to one of his degree of development. To hear a rude man utter his experience in the forms of cultivation, would be at once to suspect the mere glitter of a reflex, and to doubt an illumination from within. I repeat, the genuine influence shows itself such in showing that it has laid hold of the very man, at the very stage of growth he had reached. The dancing of David before the ark, the glow of St. Stephen's face, and the wild gestures and rude songs of miners and fishers and negroes, may all be signs of the presence of the same spirit in temples various. Children will rush and shout and hollo for the same joy which sends others of the family to weep apart.

Of course the one infallible test as to whether any such movement is of man without God, or of God within the man, is the following life; only a large space for fluctuation must be allowed where a whole world of passions and habits has to be subjected to the will of God through the vice regency of a human will hardly or only just awakened, and as yet unconscious of itself.

The nearest Joseph Mair could come to the origin of the present movement was the influence of a certain Stornoway fisherman, whom they had brought back with them on their return from the coasts of Lewis--a man of Celtic fervour and faith, who had agreed to accompany them probably in the hope of serving a set of the bravest and hardest working men in the world, who yet spent a large part of their ease in drinking up the earnings of fierce and perilous labour. There were a few amongst them, he found, already prepared to receive the word, and to each of these he spoke in private. They spoke to one another, then each to his friend outside the little circle. Next a few met to pray. These drew others in, and at length it was delivered from mouth to mouth that on the following Sunday, at a certain early hour in the morning, a meeting would be held in the Bailie's Barn, a cave large enough to receive all the grown population of Scaurnose.

The news of this gathering of course reached the Seaton, where some were inclined to go and see, others to go and hear; most of even the latter class, however, being at the same time more than inclined to mock at the idea of a popular religious assembly.

Not so Duncan MacPhail, who, notwithstanding the more than half Pagan character of his ideas, had too much reverence to mock at anything in the form of religion, to all the claims of which he was even eager to assent: when the duty of forgiveness was pressed upon him too hard, he would take his last refuge in excepting to the authority of the messenger. He regarded the announcement of the meeting with the greater respect that the man from Stornoway was a MacLeod, and so of his mother's clan.

It was now the end of August, when the sky is of a paler blue in the day time, and greener about the sunset. The air had in it a touch of cold, which, like as a faint acid affects a sweet drink, only rendered the warmth more pleasant. On the appointed morning, the tide was low, and the waves died gently upon the sand, seeming to have crept away from the shore to get nearer to the sunrise. Duncan was walking along the hard wet sand towards the promontory, with Mr Graham on one side of him and Malcolm on the other. There was no gun to fire this morning; it was Sunday, and all might repose undisturbed: the longer sleep in bed, possibly the shorter in church.

"I wish you had your sight but for a moment, Mr MacPhail," said the schoolmaster. "How this sunrise would make you leap for joy."

"Ay!" said Malcolm, "it wad gar daddy grip till 's pipes in twa hurries."

"And what should she'll pe wanting her pipes for?" asked Duncan.

"To praise God wi'," answered Malcolm.

"Ay; ay;" murmured Duncan thoughtfully. "Tey are tat."

"What are they?" asked Mr Graham gently.

"For to praise Cod," answered Duncan solemnly.

"I almost envy you," returned Mr Graham, "when I think how you will praise God one day. What a glorious waking you will have!"

"Ten it 'll pe your opinion, Mr Craham, tat she'll pe sleeping her sound sleep, and not pe lying wite awake in her coffin all ta time?"

"A good deal better than that, Mr MacPhail!" returned the schoolmaster cheerily. "It's my opinion that you are, as it were, asleep now, and that the moment you die, you will feel as if you had just woke up, and for the first time in your life. For one thing, you will see far better then than any of us do now."

But poor Duncan could not catch the idea; his mind was filled with a preventing fancy.

"Yes; I know; at ta tay of chutchment," he said. "Put what 'll pe ta use of ketting her eyes open pefore she 'll pe up? How should she pe seeing with all ta earth apove her--and ta cravestone too tat I know my poy Malcolm will pe laying on ta top of his old cranfather to keep him waarm, and let peoples pe know tat ta plind piper will be lying town pelow wite awake and fery uncomfortable?"

"Excuse me, Mr MacPhail, but that's all a mistake," said Mr Graham positively. "The body is but a sort of shell that we cast off when we die, as the corn casts off its husk when it begins to grow. The life of the seed comes up out of the earth in a new body, as St Paul says,"

"Ten," interrupted .Duncan, "she'll pe crowing up out of her crave like a seed crowing up to pe a corn or a parley?"

The schoolmaster began to despair of ever conveying to the piper the idea that the living man is the seed sown, and that when the body of this seed dies, then the new body, with the man in it, springs alive out of the old one--that the death of the one is the birth of the other. Far more enlightened people than Duncan never imagine, and would find it hard to believe, that the sowing of the seed spoken of might mean something else than the burying of the body; not perceiving what yet surely is plain enough, that that would be the sowing of a seed already dead, and incapable of giving birth to anything whatever.

"No, no," he said, almost impatiently, "you will never be in the grave: it is only your body that will go there, with nothing like life about it except the smile the glad soul has left on it. The poor body when thus forsaken is so dead that it can't even stop smiling. Get Malcolm to read to you out of the book of the Revelation how there were multitudes even then standing before the throne. They had died in this world, yet there they were, well and happy."

"Oh, yes!" said Duncan, with no small touch of spitefulness in his tone, "--twang twanging at teir fine colden herps! She'll not be thinking much of ta herp for a music maker! And peoples tells her she'll not pe hafing her pipes tere! Och hone! Och hone!--She'll chust pe lying still and not pe ketting up, and when ta work is ofer, and eferypody cone away, she'll chust pe ketting up, and taking a look apout her, to see if she'll pe finding a stand o' pipes that some coot highlandman has peen left pehint him when he tied lately."

"You'll find it rather lonely--won't you?"

"Yes; no toubt, for they'll aal be cone up. Well, she'll haf her pipes; and she could not co where ta pipes was looked town upon by all ta creat people--and all ta smaal ones too."

They had now reached the foot of the promontory, and turned northwards, each of his companions taking an arm of the piper to help him over the rocks that lay between them and the mouth of the cave, which soon yawned before them like a section of the mouth of a great fish. Its floor of smooth rock had been swept out clean, and sprinkled with dry sea sand. There were many hollows and projections along its sides rudely fit for serving as seats, to which had been added a number of forms extemporized of planks and thwarts. No one had yet arrived when they entered, and they went at once to the further end of the cave, that Duncan, who was a little hard of hearing, might be close to the speakers. There his companions turned and looked behind them: an exclamation, followed by a full glance at each other, broke from each.

The sun, just clearing the end of the opposite promontory, shone right into the mouth of the cave, from the midst of a tumult of gold, in which all the other colours of his approach had been swallowed up. The triumph strode splendent over sea and shore, subduing waves and rocks to a path for its mighty entrance into that dark cave on the human coast. With his back to the light stood Duncan in the bottom of the cave, his white hair gleaming argentine, as if his poor blind head were the very goal of the heavenly progress. He turned round.

"Will it pe a fire? She feels something warm on her head," he said, rolling his sightless orbs, upon which the splendour broke waveless, casting a grim shadow of him on the jagged rock behind.

"No," answered Mr Graham; "it is the sun you feel. He's just out of his grave."

The old man gave a grunt.

"I often think," said the schoolmaster to Malcolm, "that possibly the reason why we are told so little about the world we are going to, is, that no description of it would enter our minds any more than a description of that sunrise would carry a notion of its reality into the mind of your grandfather."

"She's obleeched to you, Mr Craham!" said the piper with offence. "You take her fery stupid. You're so proud of your eyes, you think a plind man cannot see at aall! Chm!"

But the folk began to assemble. By twos and threes, now from the one side, now from the other, they came dropping in as if out of the rush of the blinding sunshine, till the seats were nearly filled, while a goodly company gathered about the mouth of the cave, there to await the arrival of those who had called the meeting. Presently MacLeod, a small thin man, with iron gray hair, keen, shrewd features, large head, and brown complexion, appeared, and made his way to the further end of the cave, followed by three or four of the men of Scaurnose, amongst whom walked a pale faced, consumptive lad, with bowed shoulders and eyes on the ground: he it was who, feebly clambering on a ledge of rock, proceeded to conduct the worship of the assembly. His parents were fisher people of Scaurnose, who to make a minister of him had been half starving the rest of their family; but he had broken down at length under the hardships of endless work and wretched food. From the close of the session in March, he had been teaching in Aberdeen until a few days before, when he came home, aware that he was dying, and full of a fervour betraying anxiety concerning himself rather than indicating the possession of good news for others. The sun had now so far changed his position, that, although he still shone into the cave, the preacher stood in the shadow, out of which gleamed his wasted countenance, pallid and sombre and solemn, as first he poured forth an abject prayer for mercy, conceived in the spirit of a slave supplicating the indulgence of a hard master, and couched in words and tones that bore not a trace of the filial; then read the chapter containing the curses of Mount Ebal, and gave the congregation one of Duncan's favourite psalms to sing; and at length began a sermon on what he called the divine justice. Not one word was there in it, however, concerning God's love of fair dealing, either as betwixt himself and man, or as betwixt man and his fellow; the preacher's whole notion of justice was the punishment of sin; and that punishment was hell, and hell only; so that the whole sermon was about hell from beginning to end--hell appalling, lurid, hopeless. And the eyes of all were fixed upon him with that glow from within which manifests the listening spirit. Some of the women were as pale as himself from sympathetic horror, doubtless also from a vague stirring of the conscience, which, without accusing them of crime, yet told them that all was not right between them and their God; while the working of the faces of some of the men betrayed a mind not at all at ease concerning their prospects. It was an eloquent and powerful utterance, and might doubtless claim its place in the economy of human education; but it was at best a pagan embodiment of truths such as a righteous pagan might have discovered, and breathed nothing of the spirit of Christianity, being as unjust towards God as it represented him to be towards men: the God of the preacher was utterly unlike the father of Jesus. Urging his hearers to flee from the wrath to come, he drew such a picture of an angry Deity as in nothing resembled the revelation in the Son.

"Fellow sinners," he said in conclusion, "haste ye and flee from the wrath to come. Now is God waiting to be gracious--but only so long as his Son holds back the indignation ready to burst forth and devour you. He sprinkles its flames with the scarlet wool and the hyssop of atonement; he stands between you and justice, and pleads with his incensed Father for his rebellious creatures. Well for you that he so stands and so pleads! Yet even he could not prevail for ever against such righteous anger; and it is but for a season he will thus entreat; the day will come when he will stand aside and let the fiery furnace break forth and slay you. Then, with howling and anguish, with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, ye shall know that God is a God of justice, that his wrath is one with his omnipotence, and his hate everlasting as the fires of hell. But do as ye will, ye cannot thwart his decrees, for to whom he will he showeth mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth."

Scarcely had he ceased, when a loud cry, clear and keen, rang through every corner of the cave. Well might the preacher start and gaze around him! for the cry was articulate, sharply modelled into the three words--"Father o' lichts!" Some of the men gave a scared groan, and some of the women shrieked. None could tell whence the cry had come, and Malcolm alone could guess who must have uttered it.

"Yes," said the preacher, recovering himself, and replying to the voice, "he is the Father of lights, but only to them that are in Christ Jesus;--he is no father, but an avenging deity, to them over whom the robe of his imputed righteousness is not cast. Jesus Christ himself will not be gracious for ever. Kiss ye the Son, lest even he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little."

"Father o' lichts!" rang the cry again, and louder than before.

To Malcolm it seemed close behind him, but he had the self possession not to turn his head. The preacher took no farther notice. MacLeod stood up, and having, in a few simple remarks, attempted to smooth some of the asperities of the youth's address, announced another meeting in the evening, and dismissed the assembly with a prayer.

Malcolm went home with his grandfather. He was certain it was the laird's voice he had heard, but he would attempt no search after his refuge that day, for dread of leading to its discovery by others.

That evening most of the boats of the Seaton set out for the fishing ground as usual, but not many went from Scaurnose. Blue Peter would go no more of a Sunday, hence Malcolm was free for the night, and again with his grandfather walked along the sands in the evening towards the cave.

The sun was going down on the other side of the promontory before them, and the sky was gorgeous in rose and blue, in peach and violet, in purple and green, barred and fretted, heaped and broken, scattered and massed--every colour edged and tinged and harmonized with a glory as of gold, molten with heat, and glowing with fire. The thought that his grandfather could not see, and had never seen such splendour, made Malcolm sad, and very little was spoken between them as they went.

When they arrived, the service had already commenced, but room was made for them to pass, and a seat was found for Duncan where he could hear. Just as they entered, Malcolm spied, amongst those who preferred the open air at the mouth of the cavern, a face which he was all but certain was that of one of the three men from whom he had rescued the laird.

MacLeod was to address them. He took for his text the words of the Saviour, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," and founded upon them a simple, gracious, and all but eloquent discourse, very different in tone and influence from that of the young student. It must be confessed that the Christ he presented was very far off, and wrapped in a hazy nimbus of abstraction; that the toil of his revelation was forgotten, the life he lived being only alluded to, and that not for the sake of showing what he was, and hence what God is, but to illustrate the conclusions of men concerning him; and yet there was that heart of reality in the whole thing which no moral vulgarity of theory, no injustice towards God, no tyranny of stupid logic over childlike intuitions, could so obscure as to render it inoperative. From the form of the Son of Man, thus beheld from afar, came a warmth like the warmth from the first approach of the far off sun in spring, sufficing to rouse the earth from the sleep of winter--in which all the time the same sun has been its warmth and has kept it from sleeping unto death.

MacLeod was a thinker--aware of the movements of his own heart, and able to reflect on others the movements of their hearts; hence, although in the main he treated the weariness and oppression from which Jesus offered to set them free, as arising from a sense of guilt and the fear of coming misery, he could not help alluding to more ordinary troubles, and depicting other phases of the heart's restlessness with such truth and sympathy that many listened with a vague feeling of exposure to a supernatural insight. The sermon soon began to show its influence; for a sense of the need of help is so present to every simple mind, that, of all messages, the offer of help is of easiest reception; some of the women were sobbing, and the silent tears were flowing down the faces of others; while of the men many were looking grave and thoughtful, and kept their eyes fixed on the speaker. At length, towards the close, MacLeod judged it needful to give a word of warning.

"But, my friends," he said, and his voice grew low and solemn, "I dare not make an end without reminding you that, if you stop your ears against the gracious call, a day will come when not even the merits of the Son of God will avail you, but the wrath of the--"

"Father o' Lichts!" once more burst ringing out, like the sudden cry of a trumpet in the night.

MacLeod took no notice of it, but brought his sermon at once to a close, and specified the night of the following Saturday for next meeting. They sung a psalm, and after a slow, solemn, thoughtful prayer, the congregation dispersed.

But Malcolm, who, anxious because of the face he had seen as he entered, had been laying his plans, after begging his grandfather in a whisper to go home without him for a reason he would afterwards explain, withdrew into a recess whence he could watch the cave, without being readily discovered.

Scarcely had the last voices of the retreating congregation died away, when the same ill favoured face peeped round the corner of the entrance, gave a quick glance about, and the man came in. Like a snuffing terrier, he went peering in the dimness into every hollow, and behind every projection, until he suddenly caught sight of Malcolm, probably by a glimmering of his eyes.

"Hillo, Humpy!" he cried in a tone of exultation, and sprang up the rough ascent of a step or two to where he sat.

Malcolm half rose, and met him with a well delivered blow between the eyes. He fell, and lay for a moment stunned. Malcolm sat down again and watched him. When he came to himself, he crept out, muttering imprecations. He knew it was not Humpy who dealt that blow.

As soon as he was gone, Malcolm in his turn began searching. He thought he knew every hole and corner of the cave, and there was but one where the laird, who, for as near him as he heard his voice the first time, certainly had not formed one of the visible congregation, might have concealed himself: if that was his covert, there he must be still, for he had assuredly not issued from it.

Immediately behind where he had sat in the morning, was a projection of rock, with a narrow cleft between it and the wall of the cavern, visible only from the very back of the cave, where the roof came down low. But when he thought of it, he saw that even here he could not have been hidden in the full light of the morning from the eyes of some urchins who had seated themselves as far back as the roof would allow them, and they had never looked as if they saw anything more than other people. Still, if he was to search at all, here he must begin. The cleft had scarcely more width than sufficed to admit his body, and his hands told him at once that there was no laird there. Could there be any opening further? If there was, it could only be somewhere above. Was advance in that direction possible?

He felt about, and finding two or three footholds, began to climb in the dark, and had reached the height of six feet or so, when he came to a horizontal projection, which, for a moment only, barred his further progress. Having literally surmounted this, that is, got on the top of it, he found there a narrow vertical opening: was it but a shallow recess, or did it lead into the heart of the rock?

Carefully feeling his way both with hands and feet, he advanced a step or two, and came to a place where the passage widened a little, and then took a sharp turn and became so narrow that it was with difficulty he forced himself through. It was, however, but one close pinch, and he found himself, as his feet told him, at the top of a steep descent. He stood for a moment hesitating, for prudence demanded a light. The sound of the sea was behind him, but all in front was still as the darkness of the grave. Suddenly up from unknown depths of gloom, came the tones of a sweet childish voice, singing The Lord's my Shepherd.

Malcolm waited until the psalm was finished, and then called out:

"Mr Stewart! I'm here--Malcolm MacPhail. I want to see ye. Tell him it's me, Phemy."

A brief pause followed; then Phemy's voice answered:

"Come awa' doon. He says ye s' be welcome."

"Canna ye shaw a licht than; for I dinna ken a fit o' the ro'd," said Malcolm.

The next moment a light appeared at some little distance below, and presently began to ascend, borne by Phemy, towards the place where he stood. She took him by the hand without a word, and led him down a slope, apparently formed of material fallen from the roof, to the cave already described. The moment he entered it, he marked the water in its side, the smooth floor, the walls hollowed into a thousand fantastic cavities, and knew he had come upon the cave in which his great grandfather had found refuge so many years before. Changes in its mouth had rendered entrance difficult, and it had slipped by degrees from the knowledge of men.

At the bottom of the slope, by the side of the well, sat the laird. Phemy set the little lantern she carried on its edge. The laird rose and shook hands with Malcolm and asked him to be seated.

"I'm sorry to say they're efter ye again, laird," said Malcolm after a little ordinary chat.

Mr Stewart was on his feet instantly.

"I maun awa'. Tak care o' Phemy," he said hurriedly.

"Na, na, sir," said Malcolm, laying his hand on his arm; "there's nae sic hurry. As lang's I'm here ye may sit still; an', as far's I ken, naebody's fun' the w'y in but mysel', an' that was yer am wyte (blame), laird. But ye hae garred mair fowk nor me luik, an' that's the pity o' 't."

"I tauld ye, sir, ye sudna cry oot," said Phemy.

"I couldna help it," said Stewart apologetically.

"Weel, ye sudna ha' gane near them again," persisted the little woman.

"Wha kent but they kent whaur I cam frae?" persisted the laird.

"Sit ye doon, sir, an' lat's hae a word aboot it," said Malcolm cheerily.

The laird cast a doubting look at Phemy.

"Ay, sit doon," said Phemy.

Mr Stewart yielded, but nervous starts and sudden twitches of the muscles betrayed his uneasiness: it looked as if his body would jump up and run without his mind's consent.

"Hae ye ony w'y o' winnin' oot o' this, forbye (besides) the mou' o' the cave there?" asked Malcolm.

"Nane 'at I ken o'," answered Phemy. "But there's heaps o' hidy holes i' the inside o' 't."

"That's a' very weel; but gien they keppit the mou' an' took their time till 't, they bude to grip ye."

"There may be, though," resumed Phemy. "It gangs back a lang road. I hae never been in sicht o' the cud o' 't. It comes doon verra laich in some places, and gangs up heich again in ithers, but nae sign o' an en' till 't."

"Is there ony soon' o' watter intill 't?" asked Malcolm.

"Na, nane at ever I hard. But I'll tell ye what I hae hard: I hae hard the flails gaein' thud, thud, abune my heid."

"Hoot toot, Phemy!" said Malcolm; "we're a guid mile an' a half frae the nearest ferm toon, an' that I reckon, 'll be the Hoose ferm."

"I canna help that," persisted Phemy. "Gien 't wasna the flails, whiles ane, an' whiles twa, I dinna ken what it cud hae been. Hoo far it was I canna say, for it's ill measurin' i' the dark, or wi' naething but a bowat (lantern) i' yer han'; but gien ye ca'd it mair, I wadna won'er."

"It's a michty howkin!" said Malcolm; "but for a' that it wadna haud ye frae the grip o' thae scoonrels: wharever ye ran they cud rin efter ye."

"I think we cud sort them," said Phemy. "There's ae place, a guid bit farrer in, whaur the rufe comes doon to the flure, leavin' jist ae sma' hole to creep throu': it wad be fine to hae a gey muckle stane handy, jist to row (roll) athort it, an' gar't luik as gien 't was the en' o' a'thing. But the hole's sae sma' at the laird has ill gettin' his puir hack throu' 't."

"I couldna help won'erin' hoo he wan throu' at the tap there," said Malcolm.

At this the laird laughed almost merrily, and rising, took Malcolm by the hand and led him to the spot, where he made him feel a rough groove in the wall of the rocky strait: into this hollow he laid his hump, and so slid sideways through.

Malcolm squeezed himself through after him, saying,--

"Noo ye're oot, laird, hadna ye better come wi' me hame to Miss Horn's, whaur ye wad be as safe's gien ye war in h'aven itsel'?"

"Na, I canna gang to Miss Horn's," he replied.

"What for no, laird?"

Pulling Malcolm down towards him, the laird whispered in his ear,

"'Cause she's fleyt at my back."

A moment or two passed ere Malcolm could think of a reply both true and fitting. When at length he spoke again there was no answer, and he knew that he was alone.

He left the cave and set out for the Seaton; but, unable to feel at peace about his friends, resolved, on the way, to return after seeing his grandfather, and spend the night in the outer cave. _

Read next: Chapter 31. Wandering Stars

Read previous: Chapter 29. Florimel And Duncan

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