The Marquis of Lossie eBook

They had but one of their family at home—­the youngest son, whom his father was having educated for the dissenting ministry, in the full conviction that he was doing not a little for the truth, and justifying its cause before men, by devoting to its service the son of a man of standing and worldly means, whom he might have easily placed in a position to make money.  The youth was of simple character and good inclination—­ready to do what he saw to be right, but slow in putting to the question anything that interfered with his notions of laudable ambition, or justifiable self interest.  He was attending lectures at a dissenting college in the neighbourhood, for his father feared Oxford or Cambridge, not for his morals, but his opinions in regard to church and state.

The schoolmaster spent a few days in the house.  His friend was generally in town, and his wife, regarding him as very primitive and hardly fit for what she counted society—­the class, namely, that she herself represented, was patronising and condescending; but the young fellow, finding, to his surprise, that he knew a great deal more about his studies than he did himself, was first somewhat attracted and then somewhat influenced by him, so that at length an intimacy tending to friendship arose between them.

Mr Graham was not a little shocked to discover that his ideas in respect of the preacher’s calling were of a very worldly kind.  The notions of this fledgling of dissent differed from those of a clergyman of the same stamp in this:—­the latter regards the church as a society with accumulated property for the use of its officers; the former regarded it as a community of communities, each possessing a preaching house which ought to be made commercially successful.  Saving influences must emanate from it of course—­ but dissenting saving influences.

His mother was a partisan to a hideous extent.  To hear her talk you would have thought she imagined the apostles the first dissenters, and that the main duty of every Christian soul was to battle for the victory of Congregationalism over Episcopacy, and Voluntaryism over State Endowment.  Her every mode of thinking and acting was of a levelling commonplace.  With her, love was liking, duty something unpleasant—­generally to other people, and kindness patronage.  But she was just in money matters, and her son too had every intention of being worthy of his hire, though wherein lay the value of the labour with which he thought to counterpoise that hire, it were hard to say.

CHAPTER XXVII:  THE PREACHER