Chapter VIII.
A Vocation.
Dinah, who had risen when the gentlemen came in, but still kept hold of the sheet she was mending, curtsied respectfully when she saw Mr. Irwine looking at her and advancing towards her. He had never yet spoken to her, or stood face to face with her, and her first thought, as her eyes met his, was, “What a well-favoured countenance! Oh that the good seed might fall on that soil, for it would surely flourish.” The agreeable impression must have been mutual, for Mr. Irwine bowed to her with a benignant deference, which would have been equally in place if she had been the most dignified lady of his acquaintance.
“You are only a visitor in this neighbourhood, I think?” were his first words, as he seated himself opposite to her.
“No, sir, I come from Snowfield, in Stonyshire. But my aunt was very kind, wanting me to have rest from my work there, because I’d been ill, and she invited me to come and stay with her for a while.”
“Ah, I remember Snowfield very well; I once had occasion to go there. It’s a dreary bleak place. They were building a cotton-mill there; but that’s many years ago now. I suppose the place is a good deal changed by the employment that mill must have brought.”
“It is changed so far as the mill has brought people there, who get a livelihood for themselves by working in it, and make it better for the tradesfolks. I work in it myself, and have reason to be grateful, for thereby I have enough and to spare. But it’s still a bleak place, as you say, sir—very different from this country.”
“You have relations living there, probably, so that you are attached to the place as your home?”
“I had an aunt there once; she brought me up, for I was an orphan. But she was taken away seven years ago, and I have no other kindred that I know of, besides my Aunt Poyser, who is very good to me, and would have me come and live in this country, which to be sure is a good land, wherein they eat bread without scarceness. But I’m not free to leave Snowfield, where I was first planted, and have grown deep into it, like the small grass on the hill-top.”
“Ah, I daresay you have many religious friends and companions there; you are a Methodist—a Wesleyan, I think?”
“Yes, my aunt at Snowfield belonged to the Society, and I have cause to be thankful for the privileges I have had thereby from my earliest childhood.”
“And have you been long in the habit of preaching? For I understand you preached at Hayslope last night.”
“I first took to the work four years since, when I was twenty-one.”
“Your Society sanctions women’s preaching, then?”
“It doesn’t forbid them, sir, when they’ve a clear call to the work, and when their ministry is owned by the conversion of sinners and the strengthening of God’s people. Mrs. Fletcher, as you may have heard about, was the first woman to preach in the Society, I believe, before she was married, when she was Miss Bosanquet; and Mr. Wesley approved of her undertaking the work. She had a great gift, and there are many others now living who are precious fellow-helpers in the work of the ministry. I understand there’s been voices raised against it in the Society of late, but I cannot but think their counsel will come to nought. It isn’t for men to make channels for God’s Spirit, as they make channels for the watercourses, and say, ‘Flow here, but flow not there.’”
“But don’t you find some danger among your people—I don’t mean to say that it is so with you, far from it—but don’t you find sometimes that both men and women fancy themselves channels for God’s Spirit, and are quite mistaken, so that they set about a work for which they are unfit and bring holy things into contempt?”
“Doubtless it is so sometimes; for there have been evil-doers among us who have sought to deceive the brethren, and some there are who deceive their own selves. But we are not without discipline and correction to put a check upon these things. There’s a very strict order kept among us, and the brethren and sisters watch for each other’s souls as they that must give account. They don’t go every one his own way and say, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’”
“But tell me—if I may ask, and I am really interested in knowing it—how you first came to think of preaching?”
“Indeed, sir, I didn’t think of it at all—I’d been used from the time I was sixteen to talk to the little children, and teach them, and sometimes I had had my heart enlarged to speak in class, and was much drawn out in prayer with the sick. But I had felt no call to preach, for when I’m not greatly wrought upon, I’m too much given to sit still and keep by myself. It seems as if I could sit silent all day long with the thought of God overflowing my soul—as the pebbles lie bathed in the Willow Brook. For thoughts are so great—aren’t they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood; and it’s my besetment to forget where I am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words. That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts are full and we can’t help it. And those were always times of great blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before a congregation of people. But, sir, we are led on, like the little children, by a way that we know not. I was called to preach quite suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work that was laid upon me.”
“But tell me the circumstances—just how it was, the very day you began to preach.”
“It was one Sunday I walked with brother Marlowe, who was an aged man, one of the local preachers, all the way to Hetton-Deeps—that’s a village where the people get their living by working in the lead-mines, and where there’s no church nor preacher, but they live like sheep without a shepherd. It’s better than twelve miles from Snowfield, so we set out early in the morning, for it was summertime; and I had a wonderful sense of the Divine love as we walked over the hills, where there’s no trees, you know, sir, as there is here, to make the sky look smaller, but you see the heavens stretched out like a tent, and you feel the everlasting arms around you. But before we got to Hetton, brother Marlowe was seized with a dizziness that made him afraid of falling, for he overworked himself sadly, at his years, in watching and praying, and walking so many miles to speak the Word, as well as carrying on his trade of linen-weaving. And when we got to the village, the people were expecting him, for he’d appointed the time and the place when he was there before, and such of them as cared to hear the Word of Life were assembled on a spot where the cottages was thickest, so as others might be drawn to come. But he felt as he couldn’t stand up to preach, and he was forced to lie down in the first of the cottages we came to. So I went to tell the people, thinking we’d go into one of the houses, and I would read and pray with them. But as I passed along by the cottages and saw the aged and trembling women at the doors, and the hard looks of the men, who seemed to have their eyes no more filled with the sight of the Sabbath morning than if they had been dumb oxen that never looked up to the sky, I felt a great movement in my soul, and I trembled as if I was shaken by a strong spirit entering into my weak body. And I went to where the little flock of people was gathered together, and stepped on the low wall that was built against the green hillside, and I spoke the words that were given to me abundantly. And they all came round me out of all the cottages, and many wept over their sins, and have since been joined to the Lord. That was the beginning of my preaching, sir, and I’ve preached ever since.”
Dinah had let her work fall during this narrative, which she uttered in her usual simple way, but with that sincere articulate, thrilling treble by which she always mastered her audience. She stooped now to gather up her sewing, and then went on with it as before. Mr. Irwine was deeply interested. He said to himself, “He