University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

The following day being the Sabbath, the
village of Dangerfieldville was in a state of
great excitement on account of the arrival of
a famous preacher; an event of no small consequence
where so few novelties occurred to
rouse the rural populace from the even tenor
of their daily occupations. As happens in
many parts of our country, there was a neat
little church in the village, but no regular clergyman,
and they were indebted to the occasional
visits of itinerants for their opportunities
of public devotion. These happened so seldom,
that the arrival of a preacher was quite an
event. All, therefore, flocked to the little
church; some to while away the idle Sabbath
morn, some to laugh, and some to say their
prayers.

The church was filled when the preacher
ascended the pulpit, and there might be observed
a little flurry among the congregation,
a low whisper, as they settled themselves in
reverent attention to hear what he had to say.
He was a tall, raw-boned, fleshless man, with
an appearance of great physical energy; high
cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, deep sparkling
eyes, a pale aspect, a long face, and a profusion
of stiff black hair standing almost upright

above his high forehead. There was something
not only energetic, but intellectual about him;
that species of strong unpolished intellect
which sometimes performs such wonders in
this world. There was a wild earnestness in
his tone and gesture, as he proceeded in his
discourse, which evidenced his sincerity and
fervour; an absence of all attempts at rhetorical
embellishment, which sometimes, nay
often, approached to vulgarity, and while it
created a shuddering thrill of horror in apprehensive
minds, in others awakened a feeling of
the burlesque. But with all this, there were
genius, energy, pathos, and enthusiasm, we
may say fanaticism, combined; and though
undisciplined and unpolished, still their strength
and force were perhaps only the more irresistible.
He was the preacher of terror, not of
religion; he relied more on the fears than the
reason or the hopes of mankind; forgetting
that the great Being who has made mercy the
first of our duties, cannot have adopted vengeance
as the first of his attributes; and that,
in the language of a reverend bard,

The moisture burst from his forehead, and
rolled down his hollow cheeks; he writhed in
the toils of his own sublimated energies, as he
proceeded. He first drew a picture of the vengeance
of Heaven even in this world, where it
was supposed offenders escaped its justice; he
painted, in colours of exaggerated truth, the
torments of a guilty conscience struggling with
present pain, and the fear of future punishments,
and how the decay of the body only
added tenfold to the terrors of the dying sinner.
He dwelt with a sort of savage exultation on
the various dispensations of this world of guilt
and misery; told how the wrath of the Almighty
visited the sins of the father upon the children
in a thousand hereditary diseases and defects,
the consequences of his crimes and unbelief.
To some he sent the gout, to others he sent
lameness, to others blindness, to others apoplexy,
and to others he sent idiocy and madness;
thus punishing generation after generation,
by taking away from them the faculties
they had perverted to the purposes of impiety
and unbelief.

“Thus,” exclaimed he, in a voice of thunder,
“thus are the wicked deprived of their
boasted impunity even in this world. But the
world to come, the after world! the punishment
the guilty soul endures throughout all eternity.
Look! you don't see it, but I see it! I see you
at this moment standing like children laughing
on the edge of a high rock, on the very brink
of eternal flames. The awful gulf lies yawning
right before you, and yet you take no care to
avoid it. I see you,” and he leaned over the

pulpit and looked down as if in horror, “I see
you tumbling down, down, down, one after the
other: there you go, there! there goes a young
man who thought because he was young he
would never die; there! there goes a vain
girl, who, because she had red cheeks, and
sparkling eyes, and a snow-white bosom,
dreamed that death would spare her, and the
great Judge pardon her offences on the score
of her beauty. And there! there tumbles a
trembling old sinner, who, because he had lived
to fourscore years, thought he would live for
ever. And there! see how the smoke rises!
but I cannot look any more,” and he sank back
into the pulpit and was silent a few moments,
while the simple congregation sat stupified
with terror. Suddenly he clapped his hands to
his ears.

“But ah! my brethren, what is that I hear?
It is in vain I try to shut it out from my eyes—
it comes in at my ears. From the dark den of
your suffering I hear the screams, the shrieks,
the curses of tormented sinners. One cries, O
it would be a happy thing for me if this toothache
of mine would last only a thousand years
or two. Another prays that he may be let off
for a hundred thousand years of gout—that is
the glutton, the winebibber. Another beseeches
the eternal ministers of vengeance, who stand
with their ladles, throwing oil, and pitch, and
pine-knots on the fire to keep it up, that he may
have a drop of muddy salt water to cool his
tongue. That is a man who thought because
he was honest, and just, and loved his wife and
children, and fulfilled all his worldly duties, he

would be happy hereafter. Miserable fool! I
tell thee, my brethren, these are the devil's
links, that chain the immortal soul flat down
upon the earth, and keep it there. But what a
howl was that! Did you not hear it? Ah!
now I look down, I see who it is; that is a
vain, conceited philosopher, who said, in the
pride of his heart, there is no God, no hereafter,
no heaven, and no hell. Ah hah! he
knows better now. Hark! he is lamenting in
the midst of his torments, that he had not been
created a toad, a serpent, any crawling, filthy
reptile of the mud and mire, rather than an
immortal being, to suffer everlasting torments.

“My brethren, O! that you could be like
a quill in the fire, to be shrivelled and burnt up
in a moment. But no, you will writhe in torments,
and still live, and every hour will add
to your capacity to feel more keenly. You
think, I suppose, you'll get used to it at last.
But, believe me, you will not; you will feel ten
thousand times the agony that the poor people
did the other day, who were scalded to death in
the steamboat. And then, oh! then, you will
hear your dear friends howling beside you—
your fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and
your dear little children will be crying out to
you for help; and you'll see them crawling
about on billows of fire. And then, too, you
will be thinking of the good things you have
enjoyed in this world; the dainties, the vanities,
the lusts of the flesh, and all those wicked
delights you held so dear. You think I'll comfort
you! I will be a witness against you.
And if any one of you dare to appear before

the judgment seat of Heaven, I will turn you
back, and send you howling to the bottomless pit
of fire.”

There was a strange, an almost supernatural
force in the unstudied oratory of this singular
man, which nearly overpowered the well-ballanced
minds of the most staid and rational
hearers. The day was sweltering hot, the little
church crowded almost to suffocation; and
these circumstances, combined with the stirring
terrors of the ghost-like preacher, overpowered
the nerves of many of the congregation, who
gasped for breath, and cried out until nature,
no longer able to support the mental, as well as
physical exertion, subsided into a sort of quiet
insensibility.

Rainsford had made his appearance at church.
The absence of food, which Mrs. Judith declared
he had not tasted for four-and-twenty
hours, the harassed state of his mind for
some time past, and his exposure to the storm
the night before, had given him the appearance
of one whose mental and physical energies had
been most sorely tried. Virginia sat and
watched him with intense anxiety. The declamations
of the preacher seemed to shake his
very soul; he could not become paler than he
was; but she marked the convulsive twitches
of his features, the terrible wildness of his eye,
and the shudder of his frame, when the clergyman
came to that part of his discourse, in
which he spoke of hereditary insanity as the
punishment of the crimes of the parent. Nor
did she fail to mark the strange unintelligible
look he fixed upon her, at the passage denouncing

the ties of affection, and the social feelings
and duties, as the chains with which Satan fastened
the soul of man to the earth, and prevented
his realizing his immortal hopes.

He joined her after service, and they walked
together. As is usual, they talked of the preacher,
and the sermon, of both which Virginia
expressed her disapprobation; but Rainsford
appeared deeply affected by them. He seemed
to be under the influence of the most sublimated
enthusiasm; and had not Virginia now
accustomed herself to shrink from every lofty
flight, or daring plunge of his imagination, she
would have been charmed with the glowing
richness of his mind.

“It is a beautiful theory, Virginia,” said he,
“that of entire abstraction from this world, and
all its occupations, feelings, sufferings, and delights.
It makes us independent of joy and
sorrow; and places us on a level with the beings
of the upper worlds. To me it would be
the lot, of all others, most desirable; for to him
who is hopeless of happiness here, it were
some comfort to be insensible to misery.”

“But is such a state possible?”

“Most assuredly, Virginia; there have been
men, ay, and women too, so self-sustained, or so
supported by the divinity of faith, as to be insensible
to all mental or corporeal suffering,
save that which arose from the uncertainties
of hereafter. Nay, they have cast away all
the ties of kindred, severed the links of nature,
sacrificed love, glory, riches, parental and fraternal
affection, and became as spirits walking
the earth, but holding no communion with it

or its inhabitants. I almost wish I were such
a one. And I could be,” cried he, his eyes
almost glaring with awakened hopes, “I could
be, were it not for one link that binds me to
the earth; were that but severed, I might be
little less than the angels.”

“Would to heaven it were possible!” thought
poor Virginia.

“What is your opinion, Virginia?”

“These things are above my thoughts; yet
I cannot see how it is possible to live in this
world, and abstract ourselves so entirely from
it as neither to know nor care for any thing or
anybody but ourselves. And if it were possible,
it seems to me that this, after all, would be but
the most refined selfishness. There are ties in
this world that ought not to be severed but
by death; duties which we cannot shrink from
without blame; and enjoyments which it would
be ungrateful in us not to taste in moderation.”

“Ties! duties! enjoyments! Pish! Virginia,
did you not hear what the preacher said? These
are the devil's links. Yes, yes, he was right.
With such a load of mortal trumpery on our
backs, one might as soon attempt to scale an
ice mountain perpendicular to the skies as gain
the blessings of hereafter. For my part, I mean
one of these days to go and live alone in a hollow
tree in the woods, and not allow a squirrel
or a woodpecker to share it with me. Ha, ha!
what think you of the idea, Virginia?”

“As one unworthy the subject we are speaking
on,” replied she, in a tone of deep depression.

“The sublime and the ridiculous are as nearly

allied as life and death, time and eternity. An
imaginary line separates them, and thus they
become opposite principles, like the people of
two nations divided by nothing, yet who scarcely
seem to think they belong to the same identical
class of quarrelsome curs. Ha, ha! Virginia,
were you to die suddenly—I mean in an instant
—by a flash of lightning, before you could cry
`God bless me!' do you think you would go
to heaven?”

“I hope so, through Heaven's mercy.”

“I'll warrant you—I'd swear to it! and thus
there would be two souls saved at once. Thou
art all innocence, dear Virginia; thy life has
been, until I came to mar it, a blessing to thyself,
a blessing to all around thee, ay, all but
me!” and here he lowered his tone, so that she
could not distinguish what he said. “To die
now were to be happy; for who knows but
when you come to be a wife, and all the worldly
ties of marriage surround and trammel thee,
thou mayst lose thy hold on heaven, and tumble
to the earth? It were a great pity! Better to
die now!”

“I don't comprehend you,” replied Virginia,
who had been listening with a vague yet fearful
foreboding.

“So much the better, so much the better!
Ha! yonder I see the inspired man; I must go
and talk with him. I've a case of conscience
to submit. It requires a man that can split a
hair to decide it. When it is settled you shall
know all, for the bliss of heaven must consist
in the fruition of knowledge. Good-by, Virginia;
thou art an angel, if not a martyr!”

He hurried off to meet the preacher, leaving
Virginia saddened, perplexed, and terrified with
his strange ramblings, which either meant nothing
or boded mischief.