University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CLERICAL CONFERENCE.

A few days found Clayton in the city of —, guest of
the Rev. Dr. Cushing. He was a man in middle life; of
fine personal presence, urbane, courtly, gentlemanly. Dr.
Cushing was a popular and much-admired clergyman, standing
high among his brethren in the ministry, and almost the
idol of a large and flourishing church. A man of warm feelings,
humane impulses, and fine social qualities, his sermons,
beautifully written, and delivered with great fervor,
often drew tears from the eyes of the hearers. His pastoral
ministrations, whether at wedding or funeral, had a peculiar
tenderness and unction. None was more capable than he
of celebrating the holy fervor and self-denying sufferings of
apostles and martyrs; none more easily kindled by those
devout hymns which describe the patience of the saints;
but, with all this, for any practical emergency, Dr. Cushing
was nothing of a soldier. There was a species of moral
effeminacy about him, and the very luxuriant softness and
richness of his nature unfitted him to endure hardness.
He was known, in all his intercourse with his brethren, as
a peace-maker, a modifier, and harmonizer. Nor did he
scrupulously examine how much of the credit of this was
due to a fastidious softness of nature, which made controversy
disagreeable and wearisome. Nevertheless, Clayton
was at first charmed with the sympathetic warmth with
which he and his plans were received by his relative. He
seemed perfectly to agree with Clayton in all his views of
the terrible evils of the slave system, and was prompt with

anecdotes and instances to enforce everything that he said.
“Clayton was just in time,” he said; “a number of his
ministerial brethren were coming to-morrow, some of them
from the northern states. Clayton should present his views
to them.”

Dr. Cushing's establishment was conducted on the footing
of the most liberal hospitality; and that very evening the
domestic circle was made larger by the addition of four or
five ministerial brethren. Among these Clayton was glad
to meet, once more, father Dickson. The serene, good
man, seemed to bring the blessing of the gospel of peace
with him wherever he went.

Among others, was one whom we will more particularly
introduce, as the Rev. Shubael Packthread. Dr. Shubael
Packthread was a minister of a leading church, in one of
the northern cities. Constitutionally, he was an amiable
and kindly man, with very fair natural abilities, fairly improved
by culture. Long habits, however, of theological
and ecclesiastical controversy had cultivated a certain species
of acuteness of mind into such disproportioned activity,
that other parts of his intellectual and moral nature had
been dwarfed and dwindled beside it. What might, under
other circumstances, have been agreeable and useful tact,
became in him a constant and life-long habit of stratagem.
While other people look upon words as vehicles for
conveying ideas, Dr. Packthread regarded them only as
mediums for concealment. His constant study, on every
controverted topic, was so to adjust language that, with
the appearance of the utmost precision, it should always
be capable of a double interpretation. He was a cunning
master of all forms of indirection; of all phrases by which
people appear to say what they do not say, and not to say
what they do say.

He was an adept also in all the mechanism of ecclesiastical
debate, of the intricate labyrinths of heresy-hunting, of
every scheme by which more simple and less advised brethren,
speaking with ignorant sincerity, could be entrapped

and deceived. He was au fait also in all compromise
measures, in which two parties unite in one form of words,
meaning by them exactly opposite ideas, and call the
agreement a union. He was also expert in all those parliamentary
modes, in synod or general assembly, by which
troublesome discussions could be avoided or disposed of,
and credulous brethren made to believe they had gained
points which they had not gained; by which discussions
could be at will blinded with dusty clouds of misrepresentation,
or trailed on through interminable marshes of weariness,
to accomplish some manœuvre of ecclesiastical tactics.

Dr. Packthread also was master of every means by which
the influence of opposing parties might be broken. He
could spread a convenient report on necessary occasions,
by any of those forms which do not assert, but which disseminate
a slander quite as certainly as if they did. If it was
necessary to create a suspicion of the orthodoxy, or of the
piety, or even of the morality, of an opposing brother, Dr.
Packthread understood how to do it in the neatest and most
tasteful manner. He was an infallible judge whether it
should be accomplished by innocent interrogations, as to
whether you had heard “so and so of Mr. —;” or, by
“charitably expressed hopes that you had not heard so and
so;” or, by gentle suggestions, whether it would not be as
well to inquire; or, by shakes of the head, and lifts of the
eyes, at proper intervals in conversation; or, lastly, by
silence when silence became the strongest as well as safest
form of assertion.

In person, he was rather tall, thin, and the lines of his
face appeared, every one of them, to be engraved by caution
and care. In his boyhood and youth, the man had had a
trick of smiling and laughing without considering why;
the grace of prudence, however, had corrected all this. He
never did either, in these days, without understanding precisely
what he was about. His face was a part of his stock
in trade, and he understood the management of it remarkably
well. He knew precisely all the gradations of smile

which were useful for accomplishing different purposes.
The solemn smile, the smile of inquiry, the smile affirmative,
the smile suggestive, the smile of incredulity, and the smile
of innocent credulity, which encouraged the simple-hearted
narrator to go on unfolding himself to the brother, who sat
quietly behind his face, as a spider does behind his web,
waiting till his unsuspecting friend had tangled himself in
incautious, impulsive, and of course contradictory meshes
of statement, which were, in some future hour, in the most
gentle and Christian spirit, to be tightened around the incautious
captive, while as much blood was sucked as the good
of the cause demanded.

It is not to be supposed that the Rev. Dr. Packthread,
so skilful and adroit as we have represented him, failed in
the necessary climax of such skill — that of deceiving himself.
Far from it. Truly and honestly Dr. Packthread thought
himself one of the hundred and forty and four thousand,
who follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, in whose
mouth is found no guile. Prudence he considered the chief
of Christian graces. He worshipped Christian prudence, and
the whole category of accomplishments which we have
described he considered as the fruits of it. His prudence,
in fact, served him all the purposes that the stock of the
tree did to the ancient idolater. “With part thereof he
eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, he
warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen
the fire: and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his
graven image; he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth
it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art
my god.”

No doubt, Dr. Packthread expected to enter heaven by
the same judicious arrangement by which he had lived on
earth; and so he went on, from year to year, doing deeds
which even a political candidate would blush at; violating
the most ordinary principles of morality and honor; while
he sung hymns, made prayers, and administered sacraments,

expecting, no doubt, at last to enter heaven by some
neat arrangement of words used in two senses.

Dr. Packthread's cautious agreeableness of manner
formed a striking contrast to the innocent and almost childlike
simplicity with which father Dickson, in his threadbare
coat, appeared at his side. Almost as poor in this world's
goods as his Master, father Dickson's dwelling had been a
simple one-story cottage, in all, save thrift and neatness,
very little better than those of the poorest; and it was
a rare year when a hundred dollars passed through his
hands. He had seen the time when he had not even wherewithal
to take from the office a necessary letter. He had
seen his wife suffer for medicine and comforts, in sickness.
He had himself ridden without overcoat through the chill
months of winter; but all these things he had borne as the
traveller bears a storm on the way to his home; and it was
beautiful to see the unenvying, frank, simple pleasure which
he seemed to feel in the elegant and abundant home of his
brother, and in the thousand applicances of hospitable comfort
by which he was surrounded. The spirit within us that
lusteth to envy had been chased from his bosom by the
expulsive force of a higher love; and his simple and unstudied
acts of constant good-will showed that simple Christianity
can make the gentleman. Father Dickson was
regarded by his ministerial brethren with great affection
and veneration, though wholly devoid of any ecclesiastical
wisdom. They were fond of using him much as they did
their hymn-books and testaments, for their better hours of
devotion; and equally apt to let slip his admonitions, when
they came to the hard, matter-of-fact business of ecclesiastical
discussion and management; yet they loved well to
have him with them, as they felt that, like a psalm or a text,
his presence in some sort gave sanction to what they did.

In due time there was added to the number of the circle our
joyous, out-spoken friend, father Bonnie, fresh from a recent
series of camp-meetings in a distant part of the state, and
ready at a minute's notice for either a laugh or a prayer.

Very little of the stereotype print of his profession had he;
the sort of wild woodland freedom of his life giving to his
manners and conversation a tone of sylvan roughness, of
which Dr. Packthread evidently stood in considerable doubt.
Father Bonnie's early training had been that of what is
called, in common parlance, a “self-made man.” He was
unsophisticated by Greek or Latin, and had rather a contempt
for the forms of the schools, and a joyous determination
to say what he pleased on all occasions. There were
also present one or two of the leading Presbyterian ministers
of the North. They had, in fact, come for a private and
confidential conversation with Dr. Cushing concerning the
rëunion of the New School Presbyterian Church with the Old.

It may be necessary to apprise some of our readers,
not conversant with American ecclesiastical history, that
the Presbyterian church of America is divided into two
parties in relation to certain theological points, and that the
adherents on either side call themselves old or new school.
Some years since, these two parties divided, and each of
them organized its own general assembly.

It so happened that all the slaveholding interest, with
some very inconsiderable exceptions, went into the old
school body. The great majority of the new school body
were avowedly anti-slavery men, according to a solemn
declaration, which committed the whole Presbyterian church
to those sentiments, in the year eighteen hundred and
eighteen. And the breach between the two sections was
caused quite as much by the difference of feeling between
the northern and southern branches on the subject of
slavery, as by any differences of doctrine.

After the first jar of separation was over, thoughts of
reünion began to arise on both sides, and to be quietly discussed
among leading minds.

There is a power in men of a certain class of making an
organization of any kind, whether it be political or ecclesiastical,
an object of absorbing and individual devotion.
Most men feel empty and insufficient of themselves, and

find a need to ballast their own insufficiency by attaching
themselves to something of more weight than they are.
They put their stock of being out at interest, and invest
themselves somewhere and in something; and the love
of wife or child is not more absorbing than the love of
the bank where the man has invested himself. It is true,
this power is a noble one; because thus a man may pass out
of self, and choose God, the great good of all, for his portion.
But human weakness falls below this; and, as the idolater
worships the infinite and unseen under a visible symbol till
it effaces the memory of what is signified, so men begin
by loving institutions for God's sake, which come at last to
stand with them in the place of God.

Such was the Rev. Dr. Calker. He was a man of powerful
though narrow mind, of great energy and efficiency, and
of that capability of abstract devotion which makes the
soldier or the statesman. He was earnestly and sincerely
devout, as he understood devotion. He began with loving
the church for God's sake, and ended with loving her better
than God. And, by the church, he meant the organization
of the Presbyterian church in the United States of
America. Her cause, in his eyes, was God's cause; her
glory, God's glory; her success, the indispensable condition
of the millennium; her defeat, the defeat of all that
was good for the human race. His devotion to her was
honest and unselfish.

Of course Dr. Calker estimated all interests by their influence
on the Presbyterian church. He weighed every cause
in the balance of her sanctuary. What promised extension
and power to her, that he supported. What threatened defeat
or impediment, that he was ready to sacrifice. He would,
at any day, sacrifice himself and all his interests to that cause,
and he felt equally willing to sacrifice others and their interests.
The anti-slavery cause he regarded with a simple eye
to this question. It was a disturbing force, weakening the
harmony among brethren, threatening disruption and disunion.
He regarded it, therefore, with distrust and aversion.

He would read no facts on that side of the question. And
when the discussions of zealous brethren would bring frightful
and appalling statements into the general assembly, he
was too busy in seeking what could be said to ward off
their force, to allow them to have much influence on his
own mind. Gradually he came to view the whole subject
with dislike, as a pertinacious intruder in the path of the
Presbyterian church. That the whole train of cars, laden
with the interests of the world for all time, should be
stopped by a ragged, manacled slave across the track, was
to him an impertinence and absurdity. What was he, that
the Presbyterian church should be divided and hindered for
him? So thought the exultant thousands who followed
Christ, once, when the blind beggar raised his importunate
clamor, and they bade him hold his peace. So thought
not HE, who stopped the tide of triumphant success, that
he might call the neglected one to himself, and lay his
hands upon him.

Dr. Calker had from year to year opposed the agitation
of the slavery question in the general assembly of the Presbyterian
church, knowing well that it threatened disunion.
When, in spite of all his efforts, disunion came, he bent his
energies to the task of reüniting; and he was the most
important character in the present caucus.

Of course a layman, and a young man also, would feel
some natural hesitancy in joining at once in the conversation
of those older than himself. Clayton, therefore, sat at
the hospitable breakfast-table of Dr. Cushing rather as an
auditor than as a speaker.

“Now, brother Cushing,” said Dr. Calker, “the fact is,
there never was any need of this disruption. It has crippled
the power of the church, and given the enemy occasion
to speak reproachfully. Our divisions are playing right
into the hands of the Methodists and Baptists; and ground
that we might hold, united, is going into their hands every
year.”

“I know it,” said Dr. Cushing, “and we Southern

brethren mourn over it, I assure you. The fact is, brother
Calker, there 's no such doctrinal division, after all. Why,
there are brethren among us that are as new school as Dr.
Draper, and we don't meddle with them.”

“Just so,” replied Dr. Calker; “and we have true-blue
old school men among us.”

“I think,” said Dr. Packthread, “that, with suitable
care, a document might be drawn up which will meet the
views on both sides. You see, we must get the extreme
men on both sides to agree to hold still. Why, now, I am
called new school; but I wrote a set of definitions once,
which I showed to Dr. Pyke, who is as sharp as anybody on
the other side, and he said, `He agreed with them entirely.'
Those N— H— men are incautious.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Calker, “and it 's just dividing the resources
and the influence of the church for nothing. Now,
those discussions as to the time when moral agency begins
are, after all, of no great account in practical workings.”

“Well,” said Dr. Cushing, “it 's, after all, nothing but
the radical tone of some of your abolition fanatics that
stands in the way. These slavery discussions in general assembly
have been very disagreeable and painful to our people,
particularly those of the Western brethren. They don't
understand us, nor the delicacy of our position. They don't
know that we need to be let alone in order to effect anything.
Now, I am for trusting to the softening, meliorating
influences of the Gospel. The kingdom of God cometh not
with observation. I trust that, in his mysterious providence,
the Lord will see fit, in his own good time, to remove
this evil of slavery. Meanwhile, brethren ought to possess
their souls in patience.”

“Brother Cushing,” said father Dickson, “since the assembly
of eighteen hundred and eighteen, the number of
slaves has increased in this country four-fold. New slave
states have been added, and a great, regular system of
breeding and trading organized, which is filling all our large
cities with trading-houses. The ships of our ports go out

as slavers, carrying loads of miserable creatures down to
New Orleans; and there is a constant increase of this traffic
through the country. This very summer I was at the death-bed
of a poor girl, only seventeen or eighteen, who had been
torn from all her friends and sent off with a coffle; and she
died there in the wilderness. It does seem to me, brother
Cushing, that this silent plan does not answer. We are not
half as near to emancipation, apparently, as we were in
eighteen hundred and eighteen.”

“Has there ever been any attempt,” said Clayton,
“among the Christians of your denominations, to put a stop
to this internal slave-trade?”

“Well,” said Dr. Cushing, “I don't know that there has,
any further than general preaching against injustice.”

“Have you ever made any movement in the church to
prevent the separation of families?” said Clayton.

“No, not exactly. We leave that thing to the conscience
of individuals. The synods have always enjoined it
on professors of religion to treat their servants according to
the spirit of the Gospel.”

“Has the church ever endeavored to influence the legislature
to allow general education?” said Clayton.

“No; that subject is fraught with difficulties,” said Dr.
Cushing. “The fact is, if these rabid Northern abolitionists
would let us alone, we might, perhaps, make a movement on
some of these subjects. But they excite the minds of our
people, and get them into such a state of inflammation, that
we cannot do anything.”

During all the time that father Dickson and Clayton had
been speaking, Dr. Calker had been making minutes with
a pencil on a small piece of paper, for future use. It was
always disagreeable to him to hear of slave-coffles and the
internal slave-trade; and, therefore, when anything was
ever said on these topics, he would generally employ himself
in some other way than listening. Father Dickson he
had known of old as being remarkably pertinacious on
those subjects; and, therefore, when he began to speak, he

took the opportunity of jotting down a few ideas for a future
exigency. He now looked up from his paper, and spoke:

“O, those fellows are without any reason — perfectly
wild and crazy! They are monomaniacs! They cannot see
but one subject anywhere. Now, there 's father Ruskin, of
Ohio — there 's nothing can be done with that man! I have
had him at my house hours and hours, talking to him, and
laying it all down before him, and showing him what great
interests he was compromising. But it did n't do a bit of
good. He just harps on one eternal string. Now, it 's all
the pushing and driving of these fellows in the general
assembly that made the division, in my opinion.”

“We kept it off a good many years,” said Dr. Packthread;
“and it took all our ingenuity to do it, I assure
you. Now, ever since eighteen hundred and thirty-five,
these fellows have been pushing and crowding in every assembly;
and we have stood faithfully in our lot, to keep the
assembly from doing anything which could give offence to
our Southern brethren. We have always been particular to
put them forward in our public services, and to show them
every imaginable deference. I think our brethren ought to
consider how hard we have worked. We had to be instant
in season and out of season, I can tell you. I think I may
claim some little merit,” continued the doctor, with a cautious
smile spreading over his face; “if I have any talent, it
is a capacity in the judicious use of language. Now, sometimes
brethren will wrangle a whole day, till they all get
tired and sick of a subject; and then just let a man who
understands the use of terms step in, and sometimes, by
omitting a single word, he will alter the whole face of an
affair. I remember one year those fellows were driving us
up to make some sort of declaration about slavery. And we
really had to do it, because it would n't do to have the whole
West split off; and there was a three days' fight, till finally
we got the thing pared down to the lowest terms. We
thought we would pass a resolution that slavery was a
moral evil, if the Southern brethren like that better than

the old way of calling it a sin, and we really were getting
on quite harmoniously, when some of the Southern ultras
took it up; and they said that moral evil meant the same as
sin, and that would imply a censure on the brethren. Well,
it got late, and some of the hottest ones were tired and had
gone off; and I just quietly drew my pen across the word
moral, and read the resolution, and it went unanimously.
Most ministers, you see, are willing to call slavery an evil —
the trouble lay in that word moral. Well, that capped the
crater for that year. But, then, they were at it again the
very next time they came together, for those fellows never
sleep. Well, then we took a new turn. I told the brethren
we had better get it on to the ground of the reserved rights
of presbyteries and synods, and decline interfering. Well,
then, that was going very well, but some of the brethren
very injudiciously got up a resolution in the assembly
recommending disciplinary measures for dancing. That
was passed without much thought, because, you know,
there 's no great interest involved in dancing, and, of course,
there 's nobody to oppose such a resolution; but, then, it
was very injudicious, under the circumstances; for the abolitionists
made a handle of it immediately, and wanted to
know why we could n't as well recommend a discipline for
slavery; because, you see, dancing is n't a sin, per se, any
more than slavery is; and they have n't done blowing their
trumpets over us to this day.”

Here the company rose from breakfast, and, according to
the good old devout custom, seated themselves for family
worship. Two decent, well-dressed black women were
called in, and also a negro man. At father Dickson's request,
all united in singing the following hymn:

Anybody who had seen the fervor with which these
brethren now united in singing these stanzas, might have
supposed them a company of the primitive martyrs and confessors,
who, having drawn the sword and thrown away the
scabbard, were now ready for a millennial charge on the devil
and all his works. None sung with more heartiness than
Dr. Packthread, for his natural feelings were quick and
easily excited; nor did he dream he was not a soldier of the
cross, and that the species of skirmishes he had been describing
were not all in accordance with the spirit of the
hymn. Had you interrogated him, he would have shown
you a syllogistic connection between the glory of God and
the best good of the universe, and the course he had been
pursuing. So that, if father Dickson had supposed the
hymn would act as a gentle suggestion, he was very much
mistaken. As to Dr. Calker, he joined, with enthusiasm,
applying it all the while to the enemies of the Presbyterian
church, in the same manner as Ignatius Loyola might
have sung it, applying it to Protestantism. Dr. Cushing
considered the conflict described as wholly an internal one,
and thus all joined alike in swelling the chorus:

Father Dickson read from the Bible as follows:

“Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our consciences,
that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom,
but by the grace of God, we have our conversation in
the world.”

Father Dickson had many gentle and quiet ways, peculiar
to himself, of suggesting his own views to his brethren.
Therefore, having read these verses, he paused, and asked
Dr. Packthread “if he did not think there was danger of
departing from this spirit, and losing the simplicity of
Christ, when we conduct Christian business on worldly
principle.”

Dr. Packthread cordially assented, and continued to the
same purpose in a strain so edifying as entirely to exhaust
the subject; and Dr. Calker, who was thinking of the business
that was before them, giving an uneasy motion here,
they immediately united in the devotional exercises, which
were led with great fervor by Dr. Cushing.