The Following of the Star: A Romance. Barclay Florence Louisa
the cross-roads half a century before.
An ideal of his youth, long vanished, returned, and stood before him in David Rivers. It was too late, now, to sigh after a departed ideal. But, as a tribute to its memory, he doubled the remuneration he had offered, left the keys in every bookcase in the library, and recommended David to the most especial care of his faithful housekeeper, Sarah Dolman, with instructions that, should the young man seem tired on Sunday evenings, after the full day's work, the best old sherry might be produced and offered.
And here let it be recorded, that David undoubtedly did look worn and tired after the full day's work; but the best old sherry was declined with thanks. The fact that your heart has remained among the wild tribes of Central Africa has a way of making your body very abstemious, and careless of all ordinary creature comforts.
Nevertheless, David enjoyed the Rector's large armchair, upholstered in maroon leather, and delighted in the oak-panelled study, with its wealth of valuable books and its atmosphere of scholarly calm and meditation.
This last Sunday of his ministry at Brambledene chanced to fall on Christmas-eve. Also, for once, it was true Christmas weather.
As David walked to church that morning, every branch and twig, every ivy leaf and holly berry, sparkled in the sunshine; the frosty lanes were white and hard, and paved with countless glittering diamonds. An indescribable exhilaration was in the air. Limbs felt light and supple; movement was a pleasure. Church bells, near and far away, pealed joyously. The Christmas spirit was already here.
"Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given," quoted David, as he swung along the lanes. It was five years since he had had a Christmas in England. Mentally he contrasted this keen frosty brightness, with the mosquito-haunted swamps of the African jungle. This unaccustomed sense of health and vigour brought, by force of contrast, a remembrance of the deathly lassitude and weakness which accompany the malarial fever. But, instantly true to the certainty of his high and holy calling, his soul leapt up crying: "Unto them a Child is born! Unto them a Son is given! And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?"
The little church, on that morning, was bright with holly and heavy with evergreens. The united efforts of the Smith and the Jones families had, during the week, made hundreds of yards of wreathing. On Saturday, all available young men came to help; Miss Pike, whose taste was so excellent, to advise; the school-mistress, a noisy person with more energy than tact, to argue with Miss Pike, and to side with Smiths and Joneses alternately, when any controversial point was under discussion.
So a gay party carried the long evergreen wreaths from the parish-room to the church, where already were collected baskets of holly and ivy, yards of scarlet flannel and white cotton-wool; an abundance of tin tacks and hammers; and last, but not least, the Christmas scrolls and banners, which were annually produced from their place of dusty concealment behind the organ; and of which Mrs. Smith remarked, each year, that they were "every bit as good as new, if you put 'em up in a fresh place."
During the whole of Saturday afternoon and evening the decorative process had been carried on with so much energy, that when David came out from the vestry, on Sunday morning, he found himself in a scene which was decidedly what the old women from the alms-houses called "Christmassy."
His surplice rasped against the holly-leaves, as he made his way into the reading-desk. The homely face of the old gilt clock, on the gallery facing him, was wreathed in yew and holly, and the wreath had slipped slightly on one side, giving the sober old clock an unwontedly rakish appearance, which belied its steady and measured "tick-tick." Also into the bottom of this wreath, beneath which the whole congregation had to pass in and out, Tom Brigg, the doctor's son, a handsome fellow and noted wag, had surreptitiously inserted a piece of mistletoe. This prank of Tom's, known to all the younger members of the congregation, caused so much nudging and whispering and amused glancing at the inebrious-looking clock, that David produced his own watch, wondering if there were any mistake in the hour.
His sermon, on this Sunday morning, had seemed to him a failure.
His text confronted him in letters of gold on crimson flock: "Emmanuel – God with us"; but not a mind seemed with him as he gave it out, read it twice, slowly and clearly, and then proceeded to explain that this wonderful name, Emmanuel, was never intended to be the world's name for Christ, nor even His people's name for Him. However, at this statement, Mrs. Smith raised her eyebrows and began turning over the leaves of her Bible.
Encouraged by this unusual sign of attention, David Rivers leaned over the pulpit and tried to drive into one mind, at least, a thought which had been a discovery to himself the evening before, and was beginning to mean much to him, as every Spirit-given new light on a well-known theme always must mean to the earnest Bible student.
"The name Emmanuel," he said, "so freely used in our church decorations at this season, occurs three times only in the Bible; twice in the Old Testament, once in the New; and the New merely quotes the more important of the two passages in the Old.
"We can dismiss at once the allusion in Isaiah viii., 8, which merely speaks of Palestine as 'Thy land, O Immanuel,' and confine our attention to the great prophecy of Isaiah vii., 14, quoted in Matthew i., 23: 'Behold a Virgin shall bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel.' The Hebrew of this passage reads: 'Thou, O Virgin, shalt call His name Immanuel'; and the Greek of Matthew i. bears the same meaning. I want you to realise that this was His mother's name for the new-born King, for the Babe of Bethlehem, for the little son in the village home at Nazareth. His Presence there meant to that humble pondering heart: 'God with us.'
"If you want to find our name for Him," continued David, noting that Mrs. Smith, ignoring his two references, still turned the pages of her Bible, "look at the angel's message to Joseph in the 21st verse of Matthew i.: 'Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.' That name is mentioned nine hundred and six times in the Bible. We cannot attempt to look them all out now," – with an appealing glance at Mrs. Smith's rustling pages – "but let us make sure that we have appropriated to the full the gifts and blessings of that name, 'which is above every name.' It was the watchword of the early church. It is the secret of our peace and power. It will be our password into heaven.
"But Emmanuel was His mother's name for Him. As she laid him in the manger, round which the patient cattle snuffed in silent wonder at this new use for the place where heretofore they munched their fodder, it was 'God with us' in the stable.
"As, seated on the ass, she clasped the infant to her breast through the long hours of that night ride into Egypt, she whispered: 'Emmanuel, Emmanuel! God with us, in our flight and peril.'
"In the carpenter's home at Nazareth, where, in the midst of the many trials and vexations of a village life of poverty, He was ever patient, gentle, understanding; subject to His parents, yet giving His mother much cause for pondering, many things to treasure in her heart – often, in adoring tenderness, she would whisper: 'Emmanuel, God with us.'"
David paused and looked earnestly down the church, longing for some response to the thrill in his own soul.
"Ah," he said, slowly and impressively, "if only the boys in your village could be this to their mothers! If their loyal obedience, their gentle, loving chivalry, their thoughtful tenderness, could make it possible for their own mothers to say: 'I see the Christ-life in my little boy. When he is at home, the love of God is here. Truly it is Emmanuel, God with us.'"
"What did that young man mean," remarked Mrs. Smith at the dinner-table at Appledore Farm, "by trying to take from us the name 'Emmanuel'? Seems to me, if he stays here much longer we shall have no Bible left!"
Mr. Churchwarden Smith had been carving the Sunday beef for his numerous family. He had only, that moment, fallen to, upon his own portion. Otherwise Mrs. Smith would not have been allowed to complete her sentence.
"I've no patience with these young chaps!" he burst out, as soon as speech was possible. "Undermining the faith of their forefathers; putting our good old English Bible into 'Ebrew and Greek, just to parade their own learning, and confuse the minds of simple folk. 'Higher criticism,' they call it! Jolly low-down impudence, say I!"
Mrs. Smith watchfully