In a Village Church
It was a bright morning, peaceful and calm, after a night of rain and thunderstorm—such a morning as lends extraordinary charm and power to the sound of the church bell. As it rang a deep and solemn command: ‘Thou… shalt… do… no… work,’ the villagers—men, women, and children—streamed into the church. An old woman suddenly cried out, and we stopped at the door to look back at her. ‘I forgot to wear my shoes,’ she explained piteously. The seating arrangement inside the church was very simple. Men sat on the right, women on the left, and the choir in front.
This differentiation was not arbitrary but influenced very strongly the procedure of worship. Singing, for instance, followed very closely the seating pattern. Everybody seemed to agree that the organ was invented for the choir and such other young people as yet inexperienced in the service of God.
As for the other groups, each sang lustily at its own pace. Obviously, the convention of starting the same verse at the same time was not recognized. The advantage of this system was that at any given time—from the beginning of a hymn to the ending of the same—there was always a voice to be heard. Inherent in the system, however, was one difficulty.
The choir always got to the ‘Amen’ when the women were just beginning the last verse, and the men halfway through it. But it was of very little consequence. The custom was that any group that finished before the others went in to help them in true Christian fellowship. The sermon was very thought-provoking.
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Never was a more eloquent argument put forward to explain why in these days ‘so far retired from happy pieties’ men do not attain the longevity of Noah or Melchisedek. The preacher pointed out that the Jews always sent their first-fruits to the High Priest and received his blessing. ‘Do we do that today?’ he asked. ‘Is it any wonder then that we are surrounded by death?’
My attention was at this point drawn to an old man whose spectacles, resting so far below the usual place of contact, served probably to correct a defective sense of smell. They did not, in any way, interfere with his reading which he performed very simply by bending his head forward like a charging ram and peeping right over the spectacles at an antediluvian Bible held at arm’s length.
This Bible had obviously experienced systematic growth in its time and had increased its volume by about fifty per cent. For a long time after seeing this volume, I reflected on the disparity of treatment bestowed by Time on men and books. Fortune’s buffets and damp weather had combined to wear down the old man with the spectacles; similar conditions acting on his Bible had made it grow in size.
If men would learn to go through life with the equanimity of old books, the world would be rid of lean and hungry looks! I thought that a suitable sermon to that old man should have been something on these lines: ‘Consider your Bible how it grows…’ When I arrived at the end of this chain of thought, the old man was still searching for the text.
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After a few more desperate attempts, he gave it up as a bad job. This was hardly surprising because the Bible had, quite plainly, undergone reorganization as well since it left the publishers. The result was that one saw portions of St Matthew’s gospel peeping out, rather uneasily, from that region of the Bible usually assigned to the Prophets. It occurred to me at this stage that I ought to listen to the preacher.
The sermon went on for a very long time, and towards the end of it, I began to hear a snoring accompaniment emanating from a heap of Sunday clothes, not very far from me. Almost immediately, a churchwarden went up to the heap and shook its owner into life. He exclaimed, ‘Five and sixpence!’
This was presumably a financial statement carried from dreamland. The transition had been too sudden to facilitate a complete hand-over. After the service, I saw this man apparently quite satisfied with the part he had played in the worship. I felt at first that he had no right to be satisfied. But on further thought, I began to wonder whether he was not justified after all. He might be compared to undergraduates who go to the library for their siesta.
The philosophy behind both actions is essentially the same. The religious atmosphere of the church blows through the minds of all worshippers, whether they are awake or asleep, looking at the preacher or at the nurses.
In the same way, the library has its intellectual environment and breathes its knowledge on anyone within reasonable distance of the shelves. This philosophy was sung by a famous poet many years ago.
‘Nor less I deem that there are Powers, Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness.’
A village church is the best place on earth to learn philosophy.
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