“Why shouldn’t our minister be friendly with the Methodist parson, deacon?” questioned Squire Hadley, who was less bigoted than the deacon. “I’ve met Mr. Fry, and I think him a whole souled man.”
“He may have a whole soul,” retorted the deacon, with grim humor; “but it’s a question whether he’ll save it if he holds to his Methodist doctrines.”
“Don’t the Methodists and Congregationalists believe very much alike?” asked the Squire.
“How can you ask such a question, Squire?” asked the deacon, scandalized.
“But how do they differ? I wish you’d tell me that.”
“The Methodists have bishops.”
“That isn’t a matter of doctrine.”
“Yes, it is; they say it’s accordin’ to Scripture to have bishops.”
“Is that all the difference?”
“It’s enough.”
“Enough to prevent their being saved?”
“It’s an error, and all error is dangerous.”
“Then you disapprove of friendship between our people and the Methodists?
“Yes,” said the deacon emphatically.
“Wouldn’t you sell a cow to a Methodist if you could get a good profit?”
“That’s different,” said Deacon Peabody, who was fond of a trade. “Tradin’ is one thing and spiritual intercourse is another.”
“I can’t agree with you, deacon. I like what I’ve seen of Mr. Fry, and I hope he’ll draw us together in friendly feeling without regard to our attendance at different churches.”
When Fast Day came Mr. Wilson proposed that there should be a union service in the Methodist church, Mr. Fry to preach the sermon.
“In the two societies,” he urged, there will not be enough people desirous of attending church to make more than a fair sized congregation. Nothing sectarian need be preached. There are doctrines enough in which we jointly believe to afford the preacher all the scope he needs.”
Mr. Fry cordially accepted the suggestion, and the union service was held; but Deacon Uriah Peabody was conspicuous by his absence.
“I don’t like to lose my gospel privileges,” he said; “but I can’t consort with Methodists or enter a Methodist church. It’s agin’ my principles.”
Old Mrs. Slocum sympathized with the deacon; but curiosity got the better of principle, and she attended the service, listening with keen eared and vigilant attention for something with which she could disagree. In this she was disappointed; there was nothing to startle or shock the most exacting Congregationalist.
“What did you think of the sermon?” asked Squire Hadley, as he fell in with the old lady on the way home.
“It sounded well enough,” she replied, shaking her head but appearances are deceitful.”
“Would you have been satisfied if you had heard the same sermon from Mr. Wilson?”
“I would have known it was all right then,” said Mrs. Slocum. “You can’t never tell about these Methodists.”
But Deacon Peabody and Mrs. Slocum were exceptions. Most of the people were satisfied, and the union service led to a more social and harmonious feeling. For the first time in three years Mrs. John Keith, Congregationalist, took tea at the house of Mrs. Henry Keith, Methodist. The two families, though the husbands were brothers, had been kept apart by sectarian differences, each being prominent in his church. The two ministers rejoiced in the more cordial feeling which had grown out of their own pleasant personal relations, and they frequently called upon each other.
One result of the restored harmony between the two religious societies was a union picnic of the Sunday schools connected with each. It became a general affair, and it was understood that not only the children, but the older people, would participate in it. The place selected was a grove on the summit of a little hill sloping down to Thurber’s Pond, a sheet of water sometimes designated as a lake, though scarcely a mile in circumference.
From the first, Mr. Randolph Chester intended to invite Mabel to accompany him. The attention would look pointed, he admitted to himself; but he was quite prepared for that. So far as his heart was capable of being touched Mabel had touched it. He was not the man to entertain a grand passion, and never had been; but his admiration of the new school teacher was such that a refusal would have entailed upon him serious disappointment. Of rivalry — that is, of serious rivalry — Mr. Chester had no apprehension. One afternoon he encountered Allan Thorpe walking with Mabel, and he was not quite pleased, for he had mentally monopolized her. But he would have laughed at the idea of Mabel’s preferring Mr. Thorpe. He was handsome, and younger by twenty five years; but he was, to use Mr. Chester’s own term, “a beggarly artist.”