have heard. There was something awful and overawing, something seer-like and supernatural, in the pulpit of Mansoul. Sometimes the iron chains in which the preacher climbed up into the pulpit, and in which he both prayed and preached, struck a chill to every heart; and sometimes the garment of salvation in which he shone carried all their hearts captive. Some Sabbath mornings they saw it in his face and heard it in his voice that he had been on his bed in hell all last night; and then, next Sabbath, those who came back saw him descending into his pulpit from his throne in heaven.
'Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-page Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.
Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thine errand.'
If you think that I am exaggerating and magnifying the parish pulpit of Mansoul, take this out of the parish records for yourselves. 'And now,' you will read in one place, 'it was a day gloomy and dark, a day of clouds and thick darkness with Mansoul.
Well, when the Sabbath-day was come he took for his text that in the prophet Jonah, "They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy." And then there was such power and authority in that sermon, and such dejection seen in the countenances of the people that day that the like had seldom been heard or seen. The people, when the sermon was done, were scarce able to go to their homes, or to betake themselves to their employments the whole week after.
They were so sermon-smitten that they knew not what to do. For not only did their preacher show to Mansoul its sin, but he did tremble before them under the sense of his own, still crying out as he preached, Unhappy man that I am! that I, a preacher, should have lived so senselessly and so sottishly in my parish, and be one of the foremost in its transgressions! With these things he also charged all the lords and gentry of Mansoul to the almost distracting of them.' It was Sabbaths like that that made the people of Mansoul call their minister a seer.
5. And, then, there was another thing that I do not know how better to describe than by calling it the true catholicity, the true humility, and the true hospitality of the man. It is true he had no choice in the matter, for in setting up a standing ministry in Mansoul Emmanuel had done so with this reservation and addition.
We have His very words. 'Not that you are to have your ministers alone,' He said. 'For my four captains, they can, if need be, and if they be required, not only privately inform, but publicly preach both good and wholesome doctrine, that, if heeded, will do thee good in the end.' Which, again, reminds me of what Oliver Cromwell wrote to the Honourable Colonel Hacker at Peebles. 'These: I was not satisfied with your last speech to me about Empson, that he was a better preacher than fighter--or words to that effect. Truly, I
think that he that prays and preaches best will fight best. I know nothing that will give like courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will. I pray you to receive Captain Empson lovingly.'
6. The standing ministry in Mansoul was endowed also; but I cannot imagine what the court of teinds would make of the instrument of endowment. As it has been handed down to us, that old ecclesiastical instrument reads more like a lesson in the parish minister's class for the study of Mysticism than a writing for a learned lord to adjudicate upon. Here is the Order of Council:
