Deacon Gray's Lesson

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 11, 1875

Deacon Gray's Lesson.

DEACON GRAY was assisted carefully into his chair, then his wife mounted beside him. Things were reversed since his long illness—she took the driver's seat and then the reins. As for Dobbin, the faithful old family horse, he was a slow-going beast at the best, such a horse as old ladies like to drive, and the Deacon's wife was verging on sixty.

"Mother's hair was really beginning to turn now," Jane, the eldest daughter, said (Jane had gray hairs herself), and so it was; but mother, blessed good woman, don't care. She had lived a spotless life, and the peace of her soul had given to her face a sweetness of expression that was far better than beauty.

"Deacon, are you warm enough?" Mrs. Gray always called her husband "Deacon," but now there was a peculiar intonation of tenderness in her voice, never very musical.

"O, yes, I'm comfortable. Dear, dear, how sweet the clover smells. I did n't know as the scent would ever come to me again, when I lay in the south chamber, choking for breath."

"Never mind, Deacon, we won't talk of the past now. See Uncle Biah's medder; don't it look splendid? And the corn over there, why, its growed a sight since yesterday. La! do see Dr. Baird's apple trees; don't they look beautiful?"

"Everything looks beautiful, Marthy," said the deacon, a light breaking over his rugged and somewhat hard face.

"So it does," and the good woman's eyes were lifted to the sky, across which the softest, whitest clouds were floating with a motion so airy that they seemed like spirits of the upper ether taking forms of grace and beauty.

"Don't care about stopping anywhere, do you, father?" asked the Deacon's wife, as the old horse jogged along.

"Well, yes, guess we might as well get out at the lane."

"Old Joe!" exclaimed Mrs. Gray aghast, "are n't you afraid he'll worry you, now you're so weak, deacon?"

"Well, no, I guess not; Marthy, he's a poor critter, and—and you know I feel different now about such things. Forty years of health goes nigh to harden a man's heart, Marthy," and he sighed as he spoke.

So Dobbin was reined in at the head of the lane, and Mrs. Gray, making herself a crutch for the Deacon, went toward the homely little house, over whose door, poor and lowly though it was, the honeysuckle wandered, full of sweets.

"If I ever did! Here's Deacon Gray a coming!" cried Joe's maiden sister, smoothing his hair.

"I don't want to see him," said Joe, moving uneasily on his bed.

"Good morning, how are you all?" It was Marthy's cheerful voice, and Joe could n't choose but turn; and when once his faded eyes caught sight of the Deacon's altered face, they staid there, fastened by the expression of pallor—of tenderness that rested on those weatherbeaten features.

"Joe, I did n't know as we should ever meet again," said the Deacon, holding out his hand. "I have thought of you every day since I was laid on my sick bed. How hard it must be for you to stay there month after month!"

Joe's lips trembled a little. These words coming from a man who had more than once reproached him with shiftlessness and shamming, touched his heart.

"Well, yes, it's sort of hard," he answered, "but I s'pose I'll have to bear it. There's them that's wuss off, I guess."

"What can I do for you, Joe," asked the Deacon, his voice still soft with that strange tenderness. "Is there anything you'd like? Is the bed soft enough? Perhaps you could use my sick chair, it wheels about, and you might go to the door, or even outside in it. You're welcome to it, Joe, only say the word. And anything in the way of jellies, or delicate things that you fancy to eat, and books or papers if you want them. Don't make a stranger of me, Joe; send to me as you would to a brother."

"But you know I ain't a brother—I ain't one of your kind—Deacon, I—"

"Never mind," said Deacon Gray, as sedulously avoiding the argument now as he had before plunged into one; "never mind what your opinions are just now; the Lord sees, and may be he'll bring you round to my way of thinking yet. What I am after now is to make the body comfortable. And I just want to ask your pardon for all my hard ways and ungenerous speeches. I know I've done wrong, the Lord forgive me. I could n't tell what a difference sickness makes in body and mind then, but I do now."

"Come, Marthy, we'll be going, and Joe, I'll take it hard if you don't tax me for something. God bless you, Joe. Good morning."

The two had vanished, but it seemed, some way, as if the sunshine streamed more genially over the place they had left.

"Well, I never," exclaimed Joe's sister. Joe himself was silent for some time.

"What ailed the Deacon?" he asked at last, as his sister came back to his bedside.

"Diptheria, they said."

"Putty sick wa n't he?"

"Thought he would die; folks said so."

"Well, it's done him more good than all—no matter—," and Joe ended his sentence abruptly.

"To think how he used to fret and fume!" muttered Joe's sister. "And what a blessing that chair will be, and how you've wished you could get one, and he coming and offering it himself. Well I'll never say Deacon Gray ain't a Christian again, never."

Meantime the Deacon's wife was lifting the attenuated frame of her husband into the carriage again, her vigorous shoulders his main support. There were tears in her eyes, but she bustled about, looking this way and that, tucking the big shawl over the Deacon's knees, and pressing him snugly back, as if she feared a gust of the strong spring wind would blow him away. Oh! but in her heart it seemed as if she had never felt such wealth of tenderness. The one thing that this good, but severe, man had lacked, had now, almost by a miracle it seemed, been wrought into being, and taken its lodging in his heart. In his face a new, a holier benignity shone, even on the strongly seamed forehead, and in the deep lines that toil and thought had worn in his cheeks. The eyes, the gray eyes, that only on extra occasions had lighted up with a human beauty, seemed now to have gained an almost unearthly softness.

"Marthy, Christ knew, did n't he?" he asked, in a tender voice.

"Knew what, dear?" The good woman started at her own tenderness—at the unusual term of affection.

"Through suffering,"—and he turned to his wife.

"How to pity us. Oh, yes! and he took it all on himself."

"It was put on me, thank God! I would n't have it; no, no! Humanity shrinks from the offering, from the cross. Forty years of health, Marthy, is a fearful test. I don't know, looking at the past as I do now, feeling what I have lost and what I have gained—I do n't know as I had grace enough to save me, Marthy. It did n't seem to me once as if anybody need to be sick. Many a time I thought folks give up because they were weak and lazy. But you see God knew what I needed. Stop Dobbin, Marthy; there's poor Stephen's little lame boy. I wonder if something can't be done for him."

So Dobbin was stopped, and the poor child gladdened with a kind word and a handful of coppers that set his face shining. What with delight and surprise, tears came again to the good wife's eyes, for children had rather avoided the Deacon, sterling man though he was.

"I'll see if that boy can't be helped," the Deacon went on. "I've heard that if his father could only afford it, there's a place where he might be cured. He's a fine little fellow, and it is a shame to let him go stumping through life."

"Shan't we turn round now, Deacon!" asked his wife.

"I think I would like to go to Tom Blake's—he's another cripple, and more likely to be worse than better."

"But, Deacon, you had n't heard, I suppose. The truth is, he was taken to the poor-house."

"Marthy, is that so?" cried the Deacon, the old sternness coming back to his face.

"It is so. He grew so bad that they could n't find any one willing to be burdened with him, so they just put him there."

"I've heard him say, many's the time, he'd rather die than go there. Poor Tom!"

"Yes, it was very hard."

"We'll drive there, Marthy."

There was another refolding of the shawl, after the good woman had turned Dobbin's dull head in the direction of the poor-house. The Deacon went in, leaning on the arm of his wife, and led directly to the room of the old man, Tom Blake.

Tom looked askance at the Deacon, from whom he had taken many a long sermon—for Tom was as near an infidel as that other godless man, Joe—then at the sight of his pale, mild countenance, the old man faltered, he put up his thin hand, turned aside his face, and burst into tears.

"Tom, I'm sorry to see you here," said the Deacon, placing his withered hand on the old man's shoulder.

"I'd rather you'd seen me in the grave, Deacon Gray," sobbed the old man. "But I won't die here,"—a look of defiance crossed his features—"it shan't be said that Tom Blake died a pauper. No, sir. I'll crawl on my hands and knees at the last grasp, and I'll find strength to do it too, out of this pauper place."

"Tom, you sha'n't stay here," said the Deacon, resolutely.

The old man looked up. His face was pitiful to see, all dabbled with tears.

"No, Tom, I know how you feel. When I was choked with that awful sickness, I thought I'd give worlds for one easy breath."

"Yes, and I'm choking in here; every mouthfull I eat chokes me."

"You shall come out, Tom; be patient, and bear it as well as you can, you shall come out. If nobody else'll take you, I'll take you myself."

"Oh! God bless you, Deacon Gray! God bless you for a true Christian," cried the grateful man, tears of joy falling from his dim eyes. "I used to say hard things about you, Deacon Gray, because you tried to make me a better man. But the seed you sowed is there, Deacon, and if it takes root and ripens, it will be because I see your faith and your works go together. You've made an entirely new man of me. God bless you, Deacon Gray."

Old Dobbin took a quicker step on his way home—oats in prospect. As for mother Gray, the way she patted and tucked that old shawl, looking up every now and then into the Deacon's gray eyes with a love that made her old face look angelic, was quite a treat to see.

And as for the Deacon, he thought to himself that he had always held religion as one would an ear of corn, ignorant of its use; but now, Christ had taught him how to strip off the harsh outside husks, and find within the life-giving kernels.—Christian Monitor.