Pastoral Sketches
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WESLEYAN HERITAGE Library Holiness Writers PASTORAL SKETCHES By Rev. Mr. Beverly Carradine “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” Heb 12:14 Spreading Scriptural Holiness to the World Wesleyan Heritage Publications © 1997, 1998 PASTORAL SKETCHES By Beverly Carradine CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER 1 REMINISCENCES OF CERTAIN PREACHERS CHAPTER 2 BAPTISMAL INCIDENTS CHAPTER 3 THE INTERRUPTED MARRIAGE CEREMONY CHAPTER 4 THE INDEFINITELY POSTPONED MARRIAGE CHAPTER 5 SOME FUNERAL SCENES CHAPTER 6 THE CHOIR CHAPTER 7 STREET PREACHING CHAPTER 8 A REMARKABLE MISSIONARY CHAPTER 9 CERTAIN EXPRESSIONS AND PRONUNCIATIONS IN PULPIT AND PEW CHAPTER 10 HOW PREACHERS ARE "TAKEN IN" CHAPTER 11 THE CONFERENCE LETTER CHAPTER 12 THE CONFERENCE COLLEGE CHAPTER 13 A MARTYR CHAPTER 14 GUY CHAPTER 15 LITTLE JACK CHAPTER 16 EMMA C. CHAPTER 17 PROFESSOR S. CHAPTER 18 A PHOTOGRAPH OF A CLASS OF CONFERENCE UNDERGRADUATES CHAPTER 19 THE SICKNESS OF ZIUNNE CHAPTER 20 THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE PASTORAL SKETCHES By Beverly Carradine PREFACE This book was undertaken with a view to mental rest and relaxation. The author had not the time nor means to go to the mountains or seashore for a season of recuperation, and so wrote this volume. Three of the chapters--viii., xviii., and xix.--were penned some years ago. The remainder of the book was written during a part of the spring and summer of the present year. As the author wrote, his eyes were often wet with tears, and just as frequently the smiles would play about the mouth over the facts and fancies that flowed from his pen. But it was not simply to elicit smiles and tears from himself or others that the volume was written. These are only means to an end or, more truly speaking, the gilt on the sword or the paint and trimmings of the chariot. The reader cannot but see that, under the pathos and humor of the book, follies are punctured, formality assailed, sin exposed, truth exalted, and deep spiritual lessons inculcated. The book is a transcript of human character, a description of a part of the life procession that is seen moving in the ecclesiastical world or that is beheld from the Church by the ministerial eye. So the volume was composed for a purpose; not simply that it might prove a mental recreation and refreshment to the worker, but that it might accomplish good for others. The author feels that the book has a mission, so he opens the window and sends it forth over the waves of the world. Whether it returns with the olive branch or never comes back, it is attended with the prayer of the writer that it may cheer and brighten the hearts of thousands of readers, and be a blessing wherever it goes. THE AUTHOR. October, 1896 PASTORAL SKETCHES By Beverly Carradine CHAPTER 1 REMINISCENCES OF CERTAIN PREACHERS One of the earliest memories in the life of the author is that of sitting by the side of his mother in church, as a little boy of five or six years, with his feet dangling halfway down to the floor, and his eyes fixed on the face of the preacher, poised high above him and before him in the pulpit. Sometimes the day was hot, the sermon lengthy, and the little dangling legs became cramped and the neck wearied in looking upward so long at the speaker. But the reverent, listening face of the mother, and the boy's own awful sense of the dignity of the preacher, were sufficient to bring the curly-haired, white-jacketed lad through the service without rebuke to himself, and mortification to the mother. As the boy grew, the faces and forms in the pulpit changed, according to the policy of the Methodist Church. All were good men, but they variously impressed the lad, as piety, eloquence, dress, personal characteristics, or other things too numerous to mention, prevailed. For instance, one is remembered more by a bald head than anything else. The child wondered over the fact of an unending forehead, that went away up, and clear over, and was lost in the collar behind. Another had a very red face and a very loud voice, and this, coupled with the fact that he was an unusually large man, with a hand of corresponding proportions, caused a riveted attention to be given to all that he said and did. When that large hand struck the Bible a resounding blow, and the loud voice ascended at the same time, it meant something, and a certain small child in the audience never dreamed of going to sleep. Another is remembered mainly by a broad, white shirt bosom, in the center of which reposed a large gold stud; and by the way he pronounced the word "realizing." He divided the syllables in a slow, high-sounding way, thus: "re-al-i-zing." While the word was thus drawn out; India rubber fashion, yet it was pronounced with such a musical roll of the voice that one person at least in the audience was fascinated. The child had no idea what "realizing" meant, but he was enamored with the sound and bigness of the word, and yearned to live and grow up, that he might use the same word in conversation. He determined to employ it on all occasions, and knock down platoons of listeners even as he himself had been overrun and prostrated. A fourth greatly impressed him with the way he took out and put up his spectacles. The preacher was an aged man with white hair and heavy gray eyebrows. Everything he did was deliberate. As he stood up in the pulpit before the great Bible the child watched him with bated breath. He first glanced gravely over the audience; then, holding the left lapel of his coat with his left hand, he solemnly put his right hand into the inner side pocket and drew out a black tin box five inches long. He looked at it as if he had never seen it before. The child scarcely breathed as the preacher slowly opened the case and with finger and thumb drew out a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. In the most deliberate manner they were opened and carefully placed upon the nose; and then the tin case was closed with a snap that could be heard all over the church, and replaced in the side pocket as solemnly as a body is lowered in the grave. Then came the opening of the Bible. It was done reverently, and made the boy feel that the Book was different from all other books. Distinct to this day is the memory how tenderly the leaves were turned, and how the eyes lingered as if the preacher saw many precious things while he was passing on to the selection of his text. We recall the gravity with which that text was read, and then reread. Then in the same deliberate way the tin box was taken out of the side pocket, the spectacles were removed with the right hand, and deposited in the case now open for their reception. For a moment the preacher looked down on them as one would at the face of a friend in a coffin, then came the snap, the screws were shot in, the casket was closed, the box lowered the second time into the grave, and the sermon began. Fully four minutes had elapsed since the preacher stood up, but somehow the soul felt that there had been no loss of time, and every second of time and every motion of the man had counted. However, not all can do as did this man. A fifth preacher is recalled by his habit of drinking a glass of water just in the middle of his sermon. The author was raised in Yazoo City, Miss. Just ten miles from that town was another smaller place called Benton. Exactly halfway between the two towns on the main plank road was a watering place called "The Ponds." Having stopped there frequently in his mother's carriage in passing from one place to another, the writer of this sketch, as a child, had a vivid memory of the locality and the watering. So when the preacher we now speak of would stop suddenly in his sermon and pour out a glass of water and drink it all down; by a natural association of ideas the child in the audience felt in a vague way that the minister had reached "The Ponds" and was just halfway through his sermon. If the sermon were uninteresting, and the day warm, the sight of the preacher arriving at "The Ponds" and drinking, while the rest of the team, just as dry as he and even dryer, but not allowed by custom to share the refreshing draught, this sight was far from being calculated to promote religious feelings in a parch-mouthed, neck-cricked, and leg-aching little boy. The very vision of the glass pitcher, the cut-glass goblet, the crystal water, the way the preacher poured it out, and the way he drank it all down, wiped his mouth, and cleared his throat with a loud "Ahem!" were all exceedingly trying features in the transaction. This, coupled with the fact that we had just reached "The Ponds"-- five miles still to go, and only one horse allowed to drink! The thirst of the colts utterly ignored! All this made life bitter for a while to a certain small spectator in the audience. If the whole congregation could have been watered at the same time with the preacher, as we have sometimes seen in country churches, then it would have been "well with the child." But doubtless the preacher thought he was doing all the pulling and the congregation was riding, and so we could afford to wait until we reached--Yazoo City.