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Page 20
BOOK TWO
AT THE SCHOOLMASTER'S
In the early eighties there was no one in the parish where the old
Ingmarsson family lived who would have thought of embracing any new
kind of faith or attending any new form of sacred service. That new
sects had sprung up, here and there, in other Dalecarlian parishes,
and that people went out into rivers and lakes to be immersed in
accordance with the new rites of the Baptists, was known; but folks
only laughed at it all and said: "That sort of thing may suit those
who live at Applebo and in Gagnef, but it can never touch our
parish."
The people of that parish clung to their old customs and habits,
one of which was a regular attendance at church on Sundays; every
one that could go went, even in the severest winter weather. Then,
of all times, it was almost a necessity; with the thermometer at
twenty below zero outside, it would have been beyond human
endurance to sit in the unheated church had it not been packed to
the doors with people.
It could not be said of the parishioners that they turned out in
such great numbers because they had a particularly brilliant pastor
or one who had any special gift for expounding the Scriptures. In
those days folks went to church to praise God and not to be
entertained by fine sermons. On the way home, when fighting against
the cutting wind on an open country road, one thought: "Our Lord
must have noticed that you were at church this cold morning." That
was the main thing. It was no fault of theirs if the preacher had
said nothing more than he had been heard to say every Sunday since
his appointment to the pastorate.
As a matter of fact, the majority seemed perfectly satisfied with
what they got. They knew that what the pastor read to them was the
Word of God, and therefore they found it altogether beautiful. Only
the schoolmaster and one or two of the more intelligent farmers
occasionally said among themselves: "The parson seems to have only
one sermon; he talks of nothing but God's wisdom and God's
government. All that is well enough so long as the Dissenters keep
away. But this stronghold is poorly defended and would fall at the
first attack."
Lay preachers generally passed by this parish. "What's the good of
going there?" they used to say. "Those people don't want to be
awakened." Not only the lay preachers, but even all the "awakened
souls" in the neighbouring parishes looked upon the Ingmarssons and
their fellow-parishioners as great sinners, and whenever they
caught the sound of the bells from their church they would say the
bells were tolling, "Sleep in your sins! Sleep in your sins!"
The whole congregation, old and young alike, were furious when they
learned that people spoke in that way of their bells. They knew
that their folks never forgot to repeat the Lord's Prayer whenever
the church bells rang, and that every evening, at the time of the
Angelus, the menfolk uncovered their heads, the women courtesied,
and everybody stood still about as long as it takes to say an Our
Father. All who have lived in that parish must acknowledge that God
never seemed so mighty and so honoured as on summer evenings, when
scythes were rested, and plows were stopped in the middle of a
furrow, and the seed wagon was halted in the midst of the loading,
simply at the stroke of a bell. It was as if they knew that our
Lord at that moment was hovering over the parish on an evening
cloud--great and powerful and good--breathing His blessing upon the
whole community.
None of your college-bred men had ever taught in that parish. The
schoolmaster was just a plain, old-fashioned farmer, who was
self-taught. He was a capable man who could manage a hundred
children single-handed. For thirty years and more he had been the
only teacher there, and was looked up to by everybody. The
schoolmaster seemed to feel that the spiritual welfare of the
entire congregation rested with him, and was therefore quite
concerned at their having called a parson who was no kind of a
preacher. However, he held his peace as long as it was only a
question of introducing a new form of baptism, and elsewhere at
that; but on learning that there had also been some changes in the
administration of the Holy Communion and that people were beginning
to gather in private homes to partake of the Sacrament, he could no
longer remain passive. Although a poor man himself, he managed to
persuade some of the leading citizens to raise the money to build a
mission house. "You know me," he said to them. "I only want to
preach in order to strengthen people in the old faith. What would
be the natural result if the lay preachers were to come upon us,
with their new baptism and their new Sacrament, if there were no
one to tell the people what was the true doctrine and what the
false?"
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