"I remember your boy well," remarked Mr. Porteous, handing his snuff-box in a very kindly way to his visitor.
The Sergeant nodded. "Ye did _your_ duty, minister, to us on that occasion, or I wadna have come here the nicht. I kent ye wad like onything Charlie was fond o’."
"I quite understand your feelings, Sergeant, and sympathise with them."
The Sergeant smiled, and nodded, and said, "I hope ye do, sir; I was sure ye would. I’m thankfu’ I cam’, and sae will Katie be." The burden was lifting off his heart.
"But," said Mr. Porteous, after a pause and a long snuff, "I must be faithful with you, Adam: ’_First_ pure, _then_ peaceable,’ you know."
"And I hope, sir," said Adam, "’easy to be entreated.’"
"_That,_" replied Mr. Porteous, "depends on circumstances. Let us, therefore, look at the whole aspects of the case. There is to be considered, for example, your original delinquency, mistake, or call it by what name you please; then there is to be taken into account my full explanation, given ministerially in your own house, of the principles which guided my conduct and ought to guide yours; then there is also the matter of the Kirk Session--the fact that they have taken it up, which adds to its difficulty--a difficulty, however, let me say, Mr. Mercer, which has not been occasioned by me. Now, review all these--especially that with which you have personally most to do--the _origo mali_, so to speak--the fact that a bird endeared to you by very touching associations was, let me admit it, accidentally, and unintentionally,--let this also be granted for the sake of argument,--made by you the occasion of scandal. We are agreed on this point at least?"
"It was on that point," interrupted the Sergeant, "I thought you doubted my honour."
"No!" said Mr. Porteous; "I only declared that ’honour’ was a worldly, not a Christian phrase, and unfit therefore for a Church court."
The Sergeant was nonplussed. Thinking his ignorance sinful, he bowed, and said no more.
"I am glad you acquiesce so far," continued Mr. Porteous. "But further:--carefully observe," and he leant forward, with finger and thumb describing an argumentative enclosure out of which Adam could not escape--"observe that the visible, because notorious, _fact_ of scandal demands some reparation by a fact equally visible and notorious; you see? What kind of reparation I demanded, I have already told you. I smile at its amount, in spite of all you have said, and said so well, in explaining your difficulties in not at once making it; nay I sympathise with your kindly, though, permit me to say, your weak _feeling_, Adam. But, is feeling principle?" Here Mr. Porteous paused with a complacent smile to witness the telling effect of his suggestive question. "Were our Covenanting forefathers," he went on to say, "guided by feeling in giving their testimony for truth by the sacrifice of their very lives? Were the martyrs of the early Church guided by feeling? But I will not insult an elder of mine by any such arguments, as if he were either ignorant of them, or insensible to their importance. Let me just add," concluded the minister, in a low, emphatic, and solemn voice, laying one hand on Adam’s knee, "what would your dear boy _now_ think--supposing him to be saved--if he knew that his father was willing to lose, or even to weaken his influence for good in the parish--to run the risk of being suspended, as you now do, from the honourable position of an elder--and all for what?" asked the minister, throwing himself back in his chair, and spreading out his hands--"all for what! a toy, a plaything, a bird! and because of your _feeling_--think of it, Adam--your _feeling_! All must yield but you: neighbours must yield, Session must yield, and I must yield!--no sacrifice or satisfaction will you make, not even of this bird; and all because _your_ feelings, forsooth, would suffer! _That’s_ your position, Adam. I say it advisedly. And finally, as I also hinted to you, what would the Dissenters say if we were less pure in our discipline than themselves? Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Askelon--the Philistines would rejoice! Take any view of the case you please, it is bad--very bad." And the minister struck his thigh, turned round in his chair, and looked at the roof of the room.