Old Mortality, Complete

by Walter Scott

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist instead of a stick. Hudibras.

  In the meantime, the insurgent cavalry returned from the pursuit, jadedand worn out with their unwonted efforts, and the infantry assembled onthe ground which they had won, fatigued with toil and hunger. Theirsuccess, however, was a cordial to every bosom, and seemed even to servein the stead of food and refreshment. It was, indeed, much more brilliantthan they durst have ventured to anticipate; for, with no great loss ontheir part, they had totally routed a regiment of picked men, commandedby the first officer in Scotland, and one whose very name had long been aterror to them. Their success seemed even to have upon their spirits theeffect of a sudden and violent surprise, so much had their taking up armsbeen a measure of desperation rather than of hope. Their meeting was alsocasual, and they had hastily arranged themselves under such commanders aswere remarkable for zeal and courage, without much respect to any otherqualities. It followed, from this state of disorganization, that thewhole army appeared at once to resolve itself into a general committeefor considering what steps were to be taken in consequence of theirsuccess, and no opinion could be started so wild that it had not somefavourers and advocates. Some proposed they should march to Glasgow, someto Hamilton, some to Edinburgh, some to London. Some were for sending adeputation of their number to London to convert Charles II. to a sense ofthe error of his ways; and others, less charitable, proposed either tocall a new successor to the crown, or to declare Scotland a freerepublic. A free parliament of the nation, and a free assembly of theKirk, were the objects of the more sensible and moderate of the party. Inthe meanwhile, a clamour arose among the soldiers for bread and othernecessaries, and while all complained of hardship and hunger, none tookthe necessary measures to procure supplies. In short, the camp of theCovenanters, even in the very moment of success, seemed about to dissolvelike a rope of sand, from want of the original principles of combinationand union.

  Burley, who had now returned from the pursuit, found his followers inthis distracted state. With the ready talent of one accustomed toencounter exigences, he proposed, that one hundred of the freshest menshould be drawn out for duty--that a small number of those who hadhitherto acted as leaders, should constitute a committee of directionuntil officers should be regularly chosen--and that, to crown thevictory, Gabriel Kettledrummle should be called upon to improve theprovidential success which they had obtained, by a word in seasonaddressed to the army. He reckoned very much, and not without reason, onthis last expedient, as a means of engaging the attention of the bulk ofthe insurgents, while he himself, and two or three of their leaders, helda private council of war, undisturbed by the discordant opinions, orsenseless clamour, of the general body.

  Kettledrummle more than answered the expectations of Burley. Two mortalhours did he preach at a breathing; and certainly no lungs, or doctrine,excepting his own, could have kept up, for so long a time, the attentionof men in such precarious circumstances. But he possessed in perfection asort of rude and familiar eloquence peculiar to the preachers of thatperiod, which, though it would have been fastidiously rejected by anaudience which possessed any portion of taste, was a cake of the rightleaven for the palates of those whom he now addressed. His text was fromthe forty-ninth chapter of Isaiah, "Even the captives of the mighty shallbe taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for Iwill contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thychildren.

  "And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and theyshall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all fleshshall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the MightyOne of Jacob."

  The discourse which he pronounced upon this subject was divided intofifteen heads, each of which was garnished with seven uses ofapplication, two of consolation, two of terror, two declaring the causesof backsliding and of wrath, and one announcing the promised and expecteddeliverance. The first part of his text he applied to his own deliveranceand that of his companions; and took occasion to speak a few words inpraise of young Milnwood, of whom, as of a champion of the Covenant, heaugured great things. The second part he applied to the punishments whichwere about to fall upon the persecuting government. At times hewas familiar and colloquial; now he was loud, energetic, andboisterous;--some parts of his discourse might be called sublime, andothers sunk below burlesque. Occasionally he vindicated with greatanimation the right of every freeman to worship God according to his ownconscience; and presently he charged the guilt and misery of the peopleon the awful negligence of their rulers, who had not only failed toestablish presbytery as the national religion, but had toleratedsectaries of various descriptions, Papists, Prelatists, Erastians,assuming the name of Presbyterians, Independents, Socinians, andQuakers: all of whom Kettledrummle proposed, by one sweeping act, toexpel from the land, and thus re-edify in its integrity the beauty ofthe sanctuary. He next handled very pithily the doctrine of defensivearms and of resistance to Charles II., observing, that, instead of anursing father to the Kirk, that monarch had been a nursing father tonone but his own bastards. He went at some length through the life andconversation of that joyous prince, few parts of which, it must beowned, were qualified to stand the rough handling of so uncourtly anorator, who conferred on him the hard names of Jeroboam, Omri, Ahab,Shallum, Pekah, and every other evil monarch recorded in the Chronicles,and concluded with a round application of the Scripture, "Tophet isordained of old; yea, for the King it is provided: he hath made it deepand large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood: the breath of theLord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it."

  Kettledrummle had no sooner ended his sermon, and descended from the hugerock which had served him for a pulpit, than his post was occupied by apastor of a very different description. The reverend Gabriel was advancedin years, somewhat corpulent, with a loud voice, a square face, and a setof stupid and unanimated features, in which the body seemed more topredominate over the spirit than was seemly in a sound divine. The youthwho succeeded him in exhorting this extraordinary convocation, EphraimMacbriar by name, was hardly twenty years old; yet his thin featuresalready indicated, that a constitution, naturally hectic, was worn out byvigils, by fasts, by the rigour of imprisonment, and the fatiguesincident to a fugitive life. Young as he was, he had been twiceimprisoned for several months, and suffered many severities, which gavehim great influence with those of his own sect. He threw his faded eyesover the multitude and over the scene of battle; and a light of triumpharose in his glance, his pale yet striking features were coloured with atransient and hectic blush of joy. He folded his hands, raised his faceto heaven, and seemed lost in mental prayer and thanksgiving ere headdressed the people. When he spoke, his faint and broken voice seemed atfirst inadequate to express his conceptions. But the deep silence of theassembly, the eagerness with which the ear gathered every word, as thefamished Israelites collected the heavenly manna, had a correspondingeffect upon the preacher himself. His words became more distinct, hismanner more earnest and energetic; it seemed as if religious zeal wastriumphing over bodily weakness and infirmity. His natural eloquence wasnot altogether untainted with the coarseness of his sect; and yet, by theinfluence of a good natural taste, it was freed from the grosser and moreludicrous errors of his contemporaries; and the language of Scripture,which, in their mouths, was sometimes degraded by misapplication, gave,in Macbriar's exhortation, a rich and solemn effect, like that which isproduced by the beams of the sun streaming through the storiedrepresentation of saints and martyrs on the Gothic window of some ancientcathedral.

  He painted the desolation of the church, during the late period of herdistresses, in the most affecting colours. He described her, like Hagarwatching the waning life of her infant amid the fountainless desert; likeJudah, under her palm-tree, mourning for the devastation of her temple;like Rachel, weeping for her children and refusing comfort. But hechiefly ro
se into rough sublimity when addressing the men yet reekingfrom battle. He called on them to remember the great things which God haddone for them, and to persevere in the career which their victory hadopened.

  "Your garments are dyed--but not with the juice of the wine-press; yourswords are filled with blood," he exclaimed, "but not with the blood ofgoats or lambs; the dust of the desert on which ye stand is made fat withgore, but not with the blood of bullocks, for the Lord hath a sacrificein Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. These were notthe firstlings of the flock, the small cattle of burnt-offerings, whosebodies lie like dung on the ploughed field of the husbandman; this is notthe savour of myrrh, of frankincense, or of sweet herbs, that is steamingin your nostrils; but these bloody trunks are the carcasses of those whoheld the bow and the lance, who were cruel and would show no mercy, whosevoice roared like the sea, who rode upon horses, every man in array as ifto battle--they are the carcasses even of the mighty men of war that cameagainst Jacob in the day of his deliverance, and the smoke is that of thedevouring fires that have consumed them. And those wild hills thatsurround you are not a sanctuary planked with cedar and plated withsilver; nor are ye ministering priests at the altar, with censers andwith torches; but ye hold in your hands the sword, and the bow, and theweapons of death. And yet verily, I say unto you, that not when theancient Temple was in its first glory was there offered sacrifice moreacceptable than that which you have this day presented, giving to theslaughter the tyrant and the oppressor, with the rocks for your altars,and the sky for your vaulted sanctuary, and your own good swords for theinstruments of sacrifice. Leave not, therefore, the plough in thefurrow--turn not back from the path in which you have entered like thefamous worthies of old, whom God raised up for the glorifying of hisname and the deliverance of his afflicted people--halt not in the raceyou are running, lest the latter end should be worse than the beginning.Wherefore, set up a standard in the land; blow a trumpet upon themountains; let not the shepherd tarry by his sheepfold, or the seedsmancontinue in the ploughed field; but make the watch strong, sharpen thearrows, burnish the shields, name ye the captains of thousands, andcaptains of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens; call the footmen like therushing of winds, and cause the horsemen to come up like the sound ofmany waters; for the passages of the destroyers are stopped, their rodsare burned, and the face of their men of battle hath been turned toflight. Heaven has been with you, and has broken the bow of the mighty;then let every man's heart be as the heart of the valiant Maccabeus,every man's hand as the hand of the mighty Sampson, every man's sword asthat of Gideon, which turned not back from the slaughter; for the bannerof Reformation is spread abroad on the mountains in its firstloveliness, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

  "Well is he this day that shall barter his house for a helmet, and sellhis garment for a sword, and cast in his lot with the children of theCovenant, even to the fulfilling of the promise; and woe, woe unto himwho, for carnal ends and self-seeking, shall withhold himself from thegreat work, for the curse shall abide with him, even the bitter curse ofMeroz, because he came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty.Up, then, and be doing; the blood of martyrs, reeking upon scaffolds, iscrying for vengeance; the bones of saints, which lie whitening in thehighways, are pleading for retribution; the groans of innocent captivesfrom desolate isles of the sea, and from the dungeons of the tyrants'high places, cry for deliverance; the prayers of persecuted Christians,sheltering themselves in dens and deserts from the sword of theirpersecutors, famished with hunger, starving with cold, lacking fire,food, shelter, and clothing, because they serve God rather than man--allare with you, pleading, watching, knocking, storming the gates of heavenin your behalf. Heaven itself shall fight for you, as the stars in theircourses fought against Sisera. Then whoso will deserve immortal fame inthis world, and eternal happiness in that which is to come, let thementer into God's service, and take arles at the hand of his servant,--ablessing, namely, upon him and his household, and his children, to theninth generation, even the blessing of the promise, for ever and ever!Amen."

  The eloquence of the preacher was rewarded by the deep hum of sternapprobation which resounded through the armed assemblage at theconclusion of an exhortation, so well suited to that which they had done,and that which remained for them to do. The wounded forgot their pain,the faint and hungry their fatigues and privations, as they listened todoctrines which elevated them alike above the wants and calamities of theworld, and identified their cause with that of the Deity. Many crowdedaround the preacher, as he descended from the eminence on which he stood,and, clasping him with hands on which the gore was not yet hardened,pledged their sacred vow that they would play the part of Heaven's truesoldiers. Exhausted by his own enthusiasm, and by the animated fervourwhich he had exerted in his discourse, the preacher could only reply, inbroken accents,--"God bless you, my brethren--it is his cause.--Standstrongly up and play the men--the worst that can befall us is but a briefand bloody passage to heaven."

  Balfour, and the other leaders, had not lost the time which was employedin these spiritual exercises. Watch-fires were lighted, sentinels wereposted, and arrangements were made to refresh the army with suchprovisions as had been hastily collected from the nearest farm-houses andvillages. The present necessity thus provided for, they turned theirthoughts to the future. They had dispatched parties to spread the news oftheir victory, and to obtain, either by force or favour, supplies of whatthey stood most in need of. In this they had succeeded beyond theirhopes, having at one village seized a small magazine of provisions,forage, and ammunition, which had been provided for the royal forces.This success not only gave them relief at the time, but such hopes forthe future, that whereas formerly some of their number had begun toslacken in their zeal, they now unanimously resolved to abide together inarms, and commit themselves and their cause to the event of war.

  And whatever may be thought of the extravagance or narrow-minded bigotryof many of their tenets, it is impossible to deny the praise of devotedcourage to a few hundred peasants, who, without leaders, without money,without magazines, without any fixed plan of action, and almost withoutarms, borne out only by their innate zeal, and a detestation of theoppression of their rulers, ventured to declare open war against anestablished government, supported by a regular army and the whole forceof three kingdoms.