Wishful Seeing (5 page)

“We are afforded a great opportunity today at this gathering,” Small said. “Although this meeting was originally called by the Methodist Episcopal Church of the Province of Canada in order to bring its congregants together in worship, it has been agreed that the Reverend Phineas Brown of the Baptist Church be allowed to address you concerning a matter that weighs heavily on his mind.”

Thaddeus allowed himself a small twitch of amusement.
Weighs heavily on his mind
. What a clever way Small had put it. There might be hope for the young preacher yet.

“Mr. Brown has been invited today with the permission and full agreement of the Reverend Thaddeus Lewis of the Methodist Episcopals,” Small went on.

There was scattered applause from the crowd.

“The subject of today's discussion is Baptism. This rite is a central part of both our creeds, but there is some dispute as to the form it should take.”

“Put them in the middle of the yard and let them duke it out.” The voice floated over the yard. Everyone laughed. Although it was a disruption, Thaddeus was glad to see that it was a good-natured crowd. He knew that Brown had marshalled his troops in the same way that Thaddeus had, each hoping to lure away the other's followers. There was always a danger of fisticuffs at these things if tempers were running high.

“First,” Small said, “we'll hear from Mr. Brown.”

Brown stepped forward to scattered applause. “The Baptist Church practises the rite of Baptism,” he began. “We do not, however, content ourselves with a half-hearted sprink­ling.” He spat out the last word, as the insult it was intended to be. “We believe that only full immersion baptism will admit you to the Kingdom of God. We believe that this is what God intends, and that it says so clearly in the Bible. The Bible, which is the Book of Books, and which I love with all my heart.” He held the book he was carrying aloft for the crowd to see. “When you open this Bible,” he said, “you will note that it says ‘The King James Version.'”

The congregation could note nothing of the sort, Thaddeus knew, since the print was far too small to make out from more than a foot or so away. It didn't matter, he figured, since a great number of them could barely read anyway.

“Version,”
Brown repeated, and then he paused to let the ramifications of the word sink in. “This means that King James gathered together a group of scholars and directed them to translate the texts from the original Latin and Greek. Unfortunately, they did not do it correctly.”

There was a murmur through the crowd.

“There are three reasons for this mistranslation.” The man waved the open Bible in the air. “First of all, King James directed the translation. He gave the outlines of translation to those to whom the work was assigned. He was the king. They would dare not go contrary to his order even if they were disposed to do so. And after all, everyone knows that King James was a sprinkler.”

A number of people swivelled around to see how Thaddeus was taking this point. He remained calm and showed no reaction. As far as he was concerned, the Baptist had already hanged himself.

“Furthermore,” Brown went on, “the translators were all sprinklers themselves. As a result, the language has been so changed by this influence that it is not to be depended upon.”

Thaddeus knew what the next gambit would be. And sure enough, the man made his pitch, repeating the argument he had put forth at their first confrontation.

“My good friend here,” Brown pointed to Thaddeus, “relies upon the King James version of this Book of Books. He does not know how to read Greek or Latin.”

Thaddeus allowed himself a small nod of the head in response to this.

“I, however, have read the original Greek and Latin texts for myself, and I can tell you that this Bible, this Protestant Bible, has been mistranslated, particularly with respect to Baptism. If you read it in Greek, or if you read it in Latin, it is clear that the Lord Jesus was in favour of full immersion.”

There was another round of clapping from the Baptists in the crowd. Brown bowed in acknowledgment, and then he nodded smugly at Thaddeus and stepped back.

Thaddeus was astonished. This was no argument at all. Brown had quoted no verses, cited no authorities, had done nothing but repeat the statements he had made at the camp meeting. This was too easy. Thaddeus felt a twinge of disappointment. He had been looking forward to a spirited debate that would test his skills as both an orator and a logician, not this pale excuse for a debate. Then he recalled his duty, and knew that this day he would bring many to the Methodist Episcopal Church.

He stepped forward, cast a long look around him, resisted the urge to look toward the fence, and then turned to Brown.

“Thank you very much for that insightful summary, Mr. Brown,” he said. A handful of people caught the sarcasm in his voice and snickered a little.

“I'm afraid, however, that you have seized the wrong end of the argument. Now, you must understand me clearly. I certainly do not mean to say, or to be understood to say, that the Reverend Mr. Brown is an infidel.”

There was a gasp. Thaddeus held his hand up in admonishment.

“No, indeed, I hold him as a Christian brother. But I do believe that he has mistaken his way on the doctrine of Baptism. And I must say that I have never in my life met an infidel who strove to invalidate and render useless the Protestant Bible so much as he does.”

He had the crowd's full attention now. This was more like what they were expecting.

“No, I would prefer to believe that Mr. Brown just didn't understand properly what he was saying or doing. He pressed the open Bible to his heart and declared his intense love for it.”

“Yes, he did!” someone shouted.

“He said he esteemed it above any other book. That it was the Book of Books!”

Thaddeus paused for a moment to let the tension build before he went on.

“And then he turns right around and claims that this Book of Books, this Book that he loves with all his heart, is nothing more than a mistranslated piece of nonsense!”

There was wild applause at this. Thaddeus waited until it had just started to diminish, just slightly, and then he turned to the Baptist minister. “Well, which is it, Mr. Brown?”

He thought he would be deafened by the roar that went up. He had to admit to himself that it was a lovely piece of rhet­oric, and he couldn't believe that any minister who had achieved ordination would not have seen the contradiction in the Baptist's argument. Brown was red in the face, his mouth opening and closing. He wanted a rebuttal, Thaddeus could see, but the crowd wasn't going to let him have it. Neither was Thaddeus.

He held his hand up to quell the noise. He wasn't quite finished yet.

“It is true that I read neither Latin nor Greek, as Mr. Brown claims to. Nor do many of the people here today.” He was reasonably sure that a great many of the people gathered in the yard had difficulty enough with English, and he would be astonished if there were more than one or two persons present who were conversant with the classical languages, but the implication that it was a possibility was a compliment to his audience, and they took it as such.

“Neither could the people of England when long ago King James gathered the finest scholars in the land to translate the scriptures into a language that all could understand. These scholars were the most educated minds of their time. They were chosen carefully. They had spent countless years in the study of ancient languages. And God smiled upon their efforts.”

Again, Thaddeus paused, and assumed a look of perplexity.

“Mr. Brown thanks God that he can read Greek and Latin for himself. He will not believe any man or any set of men with whom he disagrees, because he knows for himself the Protestant Bible was not translated correctly. He
knows.
And yet, for all his supposed learning, he has not given you one single example of this so-called mistranslation. He has not quoted a single verse to support his argument. All he has done is insist that you believe him because he is wiser than the finest minds in England.”

“Good point!” someone shouted. Thaddeus looked down at Martha, who grinned at him.

“You can claim that certain passages in the Bible were mistranslated if you like.”

“No!” someone shouted.

“But if some of them are wrong, doesn't it stand to reason that all of them are wrong?”

“No, no!” More voices joined the protest.

“But if some of them are wrong and some of them are right, which ones are which? Mr. Brown claims to know, because he can read Latin and Greek. The question remains: How well? Better than I can, that's true enough. Better than most of us.”

Again, the little compliment.

“But better than scholars who have spent their entire lifetimes in study? I think not. I think I know where a mistranslation is most likely to occur.”

Another small cheer.

“And yet, Mr. Brown claims to love the Bible above all things. He holds it to his heart and proclaims it the Book of Books. But only some parts of it. The parts he agrees with. Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Brown. You cannot have it both ways.”

There was a stirring off to Thaddeus's right. It was Brown, who had climbed down from the wagon and was striding through the crowd toward the gate.

Thaddeus called after him. “I'm sorry, Mr. Brown. I don't understand your argument. Because you have made none.”

There was a huge round of applause and a few cheers as Thaddeus drove his point home.

“Let us then look at what this
mistranslated
Book of Books actually says to us, in language we can understand, as provided by King James's best scholars.
‘For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard. And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.'
”

The field was his, and now Thaddeus would give these people what they had come for. On and on he went, quoting, explaining, expostulating, until finally, after an exhausting three hours on his feet, he signalled Small to end the service with a hymn.

The crowd sang loudly and enthusiastically. As the last notes died away, many of the attendees surged forward, anxious to speak with Thaddeus, keen to abandon whatever creeds they had followed until then and join with the Methodist Episcopals. By the time he had treated with them all, Ellen Howell had once again disappeared.

Thaddeus saw Martha and the Small family off in the hay wagon before he headed west in the wake of his triumph. He would work his way through Hamilton and Hope Townships, then carry on along the shore of Lake Ontario to Cobourg for a few days rest before he and James traded routes.

For the first hour or so a flush of exhilaration allowed him to ignore his physical discomfort. He had acquitted himself well, although in all modesty he had to admit that the Baptist minister had proved a poor opponent. Still, Thaddeus knew that his efforts could only help the church, and himself, as well. He would have many baptisms to perform and surely many marriages and confirmations and burials would follow. It was a pleasure to labour on such fertile ground. He just wished that the ground he was attempting to sow wasn't quite so rough.

After his elation wore off, he realized that he was very tired. First there had been the journey from Cobourg to Cold Springs before his day had even really started, and then the three hours of standing on his feet, preaching. And now another long ride. When he'd first started the itinerant life so many years ago he had ridden for hours every day, and had sometimes been offered nothing more than a pile of straw as a bed at the end of it. Many a morning had begun with nothing more than a bowl of thin porridge.
Soft in my old age,
he thought, and yet he couldn't help but look forward to completing his round and returning to his comfortable manse in Cobourg.

He had moments when he felt a little guilty about claiming such a large house when his assistant shared a modest cottage with his parents and four siblings. But as the senior man, Thaddeus was entitled to the benefit, and he intended to make full use of it. After years of making do in tiny houses and furnished rooms in other people's homes, he found that he appreciated the space. He would make a start on his memoirs. He would pore through the many years of notes and records he had kept and put them in some kind of order. He would take over one upstairs room entirely as his office, so he could leave his papers and notebooks spread out over a table. And on those nights when sleep eluded him, he could rise, light a lamp, and write the story of his life.

He shifted in his saddle again to ease the ache in his knee. He carried a supply of willow tea with him now, which he brewed up on a regular basis. His son Luke had told him that it seemed to work best when used regularly and not just when his bones were rattled from the long rides. Luke had also given him a small bottle of laudanum for the really bad times, but Thaddeus didn't like to use it unless he absolutely had to. It dulled his wits and made him careless. He needed to stay alert. One mistake with his horse and they would both be out of action. He was fortunate that the good weather had lasted this far into the year, for when the fall rains came, the ride would be muddy and treacherous.

Even so, he much preferred riding alone with no sound but that of the wind and the birds to keep him company. He was relieved to be done with the first difficult week with his assistant. Small felt obliged to supply conversation as they rode, and it had taken only a few hours for Thaddeus to tire of it. Now he could let his thoughts wander without interruption.

He found that they were wandering far too often in the direction of the Howell woman. He wasn't sure why she unsettled him so. It was the dress, he guessed: a token of a lost time, a happier time. A memory he thought had been lost.

He wondered if he should have a word with the husband about the bruise he had seen on her arm. That could be tricky. The Howells were not members of his church. Mr. Howell was, if not an important man, at least a self-important one. He might not take kindly to an admonition from a Methodist saddlebag preacher, someone who, Thaddeus was sure, Howell regarded as a lower order of being. Besides, sometimes confrontation made things worse. But Thaddeus was sure the bruising had not been inflicted by a cow's hoof as the woman claimed. Someone had grabbed her wrist and wrenched it, leaving the unmistakable outline of fingers in a rainbow of nasty marks. For the sake of his own conscience, he needed to try to set things right. In fact, it was his duty to do so.

Perhaps he should ask Leland Gordon about it first. Gordon said he rented land from the Howells. Maybe he would know if there had been other bruises. Or better yet, he would ask Old Mrs. Gordon, who might be more sympathetic to his inquiry. That resolved, he felt easier in his mind, if not in his body.

As he reached each meeting on his western circuit, he found that reports of The Great Baptism Debate had already spread, and that his arrival was eagerly anticipated in every instance. All of his meetings attracted new people. His services were full. Everyone wanted to hear the preacher who had acquitted himself so well, who had marshalled his knowledge of scripture and commanded a large crowd. He allowed himself to bask a little in the notoriety. His only other encounter with fame had been as a result of the apprehension of murderers. This time, people wanted to know him because of the heavenly message he delivered, and not because of some earthly derring-do. This kind of admiration was much more welcome and he allowed himself to savour it.

He scheduled extra meetings for the coming month. Small would have to pick up some of them. He hoped the junior minister could consolidate the gains he'd made, and that the people didn't wander away again when they discovered that they wouldn't be hearing the preacher who had verbally wrestled a Baptist to the ground.

Second only to the talk of his exploits on the speaking platform was news of the local railways. In the western part of his circuit, the conversation was all about the proposed Port Hope Railway that was intended to snake past the western end of Rice Lake to Lindsay and Peterborough. A company had been formed and a charter applied for, with construction slated to begin sometime in the next two years. Even if it was completed, the Port Hope line would face stiff competition from the Cobourg to Peterborough Railway. They both hoped to draw from the same market, and Cobourg had a head start.

Even so, Port Hope was the far more sensible proposal, as far as Thaddeus could tell. The Cobourg railway seemed to be almost entirely dependent on the integrity of the bridge across the lake, and although the contractor, a man named Zimmerman, claimed to have extensive experience with things like bridge-building and had landed contracts for an enormous number of these small railways as a result, Thaddeus couldn't rid himself of the notion that the project was ill-fated, and that the railway mania that gripped the country would all come to naught in the end. No one had been terribly successful at building reliable roads, and he failed to see how iron rails would fare any better. Still, the province was buzzing with plans for small local railways, and a major trunk line was even now slated to inch its way from Montreal to Toronto.

As Thaddeus reached the limit of his circuit and headed east again, the conversation subtly changed. Although he was still welcomed wherever he went, he began to realize that his exploits were rather a nine-day wonder, and more of the discussions he overheard were about the difficulties that the Cobourg railway now found itself in. The problem was not with the bridge, however, but with a tract of land at the village of Sully.

“The railway company's already started building sheds on the land and now it looks like they may not own it after all,” one man in Port Britain said. “Jack Plews is taking them to court.”

“But I thought Plews was behind in the mortgage and that's why he sold it,” Thaddeus said. That was what the men at the camp meeting had thought.

“People say there was some sharp dealing and that D'Arcy Boulton tipped George Howell off about the plans for the land. Stands to reason, given Boulton is a director of the railway company. Anyhow, Plews intends to get some satisfaction.”

“Could be Plews didn't really own it either,” said one toothless old man who had hobbled into the meeting on the arm of his neighbour and now sat on the bench closest to the window. “Nor Boulton neither, if it comes to that.”

“What are you talking about, Walter?” his neighbour said.

“My uncle farmed that land on shares maybe fifty, sixty years ago, but he couldn't never get clear title for it. There was some problem.” The old man stopped and mumbled his gums while he thought about this. “Now, I just can't quite remember the ins and outs of it, but any road, he moved on. Nice piece of property, though, right there by the lake.”

“Are you sure, Walter? I didn't know your Uncle Albert ever farmed back at the lake.” The neighbour was obviously skeptical about the story.

“No, no, t'wasn't Uncle Albert. It was Uncle Lem Palmer. Or maybe it was Uncle Syl. No, it musta been Uncle Lem, 'cause he was married to Aunt Harriet …”

The old man embarked on a long, complicated explanation of his family tree. The others chuckled indulgently, but Thaddeus figured the core point of the story could well be true. Land titles were tricky things in Upper Canada — proving which parcels were grants and which were purchases, which ones had fulfilled the requirements for a patent, and which had been assigned to settlers who failed to clear the requisite number of acres and therefore forfeited the land to the Crown. The Heir and Devisee Commission existed to sort it all out, but often the original records had been lost or destroyed or simply not recorded accurately. Sometimes land passed through two or three generations with no clear title in place, and a grandson might discover that he couldn't get a mortgage on his property because his grandfather hadn't really owned it in the first place.

Thaddeus would be surprised if the railway company hadn't made certain of their ownership before they began to build, but then, he reflected, everything about the Cobourg railway was being done in a hurry and they may not have bothered before they began construction.

In any event, it wasn't really any of his business and he gently tried to steer the conversation back to the original purpose of the meeting. But he did wonder what would happen to the Sully Railroad Station if Mr. Plews could make his accusations stick. He would probably just be paid off, Thaddeus guessed. The railway company appeared to have no end of funds at their disposal, so what was a little extra to make a problem go away? And that, he decided, was probably what Plews was angling for.

The road that wound its way along the shore of Lake Ontario was kept in reasonable repair, and after the conclusion of the meeting, he made good time, arriving back in Cobourg just before suppertime. He stabled and fed his horse, then walked across the yard to the manse. To his surprise, James Small was standing just inside the back porch, a pie in his hand. Martha leaned against the jamb of the door that led into the kitchen. Small seemed flustered when he saw Thaddeus.

“Mr. Lewis,” he stammered. “I'm surprised to see you so soon.”

“You too,” Thaddeus said. Small must have galloped through his appointments and galloped right home again.

“Mother's just sent over an apple pie,” Small said, whisking away the cloth that covered the pan and holding it out for Thaddeus to see, as if he had been challenged somehow about what he was carrying and needed to justify his presence.

“Excellent!” Thaddeus said. A pie was always a welcome thing.

“Thank you, Mr. Small,” Martha said and reached for the pan. “And tell your mother I'm very much obliged.”

Small nodded at her, and then at Thaddeus, before he stumbled out the door.

Thaddeus kicked off his boots and followed Martha into the kitchen. “What was that all about?”

She sighed. “That's twice now he's made an excuse to come over here. It's a nuisance really, except that both times he brought something — first a box of kindling, and now a pie.”

“Ah, I see.” Apparently James Small had taken a fancy to Martha. “Is this going to be a problem?” She seemed not just indifferent to, but downright annoyed by, the young man's attentions. “Should I speak to him?”

“I don't think so,” Martha said. “I haven't given him the slightest encouragement. Nor will I.” She giggled a little. “Have you noticed that his Adam's apple bobs up and down when he talks? I can't help staring at it, and then I miss what he's saying to me.”

She was right. It did. Thaddeus had become mesmerized by it once or twice himself. He hoped Small wouldn't be too insistent and that there would be no hard feelings over Martha's rejection. It could make their working relationship awkward if Small took offence, or persisted in spite of her discouragement.

“Besides,” Martha went on, “he's
old
.”

Thaddeus laughed. “He's twenty-three!”

Martha looked at him solemnly. “And I'm fifteen. Far too young to have any young man coming to the door, much less an old one of twenty-three.”

“That's absolutely correct, my dear.” He knew he was being teased, but he did wonder again if he had taken on more than he bargained for.

“Anyway, I hadn't expected to see you quite so soon,” she said. “I was going to melt some cheese on some bread and call that my supper.”

“That sounds fine, if we can have some of that pie for dessert.”

“I'll brew some tea for you first.”

Thaddeus walked over to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair, but was suddenly struck with the realization that something was different. It took him a few moments to work out what it was.

“Did you put different curtains in here?” he asked. The window had been draped in a worn and yellowed fabric that blocked most of the light. Now only the bottom pane was covered, and with a far lighter material.

“Yes. Those came from the back bedroom. They washed up better than the ones that were there, so I switched them. It's lovely in the morning — the sun pours in through that window.”

“Good idea,” he said. It was something that would never have occurred to him to do. “They look nice.”