The Romance of Zion Chapel | Page 2

Gasometer Street for the Isles of Greece!
CHAPTER II
INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL
That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest light in the contrast which it was the happy business of Theophilus Londonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make in the vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchester at large.
Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's so like the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for, that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it for purposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for its reminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the more suitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhaps rather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions,--or say one was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call." By day he professed to be a clerk in a cotton-office,--and he was no fool at that (there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but by night, and occasionally of an afternoon,--when he got leave of absence to solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral,--he was a spiritual pastor, the young father of his flock.
Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject of Nonconformity, its influence on individualities and its direct relationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of Rome,--though he sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter,--Theophilus Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would have found no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could not long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was the non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity that gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of a personal force that claimed operation in some human employment, some work not made with hands, but into which also entered the spirit of man, and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth or influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity. To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the art of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for this Nonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his opportunity.
This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by no remoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher with a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a failure all in one.
I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to be a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting quality,--a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand of strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made himself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he was conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--were qualifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for, apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little "cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, he would occasionally "supply," they had passed into his son, and met in him other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love of laughter, and a mighty humanity.
Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape and partly something bigger and more effectively vital.
At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor at New Zion.
This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in terms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He would, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but that pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise, he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and humanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whatever the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderry that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However you may judge him, you must never make that mistake about him.
CHAPTER III
OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE