The Voice | Page 5

side. But Philippa noticed him.
So, after their kind, did these two shepherds of souls endeavor to
establish a relationship with Henry and Philippa Roberts. And they
were equally successful. Philippa gave her apple blossoms to the old
minister,--and went to Mr. Fenn's church the very next Sunday. Henry
Roberts accepted the tracts with a simple belief in the kindly purpose of

the young minister, and stayed away from both churches. But both
father and daughter were pleased by the clerical attentions:
"I love Dr. Lavendar," Philippa said to her father.
"I am obliged to Mr. Fenn," her father said to Philippa. "The youth," he
added, "cares for my soul. I am obliged to any one who cares for my
soul."
He was, indeed, as Dr. Lavendar said, a man of humble mind; and yet
with his humbleness was a serene certainty of belief as to his soul's
welfare that would have been impossible to John Fenn, who measured
every man's chance of salvation by his own theological yardstick, or
even to Dr. Lavendar, who thought salvation unmeasurable. But then
neither of these two ministers had had Henry Roberts's experience. It
was very far back, that experience; it happened before Philippa was
born; and when they came to live between the two villages Philippa
was twenty-four years old....
It was in the thirties that young Roberts, a tanner in Lower Ripple, went
to England to collect a small bequest left him by a relative. The sense
of distance, the long weeks at sea in a sailing-vessel, the new country
and the new people, all impressed themselves upon a very sensitive
mind, a mind which, even without such emotional preparation, was
ready to respond to any deeply emotional appeal. Then came the appeal.
It was that new gospel of the Tongues, which, in those days, astounded
and thrilled all London from the lips of Edward Irving--fanatic, saint,
and martyr!--the man who, having prayed that God would speak again
in prophecy, would not deny the power of prayer by refusing to believe
that his prayer was answered, even though the prophecy was
unintelligible. And later, when the passionate cadences of the spirit
were in English, and were found to be only trite or foolish words,
repeated and repeated in a wailing chant by some sincere, hysterical
woman, he still believed that a new day of Pentecost had dawned upon
a sinful world! "For," said he, "when I asked for bread, would God give
me a stone?"
Henry Roberts went to hear the great preacher and forgot his haste to

receive his little legacy so that he might hurry back to the tanyard.
Irving's eloquence entranced him, and it alone would have held him
longer than the time he had allowed himself for absence from the
tannery. But it happened that he was present on that Lord's Day when,
with a solemn and dreadful sound, the Tongues first spoke in that dingy
Chapel in Regent Square, and no man who heard that Sound ever
forgot it! The mystical youth from America was shaken to his very soul.
He stayed on in London for nearly a year, immersing himself in those
tides of emotion which swept saner minds than his from the somewhat
dry land of ordinary human experience. That no personal revelation
was made to him, that the searing benediction of the Tongues had not
touched his own awed, uplifted brow, made no difference: he
believed!--and prayed God to help any lingering unbelief that might be
holding him back from deeper knowledges. To the end of his days he
was Edward Irving's follower; and when he went back to America it
was as a missionary of the new sect, that called itself by the sounding
title of The Catholic Apostolic Church. In Lower Ripple he preached to
any who would listen to him the doctrine of the new Pentecost. At first
curiosity brought him hearers; his story of the Voice, dramatic and
mysterious, was listened to in doubting silence; then disapproved of--so
hotly disapproved of that he was sessioned and read out of Church.
But in those days in western Pennsylvania, mere living was too
engrossing a matter for much thought of "tongues" and "voices"; it was
easier, when a man talked of dreams and visions, not to argue with him,
but to say that he was "crazy." So by and by Henry Roberts's heresy
was forgotten and his religion merely smiled at. Certainly it struck no
roots outside his own heart. Even his family did not share his belief.
When he married, as he did when he was nearly fifty, his wife was
impatient with his Faith--indeed, fearful of it, and with persistent,
nagging reasonableness urged his return to the respectable paths of
Presbyterianism. To his pain, when his girl, his Philippa, grew up