The preacher spoke a broad Lancashire dialect, and was very dramatic. He pictured God’s efforts to save a soul. Under the pulpit ledge was the imaginary bottomless pit of this world—not of the next. He leaned over and pretended to be drawing the soul up with a cord. “He comes, he comes!” he cried; “God be praised he is safe!” and he landed him on the Bible. The congregation gave a great groan of relief. “There he is on the Rock of Ages! No, no, he slips; the Devil has him!” The preacher tried to rescue him: “He is gone—gone!” and he bent over the pulpit in agony. The people almost shrieked. “Gone—gone!” he said again with most moving pathos, and was still for a moment. Then gathering himself up, he solemnly repeated the terrible verses: “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” Zachariah knew that text well. Round it had raged the polemics of ages. Mr. Bradshaw had never referred to it but once, and all the elder members of his congregation were eager in the extreme to hear what he had to say about it. He boldly declared that it had nothing to do with the elect. He was compelled to do so. Following his master Calvin, he made it apply to outsiders. The elect, says Calvin, are beyond the risk of fatal fall. But “I deny,” he goes on to say, that “there is any reason why God may not bestow even on the reprobate a taste of His favour; may irradiate their minds with some scintillations of His light; may touch them with some sense of His goodness; may somehow engrave His word on their minds.” Horrible, most horrible, we scream, that the Almighty should thus play with those whom He means to destroy; but let us once more remember that these men did not idly believe in such cruelty. They were forced into their belief by the demands of their understanding, and their assent was more meritorious than the weak protests of so-called enlightenment. Zachariah, pondering absently on what he had heard, was passing out of the chapel when a hand was gently laid on his shoulder.
“Ah, friend, what are you doing here?”
He turned round and recognised William Ogden, who had been sent by the Hampden Club in Manchester some six months before as a delegate to the Friends of the People in London. The two walked some distance together, and Zachariah gave him the history of the last three weeks. With the murder he was, of course, acquainted. Ogden was a letterpress printer, and when he heard that Zachariah was in such straits, he said that he thought he might perhaps find him a job for the present, and told him to come to his office on the following morning. Zachariah’s heart rejoiced that his bread would not fail, but he characteristically rejoiced even more at this signal proof that his trust in his God was justified. When he reached home he proposed to his wife that they should at once kneel down and thank God for His mercy.
“Of course, Zachariah; but you are not yet sure you will get anything. I will take off my things directly.”
“Need you wait to take off your things, my dear?”
“Really, Zachariah, you do make such strange remarks sometimes. I need not wait; but I am sure it will be more becoming, and it will give you an opportunity to think over what you are going to say.”
Accordingly Mrs. Coleman retired for about five minutes. On her return she observed that it was the time for regular family prayer, and she produced the Bible. Zachariah had indeed had the opportunity to think, and he had thought very rapidly. The mere opening of the sacred Book, however, always acted as a spell, and when its heavy lids fell down on either side the room cleared itself of all haunting, intrusive evil spirits. He read the seventeenth chapter of Exodus, the story of the water brought out of the rock; and he thanked the Almighty with great earnestness for the favour shown him, never once expressing a doubt that he would not be successful. He was not mistaken, for Ogden had a place for him, just as good and just as permanent as the one he had left in London.
X
Disintegration by Degrees
We must now advance a little more rapidly. It was in the beginning of 1815 that Zachariah found himself settled in Manchester. That eventful year passed without any external change, so far as he was concerned. He became a member of the Hampden Club, to which Ogden and Bamford belonged; but he heard nothing of Maitland nor of Caillaud. He had a letter now and then from Mr. Bradshaw and it was a sore trial to him that nobody could be found in Manchester to take the place of that worthy man of God. He could not attach himself definitely to any church in the town, and the habit grew upon him of wandering into this or the other chapel as his fancy led him. His comrades often met on Sunday evenings. At first he would not go; but he was afterwards persuaded to do so. The reasons which induced him to alter his mind were, in the first place, the piety, methodistic most of it, which was then mixed up with politics; and secondly, a growing fierceness of temper,
