There had lately come to Virginia, and to the convention of its clergy at
Williamsburgh, one Mr. Eliot, a minister after the heart of a large number
of sober and godly men whose reputation as a body suffered at the hands of
Mr. Darden, of Fair View parish, Mr. Bailey, of Newport, Mr. Worden, of
Lawn's Creek, and a few kindred spirits. Certainly Mr. Eliot was not like
these; so erect, indeed, did he hold himself in the strait and narrow path
that his most admiring brethren, being, as became good Virginians,
somewhat easy-going in their saintliness, were inclined to think that he
leaned too far the other way. It was commendable to hate sin and reprove
the sinner; but when it came to raining condemnation upon horse-racing,
dancing, Cato at the playhouse, and like innocent diversions, Mr. Eliot
was surely somewhat out of bounds. The most part accounted for his turn of
mind by the fact that ere he came to Virginia he had been a sojourner in
New England.
He was mighty in the pulpit, was Mr. Eliot; no droning reader of last
year's sermons, but a thunderer forth of speech that was now acrid, now
fiery, but that always came from an impassioned nature, vehement for the
damnation of those whom God so strangely spared. When, as had perforce
happened during the past week, he must sit with his brethren in the
congregation and listen to lukewarm--nay, to dead and cold adjurations and
expoundings, his very soul itched to mount the pulpit stairs, thrust down
the Laodicean that chanced to occupy it, and himself awaken as with the
sound of a trumpet this people who slept upon the verge of a precipice,
between hell that gaped below and God who sat on high, serenely regardful
of his creatures' plight. Though so short a time in Virginia, he was
already become a man of note, the prophet not without honor, whom it was
the fashion to admire, if not to follow. It was therefore natural enough
that the Commissary, himself a man of plain speech from the pulpit, should
appoint him to preach in Bruton church this Sunday morning, before his
Excellency the Governor, the worshipful the Council, the clergy in
convention, and as much of Williamsburgh, gentle and simple, as could
crowd into the church. Mr. Eliot took the compliment as an answer to
prayer, and chose for his text Daniel fifth and twenty-seventh.
Lodging as he did on Palace Street, the early hours of the past night,
which he would have given to prayer and meditation, had been profaned by
strains of music from the Governor's house, by laughter and swearing and
much going to and fro in the street beneath his window. These disturbances
filling him with righteous wrath, he came down to his breakfast next
morning prepared to give his hostess, who kept him company at table, line
and verse which should demonstrate that Jehovah shared his anger.