CHAPTER III
Reason Is Again Enthroned
Slowly the days brought new life to the convalescent, despite his occasional attacks of theological astigmatism. And these attacks grew less frequent and less marked as the poor bones once more involved themselves in firm flesh—to the glad relief of a harried and scandalised old gentleman whose black forebodings had daily moved him to visions of the mad-house for his best-loved descendant.
Yet there were still dreadful times when the young man on the couch blasphemed placidly by the hour, with an insane air of assuming that those about him held the same opinions; as if the Christian religion were a pricked bubble the adherents of which had long since vanished.
If left by himself he could often be heard chuckling and muttering between chuckles: "I will get me honour upon Pharaoh and all his host. I have hardened his heart and the heart of his host that I might show these my signs before him."
Entering the room, the old gentleman might be met with:
"I certainly agree with you, sir, in every respect— Christianity was an invertebrate materialism of separation —crude, mechanical separation—less spiritual, less ethical, than almost any of the Oriental faiths. Affirming the brotherhood of man, yet separating us into a heaven and a hell. Christians cowering before a being of divided power, half-god and half-devil. Indeed, I remember no religion so non-moral—none that is so baldly a mere mechanical device for meeting the primitive mind's need to set its own tribe apart from all others—or in the later growth to separate the sheep from the goats, by reason of the opinion formed of certain evidence. Even schoolboys nowadays know that no moral value inheres in any opinion formed upon evidence. Yet, I dare say it was doubtless for a long period an excellent religion for marauding nations."
Or, again, after a long period of apparently rational talk, the unfortunate young man would break out with, "And how childish its wonder-tales were, of iron made to swim, of a rod turned to a serpent, of a coin found in a fish's mouth, of devils asking to go into swine, of a fig-tree cursed to death because it did not bear fruit out of season—how childish that tale of a virgin mother, who conceived 'without sin,' as it is somewhere naïvely put—an ideal of absolutely flawless falsity. Even the great old painters were helpless before it. They were driven to make mindless Madonnas, stupid bits of fleshy animality. It's not easy to idealise mere physical motherhood. You see, that was the wrong, perverted idea of motherhood—'conceiving without sin.' It's an unclean dogma in its implications. I knew somewhere once a man named Milo Barrus—a sort of cheap village atheist, I remember, but one thing I recall hearing him say seems now to have a certain crude truth in it. He said: 'There's my old mother, seventy-eight this spring, bent, gray, and wasted with the work of raising us seven children; she's slaved so hard for fifty years that she's worn her wedding-ring to a fine thread, and her hands look as if they had a thousand knuckles and joints in them. But she smiles like a girl of sixteen, she was never cross or bitter to one of us hounds, and I believe she never even wanted to complain in all her days. And there's a look of noble capacity in her face, of soul dignity, that you never saw in any Madonna's. I tell you no "virgin mother" could be as beautiful as my mother, who bore seven children for love of my father and for love of the thought of us.' Isn't it queer, sir, that I remember that—for it seemed only grotesque at the time I heard it."
It was after this extraordinary speech, uttered with every sign of physical soundness, that young Dr. Merritt confided to the old man when they had left the study:
"He's coming on fine, Mr. Delcher. He'll eat himself into shape now in no time; but—I don't know— seems to me you stand a lot better show of making a preacher out of his brother. Of course, I may be mistaken —we doctors often are." Then the young physician became loftily humble: "But it doesn't strike me he'll ever get his ideas exactly into Presbyterian shape again!"
"But, man, he'll surely be rid of these devil's hallucinations?"
"Well, well—perhaps, but I'm almost afraid they're what we doctors call 'fixed delusions.'"
"But I set my heart so long ago on his preaching the Word. Oh, I've looked forward to it so long—and so hard!"
"Well, all you can do now is to feed him and not excite him. We often have these cases."
The very last of Bernal's utterances that could have been reprobated in a well man was his telling Clytie in the old gentleman's presence that, whereas in his boyhood he had pictured the hand of God as a big black hand reaching down to "remove" people—"the way you weed an onion bed"—he now conceived it to be like her own—"the most beautiful fat, red hand in the world, always patting you or tucking you in, or reaching you something good or pointing to a jar of cookies." It was so dangerously close to irreverence that it made Clytemnestra look stiff and solemn as she arranged matters on the luncheon tray; yet it was so inoffensive, considering the past, that it made Grandfather Delcher quite hopeful.
Thereafter, instead of babbling blasphemies, the convalescent became silent for the most part, yet cheerful and beautifully rational when he did speak, so that fear came gradually to leave the old man's heart for longer and longer intervals. Indeed, one day when Bernal had long lain silent, he swept lingering doubts from the old man's mind by saying, with a curious little air of embarrassment, yet with a return of that old-time playful assumption of equality between them—"I'm afraid, old man, I may have been a little queer in my talk— back there."
The old man's heart leaped with hope at this, though the acknowledgment struck him as being inadequate to the circumstance it referred to.
"You were flighty, boy, now and then," he replied, in quite the same glossing strain of inadequacy.
"I can't tell you how queerly things came back to me—some bits of consciousness and memory came early and some came late—and they're still struggling along in that disorderly procession. Even yet I've not been able to take stock. Old man, I must have been an awful bore."
"Oh, no—not that, boy!" Then, in glad relief, he fell upon his knees beside the couch, praying, in discreetly veiled language, that the pure heart of a babbler might not be held guilty for the utterances of an irresponsible head.
Yet, after many days of sane quiet and ever-renewing strength—days of long walks in the summer woods or long readings in the hammock when the shadows lay east of the big house, there came to be observed in the young man a certain moody reticence. And when the time for his return to college was near, he came again to his disquieted grandfather one day, saying:
"I think there are some matters I should speak to you about, sir." Had he used the term "old man," instead of "sir," there might still have been no cause for alarm. As it was, the grandfather regarded him in a sudden, heart-hurried fear.
"Are the matters, boy, those—those about which you may have spoken during your sickness?"
"I believe so, sir."
The old man winced again under the "sir," when his heart longed for the other term of playful familiarity. But he quickly assumed a lightness of manner to hide the eagerness of his heart's appeal:
"Don't talk now, boy—be advised by me. It's not well for you—you are not strong. Please let me guide you now. Go back to your studies, put all these matters from your mind—study your studies and play your play. Play harder than you study—you need it more. Play out of doors—you must have a horse to ride. You have thought too much before your time for thinking. Put away the troublesome things, and live in the flesh as a healthy boy should. Trust me. When you come to—to those matters again, they will not trouble you."
In his eagerness, first one hand had gone to the boy's shoulder, then the other, and his tones grew warm with pleading, while the keen old eyes played as a searchlight over the troubled young face.
"I must tell you at least one thing, sir."
The old man forced a smile around his trembling mouth, and again assumed his little jaunty lightness.
"Come, come, boy—not 'sir.' Call me 'old man' and you shall say anything."
But the boy was constrained, plainly in discomfort. "I—I can't call you that—just now—sir."
"Well, if you must, tell me one thing—but only one! only one, mind you, boy!" In fear, but smiling, he waited.
"Well, sir, it's a shock I suffered just before I was sick. It came to me one night when I sat down to dinner —fearfully hungry. I had a thick English chop on the plate before me; and a green salad, oily in its bowl, and crisp, browned potatoes, and a mug of creamy ale. I'd gone to the place for a treat. I'd been whetting my appetite with nibbles of bread and sips of ale until the other things came; and then, even when I put my knife to the chop—like a blade pushed very slowly into my heart came the thought: 'My father is burning in hell— screaming in agony for a drop of this water which I shall not touch because I have ale. He has been in this agony for years; he will be there forever.' That was enough, sir. I had to leave the little feast. I was hungry no longer, though a moment before it had seemed that I couldn't wait for it. I walked out into the cold, raw night—walked till near daylight, with the sweat running off me. And the thing I knew all the time was this: that if I were in hell and my father in heaven, he would blaspheme God to His face for a monster and come to hell to burn with me forever—come with a joke and a song, telling me never to mind, that we'd have a fine time there in hell in spite of everything! That was what I knew of my poor, cheap, fiddle-playing mountebank of a father. Just a moment more—this is what you must remember of me, in whatever I have to say hereafter, that after that night I never ceased to suffer all the hell my father could be suffering, and I suffered it until my mind went out in that sickness. But, listen now: whatever has happened—I'm not yet sure what it is—I no longer suffer. Two things only I know: that our creed still has my godless, scoffing, unbaptised father in hell, and that my love for him—my absolute oneness with him—has not lessened.
"I'll stop there, if you wish, leaving you to divine what other change has taken place."
"There, there," soothed the old man, seizing the shoulders once more with his strong grip—"no more now, boy. It was a hard thing, I know. The consciousness of God's majesty comes often in that way, and often it overwhelms the unprepared. It was hard, but it will leave you more a man; your soul and your faith will both survive. Do what I have told you—as if you were once more the puzzled little Bernal, who never could keep his hair neatly brushed like Allan, and would always moon in corners. Go finish your course. Another year, when your mind has new fortitude from your recreated body, we will talk these matters as much as you like. Yet I will tell you one thing to remember—just one, as you have told me one: You are in a world of law, of unvarying cause and effect; and the integrity of this law cannot be destroyed, nor even impaired, by any conceivable rebellion of yours. Yet this material world of law is but the shadow of the reality, and that reality is God— the moral law if you please, as relentless, as inexorable, as immutable in its succession of cause and effect as the physical laws more apparent to us; and as little to be overthrown as physical law by any rebellion of disordered sentiment. The word of this God and this Law is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, wherein is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.
"Now," continued the old man, more lightly, "each of us has something to remember—and let each of us pray for the other. Go, be a good boy—but careless and happy—for a year."
The old man had his way, and the two boys went presently back to their studies.
The girl, Nancy, remembered them well for the things each had said to her.
Allan, who, though he constantly praised her, had always the effect of leaving her small to herself. "Really, Nance," he said, "without any joking, I believe you have a capacity for living life in its larger aspects."
And on the last day, Bernal had said, "Nance, you remember when we were both sorry you couldn't be born again—a boy? Well, from what the old gentleman says, one learns in time to bow to the ways of an inscrutable Providence. I dare say he's right. I can see reasons now, my girl, why it was well that you were not allowed to meddle with Heaven's allotment of your sex. I'm glad you had to remain a girl."
One compliment pleased her. The other made her tremble, though she laughed at it.
CHAPTER IV
A Few Letters
(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)
Dear Grandfather: The college year soon ends; also my course. I think you hoped I wouldn't want again to talk of those matters. But it isn't so. I am primed and waiting, and even you, old man, must listen to reason. The world of thought has made many revolutions since you shut yourself into that study with your weekly church paper. So be ready to hear me.
Affectionately,
BERNAL LINFORD.
(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.)
"Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions." I am sending you a little book.
GRANDFATHER.
(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)
Dear Old Man: How am I going to thank you for the "little book"—for Butler's Analogy? Or rather, how shall I forgive you for keeping it from me all these years? I see that you acquired it in 1863—and I never knew! I must tell you that I looked upon it with suspicion when I unwrapped it—a suspicion that the title did not allay. For I recalled the last time you gave me a book—the year before I came here. That book, my friend, was "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." I began it with deep respect for you. I finished with a profound distrust of all Abyssinians and an overwhelming grief for the untimely demise of Mrs. Johnson —for you had told me that the good doctor wrote this book to get money to bury her. How the circle of mourners for that estimable woman must have widened as Rasselas made its way out into the world! Oh, Grandad, if only they had been able to keep her going some way until he needn't have done it! If only she could have been spared until her son got in a little money from the Dictionary or something!
All of which is why I viewed with unfriendly distrust your latest gift, the Analogy of Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham. But, honestly, old man, did you know how funny it was when you sent it? It's funnier than any of the books of Moses, without being bloody. What a dear, innocent old soul the Bishop is! How sincerely he believes he is reasoning when he is merely doing a roguish two-step down the grim corridor of the eternal verities—with a little jig here and there, and a pause to flirt his frock airily in the face of some graven image of Fact. Ah, he is so weirdly innocent. Even when his logical toes go blithely into the air, his dear old face is most resolutely solemn, and I believe he is never in the least aware of his frivolous caperings over the floor of induction. Indeed, his unconsciousness is what makes him an unfailing delight. He even makes his good old short-worded Saxon go in lilting waltz-time.
You will never know, Grandad, what this book has done for me. I am stimulated in the beginning by this: "From the vast extent of God's dominion there must be some things beyond our comprehension, and the Christian scheme may be one of them." And at the last I am soothed with this heart-rending pas seul: "Concluding remarks by which it is clearly shown that those men who can evade the force of arguments so probable for the truth of Christianity undoubtedly possess dispositions to evil which would cause them to reject it, were it based on the most absolute demonstration." Is not that a pearl without price in this world of lawful conclusions?
By the way, Grandad—recalling the text you quote in your last—did you know when you sent me to this university that the philosophy taught, in a general way, is that of Kant; that most university scholars smile pityingly at the Christian thesis? Did you know that belief in Genesis had been laughed away in an institution like this? With no intention of diverting you, but merely in order to acquaint you with the present state of popular opinion on a certain matter, I will tell you of a picture printed in a New York daily of yesterday. It's on the funny page. A certain weird but funny-looking beast stands before an equally funny-looking Adam, in a funny Eden, with a funny Eve and a funny Cain and Abel in the background. The animal says, "Say, Ad., what did you say my name was? I've forgotten it again." Our first male parent answers somewhat testily, as one who has been vexed by like inquiries: "Icthyosaurus, you darned fool! Can't you remember a little thing like that?"
In your youth this would doubtless have been punished as a crime. In mine it is laughed at by all classes. I tell you this to show you that the Church to-day is in the position of upholding a belief which has become meaningless because its foundation has been laughed away. Believing no longer in the god of Moses who cursed them, Christians yet assume to believe in their need of a Saviour to intercede between them and this exploded idol of terror. Unhappily, I am so made that I cannot occupy that position. To me it is not honest.
Old man, do you remember a certain saying of Squire Cumpston? It was this: "If you're going to cross the Rubicon, cross it! Don't wade out to the middle and stand there: you only get hell from both banks!"
And so I have crossed; I find the Squire was right about standing in the middle. Happily, or unhappily, I am compelled to believe my beliefs with all my head and all my heart. But I am confident my reasons will satisfy you when you hear them. You will see these matters in a new light.
Believe me, Grandad, with all love and respect,
Affectionately yours,
BERNAL LINFORD.
(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.)
My Boy: For one bitten with skepticism there is little argument—especially if he be still in youth, which is a time of raw and ready judgments and of great spiritual self-sufficiency. You wanted to go to Harvard. I wanted you to go to Princeton, because of its Presbyterianism and because, too, of Harvard's Unitarianism. We compromised on Yale—my own alma mater, as it was my father's. To my belief, this was still, especially as to its pulpit, the stronghold of orthodox Congregationalism. Was I a weak old man, compromising with Satan? Are you to break my heart in these my broken years? For love of me, as for the love of your own soul, pray. Leave the God of Moses until your soul's stomach can take the strong meat of him—for he is strong meat—and come simply to Jesus, the meek and gentle— the Redeemer, who died that his blood might cleanse our sin-stained souls. Centre your aspirations upon Him, for He is the rock of our salvation, if we believe, or the rock of our wrecking to endless torment if we disbelieve. Do not deny our God who is Jesus, nor disown Jesus who is our God, nor yet question the inerrance of Holy Writ—yea, with its everlasting burnings. "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned."
I am sad. I have lived too long.
GRANDFATHER.
(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)
Grandad: It's all so plain, you must see it. I told you I had crossed to the farther bank. Here is what one finds there: Taking him as God, Jesus is ineffectual. Only as an obviously fallible human man does he become beautiful; only as a man is he dignified, worthy, great—or even plausible.
The instinct of the Jews did not mislead them. Jesus was too fine, too good, to have come from their tribal god; yet too humanly limited to have come from God, save as we all come from Him.
Since you insist that he be considered as God, I shall point out those things which make him small—as a God. I would rather consider him as a man and point out those things which make him great to me—things which I cannot read without wet eyes—but you will not consider him as man, so let him be a God, and let us see what we see. It is customary to speak of his "sacrifice." What was it? Our catechism says, "Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time."
As I write the words I wonder that the thing should ever have seemed to any one to be more than a wretched piece of God-jugglery, devoid of integrity. Are we to conceive God then as a being of carnal appetites, humiliated by being born into the family of an honest carpenter, instead of into the family of a King? This is the somewhat snobbish imputation.
Let us be done with gods playing at being human, or at being half god and half human. The time has come when, to prolong its usefulness, the Church must concede—nay, proclaim—the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a primitive Hebrew mythology—and take him in the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one of the world's great spiritual teachers. Insisting upon his godship can only make him preposterous to the modern mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will save into everlasting life those who believe him to be of divine origin. Yet he has been called meek! Surely never was a more arrogant character in history—never one less meek than this carpenter's son who ranks himself second only to God, with power to send into everlasting hell those who disbelieve him! He went abroad in fine arrogance, railing at lawyers and the rich, rebuking, reproving, hurling angry epithets, attacking what we to-day call "the decent element." He called the people constantly "Fools," "Blind Leaders of the Blind," "faithless and perverse," "a generation of vipers," "sinful," "evil and adulterous," "wicked," "hypocrites," "whited sepulchres."
As the god he worshipped was a tribal god, so he at first believed himself to be a tribal saviour. He directed his disciples thus: "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"—(who emphatically rejected and slew him for his pretensions). To the woman of Canaan whose daughter was vexed with a devil, he said: "It is not meet to take the children's bread to cast it to dogs." Imagine a God calling a woman a dog because she was not of his own tribe!
And the vital test of godhood he failed to meet: It is his own test, whereby he disproves his godship out of his own mouth. Compare these sayings of Jesus, each typical of him:
"Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Yet he said to his Twelve:
"And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, when you depart thence shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony against them."
Is that the consistency of a God or a man?
Again: "Blessed are the merciful," but "Verily I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city." Is this the mercy which he tells us is blessed?
Again: "And as ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them likewise." Another: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida... and thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell." Is not this preaching the golden rule and practicing something else, as a man might?
Again: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.
"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so?" That, sir, is a sentiment that proves the claim of Jesus to be a teacher of morals. Here is one which, placed beside it, proves him to have been a man.
"Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the son of man also confess before the angels of God;
"but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my father, which is in heaven."
Is it God speaking—or man? "Do not even the publicans so?"
Beside this very human contradiction, it is hardly worth while to hear him say "Resist not evil," yet make a scourge of cords to drive the money-changers from the temple in a fit of rage, human—but how ungodlike!
Believe me, the man Jesus is better than the god Jesus; the man is worth while, for all his inconsistencies, partly due to his creed and partly to his emotional nature. Indeed, we have not yet risen to the splendour of his ideal—even the preachers will not preach it.
And the miracles? We need say nothing of those, I think. If a man disprove his godship out of his own mouth, we shall not be convinced by a coin in a fish's mouth or by his raising Lazarus, four days dead. So long as he says, "I will confess him that confesseth me and deny him that denieth me," we should know him for one of us, though he rose from the dead before our eyes.
Then at the last you will say, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Well, sir, the fruits of Christianity are what one might expect. You will say it stands for the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. That it has always done the reverse is Christianity's fundamental defect, and its chief absurdity in this day when the popular unchurchly conception of God has come to be one of some dignity.
"That ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel." There is the rock of separation upon which the Church builded; the rock upon which it will presently split. The god of the Jews set a difference between Israel and Egypt. So much for the fatherhood of God. The Son sets the same difference, dividing the sheep from the goats, according to the opinions they form of his claim to godship. So much for the brotherhood of man. Christianity merely caricatures both propositions. Nor do I see how we can attain any worthy ideal of human brotherhood while this Christianity prevails: We must be sheep and goats among ourselves, some in heaven, some in hell, still seeking out reasons "Why the Saints in Glory Should Rejoice at the Sufferings of the Damned." We shall be saints and sinners, sated and starving. A God who separates them in some future life will have children that separate themselves here upon His own very excellent authority. That is why one brother of us must work himself to death while another idles himself to death—because God has set a difference, and his Son after him, and the Church after that. The defect in social Christendom to-day, sir, is precisely this defect of the Christian faith— its separation, its failure to teach what it chiefly boasts of teaching. We have, in consequence, a society of thinly veneered predatoriness. And this, I believe, is why our society is quite as unstable to-day as the Church itself. They are both awakening to a new truth—which is not separation.
The man who is proud of our Christian civilisation has ideals susceptible of immense elevation. Christianity has more souls in its hell and fewer in its heaven than any other religion whatsoever. Naturally, Christian society is one of extremes and of gross injustice—of oppression and indifference to suffering. And so it will be until this materialism of separation is repudiated: until we turn seriously to the belief that men are truly brothers, not one of whom can be long happy while any other suffers.
Come, Grandad, let us give up this God of Moses. Doubtless he was good enough for the early Jews, but man has always had to make God in his own image, and you and I need a better one, for we both surpass this one in all spiritual values—in love, in truth, in justice, in common decency—as much as Jesus surpassed the unrepentant thief at his side. Remember that an honest, fearless search for truth has led to all the progress we can measure over the brutes. Why must it lose the soul?
BERNAL.
(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.)
My boy, I shall not believe you are sane until I have seen you face to face. I cannot believe you have fallen a victim to Universalism, which is like the vale of Siddim, full of slime-pits. I am an old man, and my mind goes haltingly, yet that is what I seem to glean from your rambling screed. Come when you are through, for I must see you once more.
"For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God."
Lastly—doubt in infinite things is often wise, but doubt of God must be blasphemy, else he would not be God, the all-perfect.
I pray it may be your mind is still sick—and recall to you these words of one I will not now name to you: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
ALLAN DELCHER.
CHAPTER V
"Is the Hand of the Lord Waxed Short?"
A dismayed old man, eagerly trying to feel incredulous, awaited the home-coming of his grandsons at the beginning of that vacation.
Was the hand of the Lord waxed short, that so utter a blasphemer—unless, indeed, he were possessed of a devil—could walk in the eye of Jehovah, and no breach be made upon him? Even was the world itself so lax in these days that one speaking thus could go free? If so, then how could God longer refrain from drowning the world again? The human baseness of the blaspheming one and the divine toleration that permitted it were alike incredible.
A score of times the old man nerved himself to laugh away his fears. It could not be. The young mind was still disordered.
On the night of the home-coming he greeted the youth quite as if all were serene within him, determined to be in no haste and to approach the thing lightly on the morrow—in the fond hope that a mere breath of authority might blow it away.
And when, the next morning, they both drifted to the study, the old man called up the smile that made his wrinkles sunny, and said in light tones, above the beating of an anxious heart:
"So it's your theory, boy, that we must all be taken down with typhoid before we can be really wise in matters of faith?"
But the youth answered, quite earnestly:
"Yes, sir; I really believe nothing less than that would clear most minds—especially old ones. You see, the brain is a muscle and thought is its physical exercise. It learns certain thoughts—to go through certain exercises. These become a habit, and in time the muscle becomes stiff and incapable of learning any new movements —also incapable of leaving off the old. The religion of an old person is merely so much reflex nervous action. It is beyond the reach of reason. The individual's mind can affect it as little as it can teach the other muscles of his body new suppleness."
He spoke with a certain restrained nervousness that was not reassuring. But the old man would not yet be rebuffed from his manner of lightness.
"Then, wanting an epidemic of typhoid, we of the older generation must die in error."
"Yes, sir—I doubt even the efficacy of typhoid in most cases; it's as difficult for an old person to change a habit of thought as to take the wrinkles from his face. That is why what we very grandly call 'fighting for the truth' or 'fighting for the Lord' is merely fighting for our own little notions; they have become so vital to us and we call them 'truth.'"
The youth stopped, with a palpable air of defiance, before which the old man's assumption of ease and lightness was at last beaten down. He had been standing erect by the table, still with the smile toning his haggardness. Now the smile died; the whole man sickened, lost life visibly, as if a dozen years of normal aging were condensed into the dozen seconds.
He let himself go into the big chair, almost as if falling, his head bowed, his eyes dulled to a look of absence, his arms falling weakly over the chair's sides. A sigh that was almost a groan seemed to tell of pain both in body and mind.
Bernal stood awkwardly regarding him, then his face lighted with a sudden pity.
"But I thought you could understand, sir; I thought you were different; you have been like a chum to me. When I spoke of old persons it never occurred to me that you could fall into that class! I never knew you to be unjust, or unkind, or—narrow—perhaps I should say, unsympathetic."
The other gave no sign of hearing.
"My body was breaking so fast—and you break my heart!"
"There you are, sir," began the youth, a little excitedly. "Your heart is breaking not because I'm not good, but because I form a different opinion from yours of a man rising from the dead, after he has been crucified to appease the anger of his father."
"God help me! I'm so human. I can't feel toward you as I should. Boy, I won't believe you are sane." He looked up in a sudden passion of hope. "I won't believe Christ died in vain for my girl's little boy. Bernal, boy, you are still sick of that fever!"
The other smiled, his youthful scorn for the moment overcoming his deeper feeling for his listener.
"Then I must talk more. Now, sir, for God's sake let us have the plain truth of the crucifixion. Where was the sacrifice? Can you not picture the mob that would fight for the honour of crucifixion to-morrow, if it were known that the one chosen would sit at the right hand of God and judge all the world? I say there was no sacrifice, even if Christian dogma be literal truth. Why, sir, I could go into the street and find ten men in ten minutes who would be crucified a hundred times to save the souls of us from hell—not if they were to be rewarded with a seat on the throne of God where they could send into hell those who did not believe in them—but for no reward whatever—out of a sheer love for humanity. Don't you see, sir, that we have magnified that crucifixion out of all proportion to the plainest truth of our lives? You know I would die on a cross to-day, not to redeem the world, but to redeem one poor soul—your own. If you deny that, at least you won't dare deny that you would go on the cross to redeem my soul from hell—the soul of one man—and do you think you would demand a reward for doing it, beyond knowing that you had ransomed me from torment? Would it be necessary to your happiness that you also have the power to send into hell all those who were not able to believe you had actually died for me?
"One moment more, sir—" The thin, brown, old hand had been raised in trembling appeal, while the lips moved without sound.
"You see every day in the papers how men die for other men, for one man, for two, a dozen! Why, sir, you know you would die to save the lives of five little children—their bare carnal lives, mind you, to say nothing of their immortal souls. I believe I'd die myself to save two thousand—I know I would to save three—if their faces were clean and they looked funny enough and helpless. Here, in this morning's paper, a negro labourer, going home from his work in New York yesterday, pushed into safety one of those babies that are always crawling around on railroad tracks. He had time to see that he could get the baby off but not himself, and then he went ahead. Doubtless it was a very common baby, and certainly he was a very common man. Why, I could go down to Sing Sing to-morrow, and I'll stake my own soul that in the whole cageful of criminals there isn't one who would not eagerly submit to crucifixion if he believed that he would thereby ransom the race from hell. And he wouldn't want the power to damn the unbelievers, either. He would insist upon saving them with the others."
"Oh, God, forgive this insane passion in my boy!"
"It was passion, sir—" he spoke with a sudden relenting—"but try to remember that I've sought the truth honestly."
"You degrade the Saviour."
"No; I only raise man out of the muck of Christian belief about him. If common men all might live lives of greater sacrifice than Jesus did, without any pretensions to the supernatural, it only means that we need a new embodiment for our ideals. If we find it in man—in God's creature—so much the better for man and so much the more glory to God, who has not then bungled so wretchedly as Christianity teaches."
"God forgive you this tirade—I know it is the sickness."
"I shall try to speak calmly, sir—but how much longer can an educated clergy keep a straight face to speak of this wretchedly impotent God? Christians of a truth have had to bind their sense of humour as the Chinese bound their women's feet. But the laugh is gathering even now. Your religion is like a tree that has lain long dead in the forest—firm wood to the eye but dust to the first blow. And this is how it will go—from a laugh—not through the solemn absurdities of the so-called higher criticism, the discussing of this or that miracle, the tracing of this or that myth of fall or deluge or immaculate conception or trinity to its pagan sources; not that way, when before the inquiring mind rises the sheer materialism of the Christian dogma, bristling with absurdities—its vain bungling God of one tribe who crowns his career of impotencies—in all but the art of slaughter—by instituting the sacrifice of a Son begotten of a human mother, to appease his wrath toward his own creatures; a God who even by this pitiful device can save but a few of us. Was ever god so powerless? Do you think we who grow up now do not detect it? Is it not time to demand a God of virtue, of integrity, of ethical dignity—a religion whose test shall be moral, and not the opinion one forms of certain alleged material phenomena?"
When he had first spoken the old man cowered low and lower in his chair, with little moans of protest at intervals, perhaps a quick, almost gasping, "God forgive him!" or a "Lord have mercy!" But as the talk went on he became slowly quieter, his face grew firmer, he sat up in his chair, and at the last he came to bend upon the speaker a look that made him falter confusedly and stop.
"I can say no more, sir; I should not have said so much. Oh, Grandad, I wouldn't have hurt you for all the world, yet I had to let you know why I could not do what you had planned—and I was fool enough to think I could justify myself to you!"
The old eyes still blazed upon him with a look of sorrow and of horror that was yet, first of all, a look of power; the look of one who had mastered himself to speak calmly while enduring uttermost pain.
"I am glad you have spoken. You were honest to do so. It was my error not to be convinced at first, and thus save myself a shock I could ill bear. But you have been sick, and I felt that I should not believe without seeing you. I had built so much—so many years—on your preaching the gospel of—of my Saviour. This hope has been all my life these last years—now it is gone. But I have no right to complain. You are free; I have no claim upon you; and I shall be glad to provide for you—to educate you further for any profession you may have chosen—to start you in any business—away from here—from this house——"
The young man flushed—wincing under this, but answered:
"Thank you, sir. I could hardly take anything further. I don't know what I want to do, what I can do—I'm at sea now. But I will go. I'm sure only that I want to get out—away—I will take a small sum to go with—I know you would be hurt more if I didn't; enough to get me away—far enough away."
He went out, his head bowed under the old man's stern gaze. But when the latter had stepped to the door and locked it, his fortitude was gone. Helplessly he fell upon his knees before the big chair—praying out his grief in hard, dry sobs that choked and shook his worn body.
When Clytie knocked at the door an hour later, he was dry-eyed and apparently serene, but busy with papers at his table.
"Is it something bad about Bernal, Mr. Delcher," she asked, "that he's going away so queer and sudden?"
"You pray for him, too, Clytie—you love him—but it's nothing to talk of."
But the alarm of Clytemnestra was not to be put down by this.
"Oh, Mr. Delcher—" a look of horror grew big in her eyes—"You don't mean to say he's gone and joined the Universalists?"
The old man shook his head.
"And he ain't a Unitarian?"
"No, Clytie; but our boy has been to college and it has left him rather un—unconforming in some little matters—some details—doubtless his doctrine is sound at core."
"But I supposed he'd learn everything off at that college, only I know he never got fed half enough. What with all its studies and football and clubs and things I thought it was as good as a liberal education."
"Too liberal, sometimes! Pray for Bernal—and we won't talk about it again, Clytie, if you please."
Presently came Allan, who had heard the news.
"Bernal tells me he will not enter the ministry, sir; that he is going away."
"We have decided that is best."
"You know, sir, I have suspected for some time that Bernal was not as sound doctrinally as you could wish. His mind, if I may say it, is a peculiarly literal one. He seems to lack a certain spiritual comprehensiveness —an enveloping intuition, so to say, of the spiritual value in a material fact. During that unhappy agitation for the revision of our creed, I have heard him, touching the future state of unbaptised infants, utter sentiments of a heterodoxy that was positively effeminate in its sentimentality—sentiments which I shall not pain you by repeating. He has often referred, moreover, with the same disordered sentimentality, to the sad fate of our father—about whose present estate no churchman can have any doubt. And then about our belief that even good works are an abomination before God if performed by the unregenerate, the things I have heard him——"
"Yes—yes—let us not talk of it further. Did you wish to see me especially, Allan?"
"Well, yes, sir, I had wished to, and perhaps now is the best moment. I wanted to ask you, sir, how you would regard my becoming an Episcopalian. I am really persuaded that its form of worship, translating as it does so much of the spiritual verity of life into visible symbols, is a form better calculated than the Presbyterian to appeal to the great throbbing heart of humanity. I hope I may even say, without offense, sir, that it affords a wider scope, a broader sweep, a more stimulating field of endeavour, to one who may have a capacity for the life of larger aspects. In short, sir, I believe there is a great future for me in that church."
"I shouldn't wonder if there was," answered the old man, who had studied his face closely during the speech. Yet he spoke with an extreme dryness of tone that made the other look quickly up.
"It shall be as you wish," he continued, after a meditative pause—"I believe you are better calculated for that church than for mine. Obey your call."