Chapter XXVI. The Strange
Adventure of Burner into Nothing,
and How my Own Mind Got into
Trouble, and How my Faith was
Strengthened under the Chapel
Window
ON my return to the Seminary I found Burner in the throes of intellectual despair. The big fellow was sitting in his room, half buried in the depths of the green Morris chair, his bony fingers prodded into his working brows.
“What’s wrong, Burner?” I demanded.
“I’ve been thinking back too far,” announced the serious fellow.
“Thinking back too far?” I gasped.
“Yes,” he muttered. “I’ve nothing to stand on, now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve thought away all substance—now!” he moaned, in despair. “I can’t even conceive a God!”
“Burner!”
“Horrible, isn’t it, Priddy?”
“What do you mean—explain, so that I can get this thing by its head,” I suggested.
Burner seriously gathered himself together in his chair, sipped from a glass of water, and then began,
“Probably I do too much thinking; maybe that’s what’s the matter, Priddy. When I left here, last June, and went out for the summer, I began to try to think through substance; I thought I might do it, sometime. I got to thinking about it, when I took my walks over the hills, and kept thinking about it, but, somehow, I couldn’t get my thought back of the material. When I got back here, last week, I was sitting in this chair, when all of a sudden I did think back of God; and conceived all reality as being so immaterial that nothing exists: no, nothing!” he shouted, “not even—God!”
“Can’t you think back again—to him?” I demanded, making an effort to be of some assistance and comfort to the disconsolate man.
Burner stood on his feet, and paced the floor, excitedly, and said as he gestured with his hands,
“I’ve got to be honest—with truth, no matter how far it leads me!”
“Yes!”
“Just think how horrible it is; I’ve thought back till I’ve struck nothing—nothing!”
“Come, it’s not so bad as that, Burner, is it?”
“I shan’t be able to preach, to study, to believe anything!” he declared. “How can I when there is nothing to preach, to study, or to believe?”
I could not conceive a more pathetic restraint on a man who sought to get his living by preaching and study.
“Perhaps some of the professors might help you back—at least as far as a belief in God,” I suggested, timidly.
“Oh, if I only could get back there,” he pleaded, “I would pray about the matter, but I can’t pray to nothing, can I?”
I began then to realize how much a dilemma a philosophical honesty could create.
“You are too serious, Burner,” I proposed. “You ought to take some things for granted; not seek to explain everything, you know.”
He looked at me through astonished eyes,
“I will take nothing for granted that cannot bear the test of logic!”
“There,” I cried exultantly, “your intellectual adventures have brought you into German Rationalism: that’s just what’s the matter with you, Burner. You’re not the first one that has been caught. It is a passing experience. Keep on thinking, old fellow, you’ll come back after a time. It looks serious now, but it’s only a phase. Read the biographies of some of the saints; it will help you back to a positive faith, I’m sure.”
So I left him with that comfort, hoping that he would not leave the Seminary in his intellectual excitement, for I felt sure that his Rationalism or Agnosticism or whatever form of mind he was in, would pass and give way to something with more color and inspiration in it.
Our studies for the second year were more practical and philosophical than those we received during the first year. I was ready to appreciate the value of the studies more after my summer’s experience as a missionary. The intellectual honesty and sincerity of Burner was indicative of the spirit which one of the professors, who later left us, engendered in us. One incident will illustrate the temper of his art of teaching. Our class, in its first year, had approached this man’s recitation with a feeling of fear, for his astute mind and his impassive manner in the classroom, and withal, his absolute fearlessness in bringing up the other side of an affirmative, had not reacted in his favor. Even before we knew him, we had him placarded, in our minds, as an unbeliever! One day when we came into his class we found that some one had written on the blackboard, the professor’s name with this legend after it:
“Professor —— Atheist!”
When he came into the classroom, and saw that, I thought he would burst into tears; a look of patient wonder came into his eyes, and he merely said to me,
“Mr. Priddy, will you kindly take the eraser and give us a clean blackboard!”
Our first class under this teacher was one in psychology. We met and his first question was,
“What are we to study?”
Instantly one of my classmates replied,
“Psychology!”
“What is psychology?”
My classmate, who had read the definition in the day’s lesson replied, confidently,
“‘The study of the mind and the processes of the mind,’ sir.”
“Ah, and what do you mean by the mind? What do you know about the mind? Have you ever seen one?”
My classmate stammered,
“Why—eh, no, sir.”
“Then perhaps some one else will inform me what we are here for?”
No one was willing.
“Then you will return to your rooms, gentlemen,” said the professor, without a trace of a smile, “and come tomorrow at the same hour and tell us what we are to study during the year. I really must know. We cannot get along until I do.”
The next day, some of us met, before the class and conspired to teach that professor his lesson. We memorized the definitions and the explanations so that it would be impossible for us to slip. Then we entered the classroom.
“What are we here for, gentlemen?” began the professor.
Instantly the answer came from the corner,
“To study psychology, sir.”
“Will any one tell me what is meant by psychology?”
“‘A study of the mind and the processes of the mind, as such,’” responded another student.
“‘As such.’ What is meant by that, sir?”
One of my classmates undertook to explain that “as such” meant that the “states of the mind” were to be studied as “states of the mind,” and not as—eh—
“Mince pies?” asked the professor, with a slight, serious elevation of his eyebrows.
For the next five minutes he went around the class involving each one of us in our own ignorance until it was impossible for him to get a reply to any one of his questions.
“Too bad,” he muttered, seriously. “I really don’t see how we are to get on. This won’t do. You had better go back to your rooms and come tomorrow and see if we can let in any daylight on this matter. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”
We resolved that we would not study a single word for the morrow; but that we would go into the class and have no information to offer. We would see how the professor would like that!
The following afternoon, pursuant to this plan, when the professor had greeted us, his first question was,
“What are we to study? Can any one tell me?” It brought no response.
He looked around the room in great astonishment and went from man to man, asking,
“Can you tell me?” and each time getting a decided and belligerent negative.
Then a smile of satisfaction lighted up his sober face and he said,
“There, gentlemen. Now that you have made up your minds that you know nothing about psychology, I am ready to begin to teach you!” and from then to the end of the year we sat under instruction that was masterly, inspiring.
This spirit of thoroughness and critical honesty was needed during the second year, for we were constructing a personal faith: a task more serious than the mere acquisition of historic facts or encyclopædic knowledge. But the teachers were patient, kindly, and watched us let conservative and traditional habits of mind go, not in any spirit of intolerance. There were many times, that year, when I found myself almost duplicating Burner’s misery, by sitting in my room and wondering, after I had let go my traditional habits of thought about God and the Bible, what I should do without faith. But as one conception went, another, larger conception came, and I found a nobler faith than I ever had before. The self-distrust and miserable vacancy of doubt, were, as I had blunderingly told Burner, mere phases towards a positive faith. One winter morning, after a night of mental struggle, during which I suffered fully as much as I had ever suffered from any physical hardship, I went out on the campus to walk about in the crisp air. The students had just gone into the chapel for morning prayers. I stopped under the windows and heard the drone of the parlor organ. Then, on the quietness of the morning, the manly melody came to my ears: a hymn resonant with a man’s faith, and bringing peace to my doubts. “Oh, Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” they were singing, a monkish, monastic tinge to it, coming from male throats,—only the tenor was too boyish for a monk, too thrillingly rampant in its ambitious soaring after God over the high notes. But it soothed me and I went in the strength of that hymn for many days.