THE INVITATION.
Late one wondrously beautiful August night, as Bart was returning from
a solitary stroll, he was suddenly joined by Sartliff, bare-headed
and bare-footed, who placed his hand within his arm, and turning him
about, walked him back towards the wood. Bart had not seen him for
weeks, and he thought his face was thinner and more haggard, and his
eyes more cavernous than he had ever seen them.
"What progress are you making?" asked Bart, quietly.
"I am getting increase of power. I don't know that I need light;
I think I want strength. I hear the voices oftener, and they are
wonderfully sweeter; I find that they consist of marvelous musical
sounds, and I can distinguish some notes; meanings are conveyed by
them. If I could only comprehend and interpret them. I shall in time
if I can hold out. I find as the flesh becomes more spirit-like, that
this power increases. If I only had some fine-fibred soul who
could take this up where I must leave it! Barton, you believe God
communicates with men through other than his ordinary works?"
"I don't know; I see and hear God in the wondrous symbols of nature;
when they say that he speaks directly, I don't feel so certain. I am
so made up, that the very nature, the character and quality of the
evidence, is unequal to the facts to be proven, and so to produce
conviction. If a score of you were to say to me, that in the forest
to-day, you saw a fallen and decayed tree arise and strike down new
roots, and shoot out new branches, and unfold new foliage and flowers,
I would not believe it: Nor, though five hundred men should swear
that they saw a grave heave up, and its tenant come forth to life and
beauty, would I believe. The quality of the evidence is not equal to
sustain the burthen of the fact to be established, and it does not
help the matter, that alleged proofs come to me through uncertain
historical media. Yet I can't say that I disbelieve. Who can say that
there is not within us a religious spiritual faculty, or a set of
faculties, that take impressions, and receive communications,
not through the ordinary perceptions and convictions of the mere
mind--that sees and hears, retains and transmits, loves, hopes and
worships, in a spiritual or religious atmosphere of its own; whose
memories are superstitions, whose realizations are extatic visions,
and whose hopes are the future of blessedness; and that it is through
these faculties that religious sentiments are received, transmitted
and propagated, and to which God speaks and acts, spirit to spirit, as
matter to matter? Who can tell how many sets of faculties are possible
to us? We may have developed only a few of the lowest. I sometimes
fancy that I feel the rudiments of a higher and finer set within me.
Who shall say that I have them not?"
"Go on, Barton; I like to hear you unfold yourself," said Sartliff.
"I can't," said Bart, "I can only vaguely talk about what I so vaguely
feel."
"Barton," said Sartliff, "go with me; let me impart to you what I
know; perhaps you have a finer and subtler sense than I had. At any
rate I can help you. You can be warned by my failures and blunders,
and possess yourself of my small gains. I know I have taken some
steps. I shall last long enough to place you well on the road. You are
silent. Do you think me crazy--mad?"
"No, not that, nor do I think that we have occupied all the fields
of human knowledge. We are constantly acquiring a faculty to see new
things and to take new meanings from the common and old. Nature has
not yet delivered her full speech to man. She can communicate only as
he acquires the power to receive. This idea of finding new pathways,
and new regions and realms, with new powers, of finding an opening
from our day into the more effulgent, with new strange and glorious
creatures, with new voices and forms, with whom we may communicate, is
alluring, and may all lay within the realm of possibility. I don't say
that to dream of it, is to be mad."
"It is possible," said Sartliff with fervor. "I have seen the forms
and heard the voices."
"And to what purpose do you pursue these mystical studies and
researches."
"Partly for the extacy and glory of the present, mainly for the
ultimate good to the races of men, when the new and powerful agencies
that come of the wisdom and strength which will be thus acquired, the
powers within and about us, are developed and employed for the common
good; and man is emancipated from his sordid slavery to the gross and
physical of his worst and lowest nature, and when woman through this
emancipation takes her real position, glorified, by the side of her
glorified companion; when she seeks to be wife and mother, with free
choice to be other--what a race will spring from them! Strong, brave,
beautiful men, great, radiant, beautiful women, like the first
mothers of the race, bringing forth their young, with the same joy and
gladness, as that with which they receive their young bridegrooms."
"Go and help me find the way for our common race."
He had turned, and stood with intent eyes burning into the soul of the
young man. "I have faith in you. Of all the young men I have met, you
have exhibited more capacity to comprehend me than any other, and I am
beginning to feel the need of help," said Sartliff, plaintively.
"God alone can help you," said Bart, "I cannot. You believe in this;
to me it is a dream, with which my fancy, when idle, willingly toys. I
like to talk with you. I sympathise with you; I cannot go with you. I
will not enter upon your speculations. Don't think me unkind."
"I don't," said Sartliff, "nor do I blame you. You are young and
gifted, and opportunities will come to you; and distinction and fame,
and some beautiful woman's love await you, and God bless you." And he
walked away.
There was always something about Sartliff that stimulated, but at the
same time excited an apprehension in Bart, who regarded him as past
recall to healthy life, and he felt a sense of relief when he was
alone; but the old, melancholy chords continued to vibrate, and Bart
returned to the village under a depression that lingered about him for
days.