the real gems of life, the beautiful things, the lasting and abiding and
satisfying things, I wanted them for myself," Max continued, "and no
fires of hell can ever burn and sear as did the belief that I had lost
them irrevocably; that through the conduct that my family had ignored
and society had condoned I had with my own hand shut myself off from
them forever. I think my indignation was directed not so much at myself
as at the civilized world, the society, church, and family that had
offered no resistance and put no check on my journey to perdition. But
when I came back to my native land I had had some experiences that made
another man of me. When a man goes down into the valley and stands on
the border he sees things with a clearer vision. I had no desire then
to shift the responsibility of my misspent life upon either people or
institutions. I think I saw more clearly, perhaps, than I had before the
faults and weaknesses in our institutions, and the lack of moral stamina
in those who take upon themselves the training of the young; but these
were not the things that counted with me then, not the things I cared
about. No, I tell you I was face to face with my own soul then, and
nothing else counted! The inexorability of it! There was no way to
escape, no way to shift or turn, no excuses, no deceits, no subterfuges.
Absolute, immovable Justice is the most grim-faced thing that a man can
meet. It was not until after I had met this grim fellow, and laid my
black life bare before him, asking nothing, deserving nothing, that any
peace came to me. But after this I knew--I cannot tell you how I
knew--but the knowledge came to me that over this sinning and suffering
life there lies the great Life, tender, compassionate Love.
"When I came back to this Flat and found Margaret, and looked into her
face, and saw the transformation there, then I knew that there is a God,
and to know this, that there is a God, is to know that the whole duty,
pleasure and profit of man is to serve Him by serving his fellow men,
and this, without any meeting-house religion whatever, is what I have
been trying to do.
"My mother and sister go every Sunday and worship in the beautiful
church yonder on the hill. They have never recognized my wife, although
my mother knows, as God knows, that the guilt was mine more than it was
Margaret's. My mother is a Christian woman, according to accepted
standards, and far be it from me to reproach or judge her, but the son
that she reared had a long way to go and a hard battle to fight before
he could see and know the purity of an honest love, the dignity of a
human soul, whether it be in a high place or a lowly one. I have come
to the conclusion that what we call the Christian world has in its
social code and accepted standards of respectability a law of its own,
the spirit of which never sprang from inspiration; a law that binds and
holds absolutely, as the letter of the old Jewish law held the priests
and scribes who cried 'Crucify, crucify the Truth unless it comes in the
style and manner that we have marked out for its coming.' The simple,
undressed truth is ignored, put aside and kept in the background; the
so-called church of Christ keeps it there.
"You know, Eldrige, and I know, and every man in the world to-day knows,
that there is something wrong, radically wrong, deep-seated and to the
heart's core, with our church, society and home training when a man and
woman, reared you might say, in the very shadow of the church, and
having its precepts hurled at them from their infancy, yet can mistake
passion, immorality and shame for the joy and pleasure of life; when to
their young lives the hell-brewed poison of destruction appears like the
rich, red wine of satisfaction.
"For what does the church over there on the hill stand? What is its
mission? its object? its meaning? If there is anything in the power of
the Son of Man there is everything--everything or nothing; and this
attitude of people who call themselves Christians, standing between
suffering, sin-sick mortals and the sinner's God is enough to make the
angels weep--and mortals howl!"
"Well, well, Max, I believe you are aroused a bit; but I am afraid, my
man, that you are probing to the heart and center of conditions that
will never be righted in this world. Eternity alone, I think, will
reveal the why and wherefore of some of the things that are troubling
you."
"No, Eldrige, it will not require the revelations of eternity to
convince me why the Church is cankered, worm-eaten and corrupt. I
verily believe I can give you the reason this minute: it is because its
advocates are _hearers_ of the Truth, but not followers of it. Over
there in Christian Edgerly men and women profess to follow Christ, and
in their hearts they know that they stop with the professing. Not one
man in ten will read the words of Christ and admit that they can be
taken as a rule of life and conduct.
"'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so to
them.'
"Where is the man who does this? The poor, the needy, the suffering,
the down-trodden, the unfortunate, they circle the globe, they are in
every land, every clime, every city, town and hamlet; the voice of their
cries by day and their groanings by night is never still; naked, they
are not clothed; hungry, they are not fed; thirsty, they are not given
drink; and these are 'the others.' Where is the man who does unto them
as he would be done by? Do you? Do I?
"And where is the man who loves his neighbor as himself? Where would be
the stress and strife of life, the wear and tear, the wrangle and
scramble, the heartache and crime, the murder and suicide, if this
precept were followed? Where would be all this agitation about labor
and capital, the piling up of wealth on one hand and biting poverty on
the other, if men--Christian men--loved their neighbors as themselves?
Wise men of our generation are trying to devise ways and formulate plans
to regulate the differences and disagreements among men; but even the
reformers disagree among themselves and dissensions grow greater from
year to year. Do men think that they are wiser than God? Do they think
that if there is a better way Christ would have failed to tell us about
it? Yet we are deaf to the simple words of the divine Teacher, the
grandest precept ever given, the one and only panacea for the world's
discord, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'"
"If only the world had such a religion as that, Max, Christianity would
be Christian."
"And Christianity never will be Christian until men believe what they
profess to believe. I am not much of a Bible scholar, I was brought up
to reverence the Bible, not to read it, but I know that we are told that
faith without works is dead. There is faith enough in the world, if it
were alive, to save the world--but it is dead, dead and buried, and the
devil is dancing to his hornpipes over its burial place--the opaque
hearts of men. A general may fight a battle with an army of men, if
they are alive--but if they are dead, dead in the trenches, they will
not put up much of a fight. Yet the absurdity of fighting a battle with
dead men is not greater than the inconsistency of a religion with a dead
faith.
"I have not yet learned to understand the scientific principle back of
the kind of religion that has been at work on this Flat; but I know that
the faith of a grain of mustard seed would remove mountains of sin and
crime and unholy desire from our land. A grain of mustard seed is
alive, pregnant; given favorable conditions it will expand and increase,
and flower and produce again, demonstrating the power of the Invisible.
This work here on this Flat started from a grain of mustard seed; a
grain sown and tended and watered and tilled by a woman's hand. And the
Christian city and the stately church marvel that God has given the
increase. You and I have special cause to honor this woman and her
work, Eldrige, and we both owe her an endless debt of gratitude."
Again their hands met in silent companionship. Then Max arose. "I am
afraid we have forgotten the ladies," he said. "Let us go and join them
in the garden."
The doctor followed his friend, and he no longer felt that he failed to
understand him; he was just an honest man, nothing more--nothing less.
*CHAPTER XX*
*THE REVELATION*
In a small village at the foot of a Colorado mountain, the Reverend
Maurice Thorpe pitched his tent--literally pitched his tent--for he
resolved to try the open air treatment for his malady.
He had tried the remedies that men have compounded and the devices that
their skill have fashioned until the last one was tested and tried and
found wanting; and when his faith in these was gone he resorted to the
Nature cure--he resolved to let Nature have her way with him. So he set
up his tent, lived in the open, bathed in the sunshine, breathed the
mountain air; and he felt his strength returning. If there was
something beside these things that helped his recovery he did not know
of it at the time.
The good Book tells us that "The prayer of faith shall save the sick,
and the Lord will raise him up," and there are yet some people in God's
world who believe it.
The tent was pitched near the bank of a mountain stream. From far up
the mountains it came, at times a turbulent, rushing stream and again
narrowing to a silver rill. Part way down its course it came to a rocky
formation which obstructed its flow and forced it into two different
channels. During the summer months the larger of these two streams
diminished in size and the other became dry. Following the dry course
over stones and sand one was led through a region of wild and rugged
grandeur. The circuitous course led through deep gorges and past great
ledges of rock, and here and there huge stones stood out alone, like
silent sentinels.
Mr. Thorpe, in his long walks over the mountains, often followed this
course until he reached the chasm, or cave-like opening, where it ended.
The rocks were dry and bleached now, except for here and there a patch
of moss or bit of grass which grew among the crevices. Some birds had
chosen the cave for their nesting place, and their cries echoed shrilly
among the rocks. This wild, isolated spot was far removed from the
usual haunts of men, but it held a peculiar charm for Mr. Thorpe, and he
fell into the way of taking his books and reading there. Some
goat-skins spread on the rocks served for a couch and a ledge of rock
answered for a table; and here, one by one, his favorite books and
magazines found a place. Here, alone with his silent friends, he became
a recluse. The world that had so bitterly disappointed him, the life
that had so grieved and vexed him, the love that had bowed and broken
him, all were left behind.
The brook babbled noisily by the tent one rare morning in June; the
birds called shrilly from the rocky ledges, and the sky was azure above
the mountains. Mr. Thorpe looked over his letters and papers and laid
aside those that he cared to take with him for the day. The canvas bag
in which he carried his luncheon was packed and his water-bottle filled.
He picked up his selection of papers, and as he did so his eyes fell on
one that he had not noticed before. He examined it and saw that it was a
copy of the Edgerly Times. Some headlines at the top of the page caught
his eye: "The Transformation of the Flat. Once a Place of Vice and
Want, Now a Thriving Factory Settlement." He glanced down the page and
caught sentences that contained familiar names: "Mrs. Thorpe, former
pastor's wife--Max Morrison, returned soldier--Dr. Eldrige Jr. and his
young wife--"
Mr. Thorpe's face set in grim lines and the blue veins stood out
prominently on his forehead. He folded the paper and thrust it in his
pocket, picked up the canvas bag and water-bottle and made his way down
the rocky course to the rock-walled cavern. His attitude was that of a
man bowed, broken, vanquished.
When he reached the cavern he threw himself upon his goat-skins, drew
the paper from his pocket and read the article carefully through to the
finish. It dwelt at length on the factors that had brought about the
change on the Flat.
When he finished the article he folded the paper slowly, methodically,
as one whose mind is far away. His eyes were upon the stones at his
feet, and slowly the doors of memory swung open, and before him were the
hopes and aspirations of his life, its trials and disappointments--the
questioning anguish of failure.
He had been so sure of his standards, so certain of the infallibility of
his ideals. He felt that if the voice of the Lord had spoken to him, as
it spoke to Moses from the burning bush it could not have brought to him
more conviction than the ideals of his early manhood had afforded
him--yet he had failed, his life was a wreck, a derelict stranded on the
shore of time.
His mind had been so filled with the convictions that had come to him
with the stamp and seal of his forefathers upon them that he had not
grasped the possibilities, nor realized the demands of the vital,
ever-present and progressive forces about him. And as one who starts
upon a race bound and handicapped from the start, the inevitable had
come upon him. But these underlying causes that had made shipwreck of
his hopes and a tragedy of his existence had been to him as an unwritten
book, unseen and unknown. And always when his mind had gone back over
the past he had seen only the strewn and broken wreckage of his hopes,
and the future was black with a dumb agony that he had no heart to face.
But one of the facts of this creation of ours and of the eternal
verities that govern it is that sincerity never seeks in vain; when the
sincerity of the soul asks, divine Love does not, could not, fail to
respond. We must understand that there are many phases of mortal thought
that parade under the mantle of sincerity which have little or no
relation to that which is truly sincere. Sometimes we, as untutored
children, ask for that which we would instantly cast from us were our
requests granted; many times we beg and plead for that from which our
very souls would shrink and cower; and very many times our motives are
so obscure and our desires so warped and misshapen that we have no
logical conception of that for which we ask. But the eternal fact
remains: Man never yet asked for bread and was given a stone, never yet
asked for an egg and was given a scorpion.
Now the man's life, bare to the quivering quick, stripped of every
hypothesis, analysis and subterfuge of philosophy, was asking, sincerely
asking, why he had failed. His self-righteousness slipped from him and
lay like a cast-off garment at his feet; prejudice, which had held him
in so firm a grip, retreated and slunk back into the dim, illusory
creation where its multiform delusions have their inception; pride,
humbled and forsaken, trailed its glittering pageant out of the range of
his vision.
The branches of a tree outside the cave swayed in the wind and brushed
against the rocks with a soft, rustling sound, and the birds called
across the cavern and circled about the man's motionless figure. But
outward conditions, location, surroundings and lapse of time were for
the time no part of Mr. Thorpe's experience. The sun crept up in the
heavens until it reached the meridian. The dog, the man's only
companion in his rambles, came to his side and thrust his nose against
the canvas bag, but receiving no attention, stretched himself again
patiently beside his master.
When Mr. Thorpe raised his eyes from the stones at his feet he was not
surprised at that which he saw. That which he beheld was exactly that
which he raised his eyes expecting to see. On one side of the cavern
there stood a grim, relentless form, heavy-browed and strongly built.
There were iron bands about the waist and thighs and iron circles on the
ankles, arms and wrists. One hand held an iron sword, the other an iron
pen. And branded deep into the forehead in letters of red-hot iron was
the word INTOLERANCE. On the opposite side of the cavern stood a figure
of less massive proportions, of easy grace and supple bearing, clothed
in a simple, clinging garment of white. In one outstretched hand was
held a burning torch, and in the other a pen of light, tipped with a
diamond point. Glittering gems upon the forehead fashioned the word
FREEDOM. From out of the past they came, years, centuries, ages were
upon them.
Now on the stones of the cavern walls each figure began to write,
carefully, silently, remorselessly, until slab after slab stretching
away into the dim recesses of the cave was filled with the history of
the past. Every word that the iron pen recorded stood out clearly and
distinctly, and there was no choice but to read. The silent spectator
felt his senses shrink and quiver and his heart grow sick as the record
passed before him, but he was not spared. His body grew rigid and every
sense was in revolt, but the iron-bound hand did not waver nor relent.
So vivid was the record that all the awful carnage and bloodshed,
torture and persecution were as though actually transpiring before his
tortured gaze, and the air was filled with the shrieks of the dying and
groans and invectives of the tortured and tormented. But the physical
horror of it did not compare with the agony of noble minds and fearless
souls whose mental anguish the iron-bound hand did not hesitate to
record.
The silent man, alone with these strange creations of his brain, fell to
tracing the work of this iron-bound monster back to its birth or
beginning. And as he pondered and questioned, it came to him with a
distinct shock that the first intolerance was that which opposed itself
to God's creation in the Garden of Eden. Its first form was that of a
sinuous serpent; its voice that of the subtle testimony of the senses!
He found also that this monster had assumed a form, and found a voice in
every age in which mortal man had lived. And it came to him straight as
an arrow and as keen to his highly-wrought senses that the relentless
iron pen was writing, along with the other records, the history of the
Church, the Church which had seemed to him to be infallible, which had
come to him fraught with the faith of his ancestors, steeped in the
blood of martyrs, and which held within its sacred teachings the only
possible redemption for mankind, the Church for which he had labored.
But he was not yet spared; remorse and contrition were having their way
with him, and the sweat of agony was on his brow. For the first time in
his life he entertained a doubt as to a literal hell; for what could a
quenchless fire do to the physical body, compared to this which the
bigotry and intolerance of his life were uncovering before him?
It was a relief to turn from this mental gloom, this verge of madness,
from all this record of pain and woe, the history of the world's wrongs,
to turn and behold the supple figure in white, writing with the
diamond's flashing point. Here was a record of God's creation,
untouched by mortal sense; a story of man untempted and woman
unbeguiled; all things the image and reflection of the one God. Only
that which is good and true and pure, that which is noble and righteous,
was recorded by the flashing pen; the freedom which God gives to man can
write no other record.
The events of the ages passed as a panorama before the solitary
observer. From the bookshelves of the world were selected volumes
written by a master hand, books that had stood the test of time and
lived through the years. And the fact stood out with distinctness that
the souls of the men who wrote them were not shackled, they were not
slaves to another's will, nor bound by another's power, but that the
minds that conceived them stood in absolute freedom before God. He was
made to feel the throb and pulse of freedom, unbound and unfettered,
that surged through the life of the artists that have painted the
world's famous pictures and fashioned its works of art. He saw man
expanding beneath the touch of the Infinite, answerable to the Infinite
only.
Then the world's greatest singers stood before him, those to whom had
been given the gracious gift of melody. And he knew that the possessor
of this gift had arisen over difficulties, through trials and endeavor,
until he reached the height where for him there sounded the supreme
harmonies of the universe, and that he stood alone, exultant in the
freedom of his power.
The flashing pen went back over the past and noted the world's
reformers, men of staunch and steadfast character, who have stood for
righteousness, for purity and truth, men who resisted despotism, put
down superstition, stamped out ignorance and made possible the progress
of science, even though their footsteps were stained with blood and led
to the dungeon and the guillotine.
And this record of light, traced with the diamond's point, made it clear
beyond question that in the small things as well as the great, only that
which has been done in the freedom of the soul has made the world
better. It is soul-freedom that has uplifted, transformed and glorified
life. Every act of charity, of love, of Christian kindness, the cup of
water given in the Master's name, the garment to the naked, the bread to
the hungry, the visit to the prison if of any worth, of any efficacy or
power, have been done in the freedom of the soul, prompted by the
heart-spirit, the desire of the individual unhampered by another's will.
Now before the smitten man there rolled the long years, uncompromising
and relentless as he believed the Judgment-day to be, the years in which
he had held a fair, frail woman, soul and body in subjection to his
wishes, dominated and controlled her by the superior force of his will.
He had held to the belief that he had chosen to live apart from this
woman that he loved because of her infidelity to the Church; now he was
face to face with the conviction that he had deserted her because she
had not subscribed unconditionally to scholastic theology.
Mr. Thorpe was aroused from his trance-like condition by the whimpering
of his dog. The animal thrust his nose against the canvas bag and
looked pleadingly into his master's face. Mr. Thorpe put out his hand
and patted the dog's head; he gave him a biscuit from the bag and poured
some water from the bottle for him to drink. Then he arose, stretched
his stiffened limbs and walked to the entrance of the cave. The sun was
nearing the horizon; the day had passed. He gathered his papers
together, took up the untasted food and made his way back to the tent.
Pauline, who lived with her brother, and who still exercised a watchful
care over her cousin, had been watching for him, and saw him when he
came into sight. She was surprised at his appearance; his shoulders
were squared to meet the bracing wind, and he swung along with the
stride of a strong man, physically and mentally vigorous.
*CHAPTER XXI*
*THE LAW OF LIFE*
June was drawing to a close. The sun rode high in the heaven, and at
evening seemed loath to leave the verdant earth in darkness. From the
rows of neat cottages on the Flat came the scent of perfume-laden
flowers. The garden beds, bathed in the glowing sun and watered from
heaven, grew and throve; and the vines and shrubs lately planted vied
with each other in growth and beauty.
Mrs. Thorpe had spent the day as usual in the school. All day she
labored among the children, and at evening sent them glad and happy to
their homes. There was something about her patience and loving kindness
that touched the hearts of those about her; her presence was an
inspiration, as well as a help and comfort.
At the close of school this June day Margaret asked Mrs. Thorpe to go
with her to tea.
"You refused last night and the night before," she said.
"And I think it better for me not to go to-night, dear. I have some
exercises to look over and some work to prepare for to-morrow. Another
time, perhaps, but not to-night." And so Margaret left her and went her
way alone.
The work that required her attention was examined and preparations for
the morrow completed, and still Mrs. Thorpe lingered in the empty room.
She walked back and forth through the room where all was silent save the
sound of her footsteps; but she was not lonely; she loved the quiet of
the deserted room and the memories that lingered about it. She loved
the children among whom she worked, and she was hopeful and ambitious
for them. She longed to see them in the way of honor and virtue, in the
way of self-respect and independence; and she believed that this way lay
before them. Her life was full of hopes and plans for their future, and
she worked willingly, gladly, whole-heartedly, for the fulfillment of
these plans.
Yet this woman had never tried to deceive herself. She knew that there
was a room in her heart silent and empty, where memories, sad and
silent, lingered among the shadows. She was not unhappy because of
this; her happiness lay in accepting it and fashioning her life superior
to it.