DR. STANLEY DISCOURSES CONCERNING THE DIVERSIONS OF THE SAINTS.
At the hour agreed upon, Mrs. Joe left Stormpoint to fetch Natalie. As
the latter had done in the morning, and in order to inspect the
newly-erected headstone, she alighted from her carriage at the cemetery
and passed through various alleys, when, as she approached her
destination, she suddenly halted.
A woman was stretched upon the grave, who, on hearing the ejaculation of
Mrs. Joe, partly raised her head, disclosing an earth-bedaubed face, and
emitting sounds not human, but rather the moans of a tortured animal.
Mrs. Joe ran and seized her shoulder, and at the touch Natalie half
arose. Her gleaming eyes, her face distorted and soiled with
earth--these presented an appalling spectacle.
The lady of Stormpoint could hardly have told how the task was
accomplished, but she succeeded in inducing the frantic woman to enter
the carriage, and, thus separated from the grave, she became quieter,
though never ceasing to mutter phrases which caused the listener to
shudder. Mrs. Joe was a woman of varied experience. She had heard the
oaths of mining camps when pistols and knives were out and frenzied
ruffians were athirst for blood; she would have thought no form of
profanity strange to her ears; yet she had heard no blasphemy equal to
that uttered by her companion, repeated as a weary child asleep may
repeat some hard-learned sentence impressed upon a tired brain.
Arrived home, and Natalie in her bed, and withal lying quiet, and the
carriage dispatched at full speed for Dr. Stanley, there was time to
consider the next step.
"Send for Father Cameril," urged Paula.
"What is Leonard's address?" asked the lady, ignoring the suggestion.
"Dear," said Paula, caressingly, and taking Natalie's hand, "where is
Leonard?"
"In hell," was the answer. "I am overjoyed in hearing the howlings of
hell. My joy is increased as I gaze upon Leonard in the midst of that
sea of suffering."
"Good Lord deliver us!" ejaculated Mrs. Joe. Paula fell upon her knees.
"Father in heaven!" she commenced.
Natalie looked at her with languid interest "The sight of hell-torments
exalts the happiness of the saints," she said.
At this delectable quotation from Jonathan Edwards Mrs. Joe wrung her
hands; Paula uttered a half scream and burst into tears; in the same
moment Dr. Stanley was ushered into the room.
"A frightful shock!" was his verdict. "Absolute quiet! No tears; no
exorcisms," with a warning finger upheld for Paula. "I'll send a nurse
at once and return soon."
By night he was again in the house, having received bulletins from the
nurse in the meanwhile. The patient was asleep; had been so for nearly
three hours. "Excellent!" he said to Mrs. Joe, finding that lady
awaiting his report in the library. "It's a fine brain, Mrs. Claghorn.
Let us hope it may prove a strong one. Can you explain further than you
could this afternoon?"
"The keeper of the cemetery knows nothing. Her maids are here. I sent
James for them, and have kept them to be questioned by you."
The maids only knew that Mrs. Leonard had visited the house, and had
spent the day in the library; that one of them, noting that her mistress
had neglected the luncheon that had been laid out for her, had ventured
to look into the room. "She was crouched on the floor, reading; I could
not well see her face. When I spoke she waved her hand, as though I was
not to interrupt. That was about two o'clock. I went back to the
kitchen, just putting the tea on the range so's to heat it. Then neither
Martha nor I thought anything more about her, until about five Martha
thought she heard the front door slam. We looked in the library; she
was gone. She hadn't touched the lunch." Such, relieved of some
circumlocution, was the report of the maid most glib of speech. They
were dismissed by the doctor.
"She has done," was his comment, "that which creed-adherents usually
omit. She has read, and as a consequence is crazed."
"Crazed as a consequence of reading!" exclaimed Mrs. Joe.
"Mrs. Leonard has sustained a shock; there must be a cause. No external
injury is discoverable. The cause is to be found in her moral, or, if
you please, her spiritual constitution--I don't care what you call
it--among other things in strong maternal yearnings--subjective causes
these, and not sufficient to explain the seizure; there must have been
an agent. The maid found her deeply absorbed; people that read crouched
on the floor are so; therefore a book----"
"I took this from her," exclaimed the lady, producing the Reverend
Eliphalet's "Call to the Careless."
"Aha!" exclaimed the doctor, pouncing upon the volume and glancing at
the title-page, "here we have it; here's enough to convert a lying-in
hospital into Bedlam."
Mrs. Joe gazed upon the fat little volume in the hand of the speaker,
with the same expression with which a novice might contemplate an
overgrown spider impaled upon the card of a collector.
"This unctuous treatise," proceeded the doctor, who, finding his hobby
saddled, was impatient to mount, "was written by a shining light of that
family to which you and I have been graciously permitted to ally
ourselves. In this volume are recorded the ecstatic transports of one of
the most blessed of the blessed Claghorns. Our patient may have derived
her tendency to exaltation from this very rhapsodist. Here, with the
Reverend Eliphalet, we may revel in angelic joys; with him, we may,
god-like, gloat over sinners damned, and, enraptured, contemplate
Flames, Torment and Despair; here our ears may be charmed with the Roars
of Age, the Howls of Youth, the Screams of Childhood and the Wails of
Infancy; all in linked sweetness long drawn out; all in capital
letters, and all extorted by the Flames that Lick the Suffering
Damned!"
"Doctor!" exclaimed the lady, scandalized at that which she supposed was
a burst of profanity.
"Shocked? Well, shocking it is--in me, who refuse to believe it, but
edifying in Eliphalet. Ah! madam, the evil that men do lives after them.
Was truth ever better exemplified? Listen to this: The writer pictures
himself in heaven and looking down into hell. 'What joy to behold Truth
vindicated from all the horrid aspersions of hellish monsters!' (that's
me) 'I am overjoyed at hearing the everlasting Howlings of the Haters of
the Almighty! Oh! Sweet, sweet. My heart is satisfied!'"
The lady attempted to interrupt, but the doctor continued to read: "The
saints in glory will see and better understand (than we do) how terrible
the sufferings of the damned are! When they have this sight it will
excite them to joyful praises,' that's a choice bit from Jonathan
Edwards. What do you think of the diversions of 'the saints in glory?'"
"It's blasphemy!"
"Blasphemy! Tell it not in Hampton! But listen to Jonathan again. Here
is his picture of a sinner just condemned. His parents are witnesses of
his terror and agony, and thus they righteously gloat: 'When they shall
see what manifestations of amazement will be in you at the hearing of
this dreadful sentence; when they shall behold you with a frightened and
amazed countenance, trembling and astonished, and shall hear you groan
and gnash your teeth, these things will not move them at all to pity
you, but you will see them with a holy joy in their countenances and
with songs in their mouths. When they shall see you turned away and
beginning to enter into the great furnace, and shall see how you shrink
at it, and hear how you shriek and cry out, yet they will not be at all
grieved for you; but at the same time you will hear from them renewed
praises and hallelujahs for this true and righteous judgment of God in
so dealing with you!'"
"If," interjected the listener, "that is written there, the devil wrote
it."
"The devil may have had a hand in the matter, but it was written by no
less a person than Jonathan Edwards, regarded, and justly, by the
Reverend Eliphalet and others, as a great man. He is also quoted here as
saying to his hearers, 'If you perish hereafter, it will be an occasion
of joy to all the godly'; one is hardly surprised that he didn't get on
with his congregation. Imagine Father Cameril making that announcement
with you and Miss Paula in the front pew."
"Doctor, if you are not inventing----"
"I could not. My imagination is not warmed by the flames of hell or by
celestial visions. This book is filled with similar elegant extracts."
"I have heard enough, Doctor. Really----"
"Permit me one or two more. We have hardly heard the author himself as
yet."
"But to what end?"
"You were incredulous when I asserted that a day's reading in Leonard's
library would account for the present condition of his wife. It's only
fair to allow me to justify my assertion."
"You have read enough to drive _me_ crazy, if for one moment I believed
it."
"Hardly. _You_ are not a recently bereaved mother; _you_ are not just
emerging from a condition consequent upon disturbance of the physical
economy which has reacted upon the mental; _you_ are not inclined to
mysticism, to see visions, to find pictures in goblets of water or in
grate fires; in short, while you have your own idiosyncrasies, they are
not of a character to render you liable to this sort of transport. But
there are organizations which, though seduced by mystic lore, can hardly
contemplate such matters without injury. The compiler of this book, the
men he quotes, the ecstatics in general--revivalists, hermits, nuns and
monks in all ages--do you believe that as a class they were well
balanced? Peering into heaven is a dangerous business."
"The men you have quoted seem to have peered into hell."
"That is the Puritan mode of ecstatic enjoyment. Our Catholic--I beg
your pardon, our Roman Catholic--enthusiasts, being more artistic, and
lovers of the beautiful, prefer contemplation of heaven. Unlike the
smug Puritan, they do not spare their bodies. They fast and flog, wear
hair shirts, roll in ashes and wash seldom, but their eyes are turned
upward; they urge the spirit to rejoice. Your fat and well-fed Calvinist
prefers a gloom irradiated by the flames of hell, in which he can behold
the writhing victims of God's vanity----"
"Doctor, you are as bitter as all your brethren; you unbeliever----"
"I don't know that I'm more of an unbeliever than you are. I'm sure if
the Reverend Eliphalet has not by this time modified his opinions, he
has no expectation of meeting you in heaven. Hear him as he warns
humanity against the devices of Satan: 'Of which,' he says, 'the traces
are visible even in the church. In these days there hath arisen a
delusive hope as to infants. Some hold, and a few dare to assert, though
with bated breath, that all infants die in the grace of God. Who saith
this? Not God, who, by His Eternal Decree, hath declared that none but
His Elect are saved. Not our Confession of Faith, formulated at
Westminster in earnest prayer and reverence for the Word. Not the
framers of that Confession, of whom I may mention Twisse, as having
specially wrote against this new-born folly, extorted by the cunning of
the Enemy of Souls by means of the bleatings of foolish mothers--search
the Scripture, reader! Nowhere shalt thou find any saved but His
Elect.'"
"Abominable!" ejaculated the lady.
"Poetical. 'Bleatings of foolish mothers' is quite so. And now our good
man actually drops into the poetry of the Reverend Michael Wigglesworth,
whose 'Day of Doom' he quotes at length. I will not inflict the whole
fifteen stanzas upon you; but listen to a morsel or two. This is the
Argument: The Still-born appear at the Seat of Mercy, and put in a plea
for grace that might have weight in Senegambia, but which has none in
the heaven of Eliphalet and of Hampton:
'Then to the bar they all drew near who died in Infancy,
And never had, or good or bad, effected personally,
But from the womb unto the tomb were straightway carried
(Or at the least, ere they transgressed), who thus began to plead.'
"Their plea is that since Adam, the actual delinquent, has been 'set
free, and saved from his trespass,' they are on better grounds entitled
to consideration. To the finite intelligence there would seem to be some
force in the infantile argument. What says Omnipotence?
'I may deny you once to try, or grace to you to tender,
Though he finds Grace before my face who was the chief offender.
You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect,
Such you shall have, for I do save none but mine own elect;
Yet to compare your sin with their who sinned a longer time,
I do confess yours is much less, though every sin's a crime;
A crime it is, therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell,
But unto you I shall allow THE EASIEST ROOM IN HELL.'"
The doctor closed the book. "I submit that I have proved my contention,"
he said. "Do you doubt now that Mrs. Leonard was affected by her
browsings among Leonard's books? The men who wrote the matter of which
this volume is made up were largely the founders of Hampton, men whose
names she has heard venerated as almost inspired of God."
"Even so, how could she believe such absurdities?"
"I do not assert that she believed. Belief in the impossible is
impossible. But have you never been deeply impressed by fiction; never
been scared by a ghost story? Have you shed tears over the sorrows of
Colonel Newcome? The few quotations you have heard cause you to shrink,
though you are well aware they are but foolish words. But if you could
_see_ the scenes herein depicted, I do not think you could bear the
prospect. I am sure _I_ should howl as lustily as any hellish monster
here referred to. Well, Mrs. Leonard being so constituted, has actually
_seen_ these horrors, and, in the central figure, has contemplated the
writhings of her child."
"Oh, Doctor!" she spoke in a subdued tone, her eyes expressing more than
her words.
"Even you, here in this well-lighted and cheerful room, with me, a very
material and matter-of-fact person, beside you, even you can feel a
faint reflection of the terrors in which this woman spent the day.
Alone, without food, a deserted room, a gloomy house, but lately
cheerful with the prattle of a childish voice, forever silent, but of
which the echoes still linger in the mother's ears--here's enough and
more than enough to disturb an exalted temperament, a morbid
imagination. Add this"--the doctor shook the book in his hand--"and what
need of belief, if by belief you mean the result of a reasoning process?
The ideas suggested _here took possession of her_! Belief! Pshaw! nobody
believes in this stuff; but Hampton says it believes."
"But that's monstrous!"
"Nothing more common than loud assertions of belief where is no belief.
That's politics, partisanship."
"But this is religion----"
"So-called."
"But----"
"The Westminster Confession is a written document. The men who composed
it knew what they wished to say, and said it so clearly that nobody can
misapprehend their meaning. Your own creed of compromises--pardon me,
compromise is always the resort of politicians who understand their
business--was wiser, or luckier; its Articles are all loopholes in
regard to this doctrine of Election----"
"Doctor, your ignorance of my church is so palpable that I decline to
take your word concerning Hampton and the Confession of Faith. I've
never read it----"
"Even its adherents are not so rash. It becomes a serious matter as to
one's self-respect to maintain a monstrous absurdity, after one knows
it. Nevertheless, the Westminster Confession teaches as truth all that
the Reverend Eliphalet says, or that Michael Wigglesworth grotesquely
sings. Moreover, it is annually published under the title of 'The
Constitution and Standards of the Presbyterian Church in the United
States of America'--a solemn declaration that God, before the creation
of man, damned the great majority to everlasting agony so excruciating
as to be beyond conception, and all for His own glory and pleasure."
"Yet I know, and you ought to know, that Christianity offers salvation
to every soul through the medium of its Founder."
"Denied _in toto_ by Westminster. According to the Confession, not even
Jesus Christ could diminish the number of the damned, fixed before the
creation of a single soul. If Mrs. Leonard's baby was born to be damned,
damned he is."
"Now I know you are asserting what is not so. I have heard infant
damnation denied by Hampton professors."
"And may again. I do not claim that a single human being believes the
Westminster Confession; but I do maintain that he who acknowledges that
Confession as his standard, and retains membership in that church, which
annually promulgates the same as truth, either believes an outrageous
absurdity, or says he believes it. If he is not willing to do this, he
has no right in the organization; why, only the other day Dr. Willis was
requested to get out because he declined to say he believed that which
he does not believe."
"Doctor, I am sorry to say it, but your statements are not credible----"
"Don't apologize. Of course they are not; but they are true. I certainly
don't blame you for doubting my word. But you shall ask Hodge; I'll lend
you his commentary. Hodge hopes as to infants, but is honest enough to
admit that in the Confession there is no ground for hope. He damns all
heathen incontinently, which includes all the babies I ever knew, though
he may have known babies that were not heathen. And, after all, why this
solicitude for babies? Why is it less monstrous to condemn to eternal
torture a being six feet long than one of three? Why, on the last
occasion I was in a church I heard these words: 'The sentiment which
sorrows over what God reveals as His will is simply maudlin. When the
Christian finds out who are in the regions of despair he will neither be
affected by their number nor by the duration of their punishment.'
That's not much better than 'bleating mothers.' And in the
meanwhile"--he concluded a tirade so rapidly uttered that his auditor
had had no opportunity to interrupt--"they are quarreling about Socrates
and tobacco, crusading against my bottle of claret, and sending
missionaries to Japan." Who "they" were he had no opportunity to
designate, for at this moment a messenger from the nurse announced that
the patient was awake.
When the doctor and the lady entered the room, Natalie looked at them,
but betrayed no surprise. Mrs. Joe was startled by the expression of her
face, which was peaceful, even happy. "Heaven is beautiful," she said,
without other preface. "Birds and flowers and little children. Oh! the
happy little children and Lenny among them; all so happy, so rosy! Ah, I
am glad!" And even as she sighed her gladness she sank into slumber. The
doctor watched her anxiously for many minutes; then he signed to Mrs.
Joe to follow, and they softly left the room.
"Is it death?" asked the lady, who had been frightened by his anxious
face.
"Such visions often mean death; there's nothing certain yet, but every
hope. Go to bed, Mrs. Claghorn; I shall remain here."
But though the lady declined to go to bed, the discussion was not
resumed.
About four in the morning he went alone to the room, and soon returned
with a smiling face. "She is sleeping naturally," he said. "A few hours
since I feared for her reason; now I have great hope. I shall return at
eight o'clock. Let nobody go near her. Burn that thing; she must never
see it again." He pointed to the "Call to the Careless," and left the
house.