The austerity of Kike's conscience had slumbered during his
convalescence. It was wide awake now. He sat that evening in his
room trying to see the right way. According to old Methodist custom
he looked for some inward movement of the spirit--some
"impression"--that should guide him.
During the great religious excitement of the early part of this
century, Western pietists referred everything to God in prayer, and
the belief in immmediate divine direction was often carried to a
ludicrous extent. It is related that one man retired to the hills
and prayed a week that he might know how he should be baptized, and
that at last he came rushing out of the woods, shouting "Hallelujah!
Immersion!" Various devices were invented for obtaining divine
direction--devices not unworthy the ancient augurs. Lorenzo Dow used
to suffer his horse to take his own course at each divergence of the
road. It seems to have been a favorite delusion of pietism, in all
ages, that God could direct an inanimate object, guide a dumb brute,
or impress a blind impulse upon the human mind, but could not
enlighten or guide the judgment itself. The opening of a Bible at
random for a directing text became so common during the Wesleyan
movement in England, that Dr. Adam Clarke thought it necessary to
utter a stout Irish philippic against what he called "Bible
sortilege."
These devout divinings, these vanes set to catch the direction of
heavenly breezes, could not but impress so earnest a nature as
Kike's. Now in his distress he prayed with eagerness and opened his
Bible at random to find his eye lighting, not on any intelligible or
remotely applicable passage, but upon a bead-roll of unpronounceable
names in one of the early chapters of the Book of Chronicles. This
disappointment he accepted as a trial of his faith. Faith like
Kike's is not to be dashed by disappointment. He prayed again for
direction, and opened at last at the text: "Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou me more than these?" The marked trait in Kike's piety
was an enthusiastic personal loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. This
question seemed directed to him, as it had been to Peter, in
reproach. He would hesitate no longer. Love, and life itself,
should be sacrificed for the Christ who died for him. Then he prayed
once more, and there came to his mind the memory of that saying about
leaving houses and homes and lands and wives, for Christ's sake. It
came to him, doubtless, by a perfectly natural law of mental
association. But what did Kike know of the association of ideas, or
of any other law of mental action? Wesley's sermons and Benson's
Life of Fletcher constituted his library. To him it seemed certain
that this text of scripture was "suggested." It was a call from
Christ to give up all for him. And in the spirit of the sublimest
self-sacrifice, he said: "Lord, I will keep back nothing!"
But emotions and resolutions that are at high tide in the evening
often ebb before morning. Kike thought himself strong enough to
begin again to rise at four o'clock, as Wesley had ordained in those
"rules for a preacher's conduct" which every Methodist preacher even
yet _promises_ to keep. Following the same rules, he proceeded to
set apart the first hour for prayer and meditation. The night before
all had seemed clear; but now that morning had come and he must soon
proceed to execute his stern resolve, he found himself full of doubt
and irresolution. Such vacillation was not characteristic of Kike,
but it marked the depth of his feeling for Nettie. Doubtless, too,
the enervation of convalescence had to do with it. Certainly in that
raw and foggy dawn the forsaking of the paradise of rest and love in
which he had lingered seemed to require more courage than he could
muster. After all, why should he leave? Might he not be mistaken in
regard to his duty? Was he obliged to sacrifice his life?
He conducted his devotions in a state of great mental distraction.
Seeing a copy of Baxter's Reformed Pastor which belonged to Dr.
Morgan lying on the window-seat, he took it up, hoping to get some
light from its stimulating pages. He remembered that Wesley spoke
well of Baxter; but he could not fix his mind upon the book. He kept
listlessly turning the leaves until his eye lighted upon a sentence
in Latin. Kike knew not a single word of Latin, and for that very
reason his attention was the more readily attracted by the sentence
in an unknown tongue. He read it, "_Nec propter vitam, vivendi
perdere causas_." He found written in the margin a free rendering:
"Let us not, for the sake of life, sacrifice the only things worth
living for." He knelt down now and gave thanks for what seemed to
him Divine direction. He had been delivered from a temptation to
sacrifice the great end of living for the sake of saving his life.
It cost him a pang to bid adieu to Dr. Morgan and his motherly wife
and the excellent Jane. It cost him a great pang to say good-bye to
Nettie Morgan. Her mobile face could ill conceal her feeling. She
did not venture to come to the door. Kike found her alone in the
little porch at the back of the house, trying to look unconcerned.
Afraid to trust himself he bade her farewell dryly, taking her hand
coldly for a moment. But the sight of her pain-stricken face touched
him to the quick: he seized her hand again, and, with eyes full of
tears, said huskily: "Good-bye, Nettie! God bless you, and keep you
forever!" and then turned suddenly away, bidding the rest a hasty
adieu and riding off eagerly, almost afraid to look back. He was
more severe than ever in the watch he kept over himself after this.
He could never again trust his treacherous heart.
Kike rode to his old home in the Hissawachee Settlement, "The Forks"
had now come to be quite a village; the valley was filling with
people borne on that great wave of migration that swept over the
Alleghanies in the first dozen years of the century. The cabin in
which his mother lived was very little different from what it was
when he left it. The old stick chimney showed signs of decrepitude;
the barrel which served for chimney-pot was canted a little on one
side, giving to the cabin, as Kike thought, an unpleasant air, as of
a man a little exhilarated with whiskey, who has tipped his hat upon
the side of his head to leer at you saucily. The mother received him
joyously, and wiped her eyes with her apron when she saw how sick he
had been. Brady was at the widow's cabin, and though he stood by the
fire-place when Kike entered, the two splint-bottomed chairs sat
suspiciously close together. Brady had long thought of changing his
state, but both Brady and the widow were in mortal fear of Kike,
whose severity of judgment and sternness of reproof appalled them.
"If it wasn't for Koike," said Brady to himself, "I'd propose to the
widdy. But what would the lad say to sich follies at my toime of
loife? And the widdy's more afeard of him than I am. Did iver
anybody say the loikes of a b'y that skeers his schoolmasther out of
courtin' his mother, and his mother out of resavin' the attintions of
a larnt grammairian loike mesilf? The misfortin' is that Koike don't
have no wakenisses himsilf. I wish he had jist one, and thin I
wouldn't keer. If I could only foind that he'd iver looked jist a
little swate loike at iny young girl, I wouldn't moind his cinsure.
But, somehow, I kape a-thinkin' what would Koike say, loike a ould
coward that I am."
Kike had come home to have his tattered wardrobe improved, and the
thoughtful mother had already made him a warm, though not very
shapely, suit of jeans. It cost Kike a struggle to leave her again.
She did not think him fit to go. But she did not dare to say so.
How should she venture to advise one who seemed to her wondering
heart to live in the very secrets of the Almighty? God had laid
hands on him--the child was hers no longer. But still she looked her
heart-breaking apprehensions as he set out from home, leaving her
standing disconsolate in the doorway wiping her eyes with her apron.
And Brady, seeing Kike as he rode by the school-house, ventured to
give him advice--partly by way of finding out whether Kike had any
"wakeniss" or not.
"Now, Koike, me son, as your ould taycher, I thrust you'll bear with
me if I give you some advoice, though ye have got to be sich a
praycher. Ye'll not take offinse, me lad?"
"O no; certainly not, Mr. Brady," said Kike, smiling sadly.
"Will, thin, ye're of a delicate constitooshun as shure as ye're
born, and it's me own opinion as ye ought to git a good wife to nurse
ye, and thin you could git a home and maybe do more good than ye do
now."
Kike's face settled into more than its wonted severity. The
remembrance of his recent vacillation and the sense of his present
weakness were fresh in his mind. He would not again give place to
the devil.
"Mr. Brady, there's something more important than our own ease or
happiness. We were not made to seek comfort, but to give ourselves
to the work of Christ. And see! your head is already blossoming for
eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were all."
Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master solemnly and rode away,
and Mr. Brady was more appalled than ever.
"The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately. "Not a
wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked gloomily into the school-house,
took down a switch and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the
worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius, often suffered on
general principles when the master was out of humor.
Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the distant Pottawottomie
Creek circuit?
Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed the wilds of
America at the call of duty as they heard it, were unhappy men? The
highest happiness comes not from the satisfaction of our desires, but
from the denial of them for the sake of a high purpose. I doubt not
the happiest man that ever sailed through Levantine seas, or climbed
Cappadocian mountains, was Paul of Tarsus. Do you think that he
envied the voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of Corinth?
Can you believe that one of the idlers in the Epicurean gardens, or
one of the Stoic loafers in the covered sidewalks of Athens, could
imagine the joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations?
For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice, and Kike
defied the storms of a northern winter, and all the difficulties and
dangers of the wilderness, and all the hardships of his lonely lot,
with one saying often on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!"
I have heard that about this time young Lumsden was accustomed to
electrify his audiences by his fervent preaching upon the Christian
duty of Glorying in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women
would nod their heads one to another as they went home afterward, and
say: "He's seed a mighty sight o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a
young man." "Yes; but he's got the victory; and how powerful sweet
he talks about it! I never heerd the beat in all my born days."
_CHAPTER XXIII._