THE SABBATH MORNING.
The Sabbath dawned calm and peaceful and beautiful, and filled with
Sabbatic stillness. Such a Sabbath as would have waked the holy muse of
Donne or Herbert, of Keble or Heber, to celebrate its restful sanctity in
sacred song. But its sweetest hymn was the gracious face of Muriel, as
she sat at the organ in the library, singing in a low voice a psalm that
breathed from heaven into the soul of David three thousand years ago.
The spirit of the music lived in her countenance as she sang, and
lingered there when the tender and regal chant had failed. Too happy for
even music to express, she rose from the instrument, and rapt in heavenly
reverie, wandered to and fro about the room.
But a little while, however, for presently the bounding foot of
Harrington was heard upon the stairs, and he came in.
“Ah, truant!” she playfully exclaimed, gliding to his arms, and gazing up
into his smiling face, “where have you been. I woke this morning to find
myself a widow. Now give me the morning kiss of which I was defrauded.”
He folded her in his arms, and fondly kissed her again and again.
“I have been to my house,” he said, “and do you know why? To see
after my dog. Positively, I had almost forgotten the existence of that
delectable animal, and my conscience smote me this morning lest he should
have been neglected, which he has not been, for the boys have been his
guardians. So I stole from your side like a thief of the night. You were
sleeping so sweetly, and looked so beautiful in your sleep, that I did
not dare to disturb you. Strange feeling I had in leaving you—it was
almost like going never to return.”
“And I, too,” she replied, melting from her blushing smile into musing.
“I woke from a singular dream of you. I dreamed that I was going about
alone in the house and in the streets and among all sorts of people, and
you were at an immeasurable distance above me, looking at me constantly
from behind the air, as it were. The strangest thing was that I could
not see you, though at the same time I knew you were there just as if I
saw you. But we were separated. And yet I was not sad—indeed, the dream
was happy. Presently I unclosed my eyes, and for a moment,” she said,
laughing, “I really felt as if I were a widow, which I have no ambition
to be, I assure you.”
Harrington laughed gaily, and pressed his lips to her forehead.
“Dreams are strange,” he said, lightly. “But how exquisite you are this
morning! Every time I see you you look new. Stand back a pace, and let me
admire you!”
She danced back a couple of yards, and stood playfully regarding him,
with her beautiful and noble head bent a little on one side, while
his eyes dwelt on her delicately tinted features, and wandered over
the stately elegance of her form. She was robed that morning in pale
rose-colored silk, with lace corsage and lace open sleeves. About her
hung that indefinable and delicious patrician odor which we sometimes
perceive around the persons of fair women, and which touches the
imagination like the aroma of a poetic nobility of soul. A thrill fled
through the veins of Harrington as he gazed on her, and then his eyes
grew sad, and the smile on his face died slowly away.
“Ah, Muriel,” he said, in a low, rapt voice, “the beauty that my eyes
see in you is the token of the beauty my soul knows in you. How could I
bear to leave you! Once it was a joy to think of death, but now heaven
could not tempt me from earth with you.”
She came quickly to him, with an agitated face, and passionately clung to
him. He folded her to his breast, and felt, as his face drooped upon her
forehead, a vague sense, as of some luminous shadow resting on them. In
a moment, she lifted her face to his, serene, though the clear eyes were
dim, and gazed ardently into his countenance.
“Do not speak of leaving me, John,” she said. “It was my foolish dream
put that into your mind. Ah, we shall neither of us leave each other.
Life is before us, and love. Come, let us not dwell on this, but speak of
other things.”
“So be it,” he replied. “Well, what shall we do with ourselves to-day?”
“I don’t know,” she gaily answered, swinging around from his breast to
his side, and putting her arm about him, while he encircled her waist.
“Suppose we vary the general impiety of our proceedings by going to
church.”
“Agreed. To Mr. Parker’s, of course.”
“Most assuredly. There’s the breakfast bell.”
And, arm in arm, they descended to the breakfast-room.
Church-time came, with the aërial pealing of bells, and with it came
Wentworth, in gallant and perfumed attire, to convoy Emily to her
devotions. Emily, however, had decided to go with Harrington and Muriel,
and presently they all set out together, Mrs. Eastman, who had recovered
her serenity, accompanying them.
The streets were full of church-goers, some of them haply wending their
way to be regaled with exhortations to obey all laws, right or wrong,
especially the Fugitive Slave Law, and to consent, if need be, to have
their brothers go into slavery to save the Union. In that blissful
period, it was agreed, among all respectable people, that ministers
must not meddle with politics, unless they were pro-slavery politics,
which were considered perfectly orthodox, _doulos_ of Christ having
been ascertained to mean, not servant, but slave of Christ, and Paul
having been proved to have sent back Onesimus, not at all as a brother
beloved, but as a runaway Thomas Sims. The sedulous inculcation of
these soul-elevating views and this cheering exegesis of Scripture, was
understood to be in perfect harmony with the dictum that ministers musn’t
meddle with politics, and many ministers conducted themselves accordingly.
Debarred by their own hardness and frowardness of heart from the holy
solace of these ministrations, our little party held their perverse
way to the Melodeon. The choir was singing as they entered, and the
church was crowded as usual, for no minister in Boston gathered such
a concourse as the mighty Theodore. A little movable pulpit, on which
bloomed a vase of flowers, occupied the platform, and behind it, with
clasped hands, musing, sat he who shall heave his noble thought in
massive mountain-chains of strength and beauty never any more. Living,
his presence was the magic spell that evoked and commanded Freedom. Oh,
dying, was it less strong—less strong when he had died? Lo! he drew nigh
the shores of Italy, and she rose, in the red storm of Magenta, from the
bondage of ten centuries, free! He laid him down to sleep in the soil of
her Florence, and pale and radiant from her long agony, all disenchanted
of her doom, she stands above his dust, bastioned with hearts and swords,
free! Free, and free forever, and secure of ever-broadening freedom, for
the land can never rest in tyranny that holds within its bosom Parker’s
grave!
There are thousands who remember those Sabbaths in his presence; but who
shall paint them in hues that will not seem faint and unfaithful in the
light of memory? What words shall revive his image as he stood behind
the little pulpit—Socratic-featured, strong, earnest, reverend—the large
volume of old Scripture open before him, the tinted flowers blooming by
his side, the faces of thousands all mutely turned toward him, as once
toward Luther, Savonarola, Abelard? What words shall tell of the firm
eyes holding all those faces, the resolute features stirring, the orotund
and fervent deep voice sounding, as he read from the sacred pages,
lifting the verses into their fullest significance and life, and flooding
the soul with all that is loftiest and sweetest in the old saints and
prophets’ lore? Who shall bring back the hours when, as in that hour,
the deep voice rose in the tender and gorgeous prayer, filled with the
affluent sunshine, the flowers, the greenery, the wild-bird melodies,
the living glory of the spring, all music-rich with reverential thought
and feeling, all overflowed with gratitude and praise to the Giver, with
faith, and piety, and aspiration, all throbbing with immortal longings,
and raising the soul to the mystic’s vision of God, and kindling the
heart with the hero’s hope of the ideal future of man? A streaming
altar-flame, uprising rich with incense from hills and valleys lovely
in the blue day and pomps of spring-time, thronged with the saints and
saviors of all time, and echoing with the supplications and hosannas
of mankind, might be the symbol of that prayer. But what symbol shall
gather within it the strong and salient intellections of the following
sermon—its massive breadth and scope of statement, its valiant dealing
with the public sins and sinners of the time, its learning that swept
all history, its knowledge that swept all life, the broad illumination
of its eloquence, the prowess of its virtue, the sweetness of its piety?
A torch of burning splendor upheld by Greatheart, and flashing on his
brand and mail in the crash of combat with Apollyon—its blaze poured
strong and definite upon the open midnight landscape of our mortal life,
illumining the path of nobleness, lighting every danger, darting its ray
upon the secret pitfall, and into the ambush of the foe, and streaming
forward over all the perilous track to the gates of God—such might be the
visioned symbol of a speech which yet no symbol can describe. Closed now
in death that glorious eloquence, nor in a hundred years may such a bloom
unfold again; but the continents shall remember how in an evil time burst
forth its flower of flame, and its fragrance shall fill the world from
age to age.
Every high heart has felt the sense of renewal and reconsecration which
follows the words of a great pulpit orator; and with this sense strong
within them, the little party left the church when the service was ended.
On their way home, Wentworth stopped the others to announce that Emily
was to dine at his father’s house, and return to Temple street late in
the afternoon. A few moments passed in exchanging warm eulogiums on the
sermon, and then Mrs. Eastman, Muriel, and Harrington left the other two
and walked across the beautiful sunlit Common.
“Now, John,” said Muriel, gaily, “of course you have some criticism to
make on Mr. Parker.”
“I declare no,” he responded; “I haven’t the conscience to criticise
him. He makes one’s heart glow so with his manhood, that criticism must
be dumb. I pass his theology, everything in fact, I might differ on, and
rest only on his magnificent public service, and the inspiration of his
example.”
“Still,” she returned, “you would differ, if you could.”
“To be sure,” he replied, smilingly. “If I could criticise, I would
own to a divine dissatisfaction. For the sermon implied no theory that
adequately accounts for the scheme of things, as my own theory does,
at least to me. However, I won’t grumble. I have Emerson still for
my refuge. All the modern thinkers cramp me in a cell, more or less
spacious, but in Emerson, chiefly in his poems, I escape into the vast of
space and stars, and breathe blithely like the self-existent soul I am.”
“Oh, heretic!” she gaily exclaimed. “But I agree with all you say, and
especially about the poems. They are incomparably beyond all else the
Muse has vouchsafed to our American bards.”
“Now, John,” said Mrs. Eastman, “I should really like to know what your
theory of things is. Come, define your position.”
“My dear mother,” replied Harrington, laughing, “will it do to give it
voice? The tell-tale birds might hear me, and carry the news to the
orthodox, and then I should have a grand auto-da-fe, with all the great
wits and little wits dancing around me in my expiring agonies.”
“Oh, but John,” she banteringly answered, “this is the age and land of
free thought, you know.”
“Yes, indeed. Free thought meaning your freedom to think as the mass
of your fellow-citizens do. Go beyond that, and they’ll melt up Judas
Iscariot and Cæsar Borgia, and all the rascals, little and big, for
colors, as Allston’s Paint-King melted up the lady, and paint your
portrait in hues of earthquake and eclipse, as Shelley’s phrase has it.
Political liberty with us includes the right to wallop your own nigger,
and howl into Coventry, or hang to a tree, any humane person who objects.
Social liberty means the right to make you submit to the ordinances of
Mrs. Grundy, be they the prescriptions of a French tailor or milliner
in regard to your dress, or the fancies of some conclave of bigots in
regard to your actions, and if taste or conscience rises in revolt, Mrs.
Grundy raps them on the head with a stick, as Lear’s cockney did the eels
when she put them in the pie alive, and cries, ‘Down, wantons, down!’
Religious liberty involves the right to fling theological mud and fire on
the good name of anybody who ventures beyond the notions of clergymen,
and liberty in general means your privilege to say and do what moderate
and immoderate intellects concede you may. Socially speaking, the very
essential principle of liberty, toleration, is tucked away in Roger
Williams’ grave. The people of this country think they love liberty.
They don’t. They don’t know what liberty means. If they did they’d love
tyranny. It is my deliberate conviction that if the people of this
country understood what the doctrine of liberty involves and comprehends,
as it lies in the pages of the scholars who conceived it, they would deny
it utterly, and set up the despotism of the Middle Ages as their idol.”
Muriel laughed heartily at this outburst.
“Bravo, John!” she cried. “Methinks I hear you thundering that from the
rostrum into the startled hearts of your fellow-citizens.”
“Yes, amidst groans and hisses,” returned the smiling Harrington. “But I
should flash a bolder speech than that if I were to address the public.
That is weak rose-water compared to what I would say when I came to
recite the special instances of the civil or social abuses of which I
complain.”
“Heaven save the sinners from your sprinkling then if that is only
rose-water,” jested Muriel. “But here is mamma bursting with impatience
for your theory of the Universe.”
“My dear mother,” said Harrington, laughingly, “another time, when I can
collect my vagrant ideas, I will confide to you all I saw when I put
my eye to a chink of this mortal prison, and looked out on the True.
Meanwhile, you will find some slight hint of my notions in Goethe’s poem
of ‘The Festival.’”
“Which I shall read when I get home,” replied Mrs. Eastman.
And talking in this strain, they reached the house in Temple street.