--You and I are at work on the same problem, said the Young Astronomer
to the Master.--I have looked into a microscope now and then, and I
have seen that perpetual dancing about of minute atoms in a fluid, which
you call molecular motion. Just so, when I look through my telescope I
see the star-dust whirling about in the infinite expanse of ether; or
if I do not see its motion, I know that it is only on account of its
immeasurable distance. Matter and motion everywhere; void and rest
nowhere. You ask why your restless microscopic atoms may not come
together and become self-conscious and self-moving organisms. I ask why
my telescopic star-dust may not come together and grow and organize
into habitable worlds,--the ripened fruit on the branches of the tree
Yggdrasil, if I may borrow from our friend the Poet's province. It
frightens people, though, to hear the suggestion that worlds shape
themselves from star-mist. It does not trouble them at all to see
the watery spheres that round themselves into being out of the vapors
floating over us; they are nothing but raindrops. But if a planet can
grow as a rain-drop grows, why then--It was a great comfort to these
timid folk when Lord Rosse's telescope resolved certain nebula into
star-clusters. Sir John Herschel would have told them that this
made little difference in accounting for the formation of worlds by
aggregation, but at any rate it was a comfort to them.
--These people have always been afraid of the astronomers,--said the
Master.--They were shy, you know, of the Copernican system, for a long
while; well they might be with an oubliette waiting for them if they
ventured to think that the earth moved round the sun. Science settled
that point finally for them, at length, and then it was all right,--when
there was no use in disputing the fact any longer. By and by geology
began turning up fossils that told extraordinary stories about the
duration of life upon our planet. What subterfuges were not used to get
rid of their evidence! Think of a man seeing the fossilized skeleton of
an animal split out of a quarry, his teeth worn down by mastication, and
the remains of food still visible in his interior, and, in order to
get rid of a piece of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to,
seriously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged to a living
creature, but was created with just these appearances; a make-believe,
a sham, a Barnum's-mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose
upon his intelligent children! And now people talk about geological
epochs and hundreds of millions of years in the planet's history
as calmly as if they were discussing the age of their deceased
great-grandmothers. Ten or a dozen years ago people said Sh! Sh! if you
ventured to meddle with any question supposed to involve a doubt of
the generally accepted Hebrew traditions. To-day such questions are
recognized as perfectly fair subjects for general conversation; not in
the basement story, perhaps, or among the rank and file of the curbstone
congregations, but among intelligent and educated persons. You may
preach about them in your pulpit, you may lecture about them, you may
talk about them with the first sensible-looking person you happen to
meet, you may write magazine articles about them, and the editor
need not expect to receive remonstrances from angry subscribers and
withdrawals of subscriptions, as he would have been sure to not a great
many years ago. Why, you may go to a tea-party where the clergyman's
wife shows her best cap and his daughters display their shining
ringlets, and you will hear the company discussing the Darwinian theory
of the origin of the human race as if it were as harmless a question as
that of the lineage of a spinster's lapdog. You may see a fine lady who
is as particular in her genuflections as any Buddhist or Mahometan saint
in his manifestations of reverence, who will talk over the anthropoid
ape, the supposed founder of the family to which we belong, and even go
back with you to the acephalous mollusk, first cousin to the clams and
mussels, whose rudimental spine was the hinted prophecy of humanity; all
this time never dreaming, apparently, that what she takes for a matter
of curious speculation involves the whole future of human progress and
destiny.
I can't help thinking that if we had talked as freely as we can and do
now in the days of the first boarder at this table,--I mean the one who
introduced it to the public,--it would have sounded a good deal more
aggressively than it does now.--The old Master got rather warm in
talking; perhaps the consciousness of having a number of listeners had
something to do with it.
--This whole business is an open question,--he said,--and there is no
use in saying, “Hush! don't talk about such things!” People do talk
about 'em everywhere; and if they don't talk about 'em they think about
'em, and that is worse,--if there is anything bad about such questions,
that is. If for the Fall of man, science comes to substitute the RISE
of man, sir, it means the utter disintegration of all the spiritual
pessimisms which have been like a spasm in the heart and a cramp in the
intellect of men for so many centuries. And yet who dares to say that
it is not a perfectly legitimate and proper question to be discussed,
without the slightest regard to the fears or the threats of Pope or
prelate?
Sir, I believe,--the Master rose from his chair as he spoke, and said in
a deep and solemn tone, but without any declamatory vehemence,--sir, I
believe that we are at this moment in what will be recognized not many
centuries hence as one of the late watches in the night of the dark
ages. There is a twilight ray, beyond question. We know something of the
universe, a very little, and, strangely enough, we know most of what is
farthest from us. We have weighed the planets and analyzed the flames of
the--sun and stars. We predict their movements as if they were machines
we ourselves had made and regulated. We know a good deal about the earth
on which we live. But the study of man has been so completely subjected
to our preconceived opinions, that we have got to begin all over again.
We have studied anthropology through theology; we have now to begin
the study of theology through anthropology. Until we have exhausted the
human element in every form of belief, and that can only be done by what
we may call comparative spiritual anatomy, we cannot begin to deal with
the alleged extra-human elements without blundering into all imaginable
puerilities. If you think for one moment that there is not a single
religion in the world which does not come to us through the medium of
a preexisting language; and if you remember that this language embodies
absolutely nothing but human conceptions and human passions, you will
see at once that every religion presupposes its own elements as already
existing in those to whom it is addressed. I once went to a church in
London and heard the famous Edward Irving preach, and heard some of
his congregation speak in the strange words characteristic of their
miraculous gift of tongues. I had a respect for the logical basis of
this singular phenomenon. I have always thought it was natural that
any celestial message should demand a language of its own, only to be
understood by divine illumination. All human words tend, of course, to
stop short in human meaning. And the more I hear the most sacred terms
employed, the more I am satisfied that they have entirely and radically
different meanings in the minds of those who use them. Yet they deal
with them as if they were as definite as mathematical quantities or
geometrical figures. What would become of arithmetic if the figure 2
meant three for one man and five for another and twenty for a third, and
all the other numerals were in the same way variable quantities? Mighty
intelligent correspondence business men would have with each other! But
how is this any worse than the difference of opinion which led a famous
clergyman to say to a brother theologian, “Oh, I see, my dear sir, your
God is my Devil.”
Man has been studied proudly, contemptuously, rather, from the point
of view supposed to be authoritatively settled. The self-sufficiency of
egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of
the worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellow-creatures given by
the dogmatists who have “gone back,” as the vulgar phrase is, on their
race, their own flesh and blood. Did you ever read what Mr. Bancroft
says about Calvin in his article on Jonathan Edwards?--and mighty well
said it is too, in my judgment. Let me remind you of it, whether you
have read it or not. “Setting himself up over against the privileged
classes, he, with a loftier pride than theirs, revealed the power of a
yet higher order of nobility, not of a registered ancestry of fifteen
generations, but one absolutely spotless in its escutcheon, preordained
in the council chamber of eternity.” I think you'll find I have got that
sentence right, word for word, and there 's a great deal more in it than
many good folks who call themselves after the reformer seem to be aware
of. The Pope put his foot on the neck of kings, but Calvin and his
cohort crushed the whole human race under their heels in the name of the
Lord of Hosts. Now, you see, the point that people don't understand
is the absolute and utter humility of science, in opposition to this
doctrinal self-sufficiency. I don't doubt this may sound a little
paradoxical at first, but I think you will find it is all right. You
remember the courtier and the monarch,--Louis the Fourteenth, wasn't
it?--never mind, give the poor fellows that live by setting you right a
chance. “What o'clock is it?” says the king. “Just whatever o'clock your
Majesty pleases,” says the courtier. I venture to say the monarch was a
great deal more humble than the follower, who pretended that his master
was superior to such trifling facts as the revolution of the planet. It
was the same thing, you remember, with King Canute and the tide on the
sea-shore. The king accepted the scientific fact of the tide's rising.
The loyal hangers-on, who believed in divine right, were too proud
of the company they found themselves in to make any such humiliating
admission. But there are people, and plenty of them, to-day, who will
dispute facts just as clear to those who have taken the pains to learn
what is known about them, as that of the tide's rising. They don't
like to admit these facts, because they throw doubt upon some of their
cherished opinions. We are getting on towards the last part of this
nineteenth century. What we have gained is not so much in positive
knowledge, though that is a good deal, as it is in the freedom of
discussion of every subject that comes within the range of observation
and inference. How long is it since Mrs. Piozzi wrote,--“Let me
hope that you will not pursue geology till it leads you into doubts
destructive of all comfort in this world and all happiness in the next”?
The Master paused and I remained silent, for I was thinking things I
could not say.
--It is well always to have a woman near by when one is talking on this
class of subjects. Whether there will be three or four women to one man
in heaven is a question which I must leave to those who talk as if they
knew all about the future condition of the race to answer. But very
certainly there is much more of hearty faith, much more of spiritual
life, among women than among men, in this world. They need faith to
support them more than men do, for they have a great deal less to call
them out of themselves, and it comes easier to them, for their habitual
state of dependence teaches them to trust in others. When they become
voters, if they ever do, it may be feared that the pews will lose what
the ward-rooms gain. Relax a woman's hold on man, and her knee-joints
will soon begin to stiffen. Self-assertion brings out many fine
qualities, but it does not promote devotional habits.
I remember some such thoughts as this were passing through my mind while
the Master was talking. I noticed that the Lady was listening to the
conversation with a look of more than usual interest. We men have the
talk mostly to ourselves at this table; the Master, as you have found
out, is fond of monologues, and I myself--well, I suppose I must own
to a certain love for the reverberated music of my own accents; at any
rate, the Master and I do most of the talking. But others help us do
the listening. I think I can show that they listen to some purpose. I am
going to surprise my reader with a letter which I received very shortly
after the conversation took place which I have just reported. It is of
course by a special license, such as belongs to the supreme prerogative
of an author, that I am enabled to present it to him. He need ask
no questions: it is not his affair how I obtained the right to give
publicity to a private communication. I have become somewhat more
intimately acquainted with the writer of it than in the earlier period
of my connection with this establishment, and I think I may say have
gained her confidence to a very considerable degree.
MY DEAR SIR: The conversations I have had with you, limited as they
have been, have convinced me that I am quite safe in addressing you with
freedom on a subject which interests me, and others more than myself. We
at our end of the table have been listening, more or less intelligently,
to the discussions going on between two or three of you gentlemen on
matters of solemn import to us all. This is nothing very new to me. I
have been used, from an early period of my life, to hear the discussion
of grave questions, both in politics and religion. I have seen gentlemen
at my father's table get as warm over a theological point of dispute
as in talking over their political differences. I rather think it has
always been very much so, in bad as well as in good company; for you
remember how Milton's fallen angels amused themselves with disputing on
“providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,” and it was the same thing
in that club Goldsmith writes so pleasantly about. Indeed, why should
not people very often come, in the course of conversation, to the
one subject which lies beneath all else about which our thoughts are
occupied? And what more natural than that one should be inquiring about
what another has accepted and ceased to have any doubts concerning?
It seems to me all right that at the proper time, in the proper place,
those who are less easily convinced than their neighbors should have
the fullest liberty of calling to account all the opinions which others
receive without question. Somebody must stand sentry at the outposts of
belief, and it is a sentry's business, I believe, to challenge every one
who comes near him, friend or foe.
I want you to understand fully that I am not one of those poor nervous
creatures who are frightened out of their wits when any question is
started that implies the disturbance of their old beliefs. I manage to
see some of the periodicals, and now and then dip a little way into
a new book which deals with these curious questions you were talking
about, and others like them. You know they find their way almost
everywhere. They do not worry me in the least. When I was a little girl,
they used to say that if you put a horsehair into a tub of water it
would turn into a snake in the course of a few days. That did not seem
to me so very much stranger than it was that an egg should turn into a
chicken. What can I say to that? Only that it is the Lord's doings, and
marvellous in my eyes; and if our philosophical friend should find some
little live creatures, or what seem to be live creatures, in any of his
messes, I should say as much, and no more. You do not think I would shut
up my Bible and Prayer-Book because there is one more thing I do not
understand in a world where I understand so very little of all the
wonders that surround me?
It may be very wrong to pay any attention to those speculations about
the origin of mankind which seem to conflict with the Sacred Record. But
perhaps there is some way of reconciling them, as there is of making the
seven days of creation harmonize with modern geology. At least, these
speculations are curious enough in themselves; and I have seen so
many good and handsome children come of parents who were anything
but virtuous and comely, that I can believe in almost any amount of
improvement taking place in a tribe of living beings, if time and
opportunity favor it. I have read in books of natural history that dogs
came originally from wolves. When I remember my little Flora, who, as I
used to think, could do everything but talk, it does not seem to me
that she was much nearer her savage ancestors than some of the horrid
cannibal wretches are to their neighbors the great apes.
You see that I am tolerably liberal in my habit of looking at all
these questions. We women drift along with the current of the times,
listening, in our quiet way, to the discussions going on round us in
books and in conversation, and shift the phrases in which we think and
talk with something of the same ease as that with which we change our
style of dress from year to year. I doubt if you of the other sex
know what an effect this habit of accommodating our tastes to changing
standards has upon us. Nothing is fixed in them, as you know; the very
law of fashion is change. I suspect we learn from our dressmakers to
shift the costume of our minds, and slip on the new fashions of thinking
all the more easily because we have been accustomed to new styles of
dressing every season.
It frightens me to see how much I have written without having yet said a
word of what I began this letter on purpose to say. I have taken so much
space in “defining my position,” to borrow the politicians' phrase, that
I begin to fear you will be out of patience before you come to the part
of my letter I care most about your reading.
What I want to say is this. When these matters are talked about before
persons of different ages and various shades of intelligence, I think
one ought to be very careful that his use of language does not injure
the sensibilities, perhaps blunt the reverential feelings, of those
who are listening to him. You of the sterner sex say that we women have
intuitions, but not logic, as our birthright. I shall not commit my sex
by conceding this to be true as a whole, but I will accept the first
half of it, and I will go so far as to say that we do not always care
to follow out a train of thought until it ends in a blind cul de sac, as
some of what are called the logical people are fond of doing.
Now I want to remind you that religion is not a matter of intellectual
luxury to those of us who are interested in it, but something very
different. It is our life, and more than our life; for that is measured
by pulse-beats, but our religious consciousness partakes of the
Infinite, towards which it is constantly yearning. It is very possible
that a hundred or five hundred years from now the forms of religious
belief may be so altered that we should hardly know them. But the sense
of dependence on Divine influence and the need of communion with the
unseen and eternal will be then just what they are now. It is not the
geologist's hammer, or the astronomer's telescope, or the naturalist's
microscope, that is going to take away the need of the human soul for
that Rock to rest upon which is higher than itself, that Star which
never sets, that all-pervading Presence which gives life to all the
least moving atoms of the immeasurable universe.
I have no fears for myself, and listen very quietly to all your debates.
I go from your philosophical discussions to the reading of Jeremy
Taylor's “Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying” without feeling that I have
unfitted myself in the least degree for its solemn reflections. And, as
I have mentioned his name, I cannot help saying that I do not believe
that good man himself would have ever shown the bitterness to those who
seem to be at variance with the received doctrines which one may see in
some of the newspapers that call themselves “religious.” I have kept
a few old books from my honored father's library, and among them is
another of his which I always thought had more true Christianity in its
title than there is in a good many whole volumes. I am going to take the
book down, or up,--for it is not a little one,--and write out the title,
which, I dare say, you remember, and very likely you have the book.
“Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, showing the Unreasonableness
of prescribing to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of persecuting
Different Opinions.”
Now, my dear sir, I am sure you believe that I want to be liberal and
reasonable, and not to act like those weak alarmists who, whenever the
silly sheep begin to skip as if something was after them, and huddle
together in their fright, are sure there must be a bear or a lion coming
to eat them up. But for all that, I want to beg you to handle some
of these points, which are so involved in the creed of a good many
well-intentioned persons that you cannot separate them from it without
picking their whole belief to pieces, with more thought for them than
you might think at first they were entitled to. I have no doubt you
gentlemen are as wise as serpents, and I want you to be as harmless as
doves.
The Young Girl who sits by me has, I know, strong religious instincts.
Instead of setting her out to ask all sorts of questions, I would
rather, if I had my way, encourage her to form a habit of attending to
religious duties, and make the most of the simple faith in which she was
bred. I think there are a good many questions young persons may safely
postpone to a more convenient season; and as this young creature is
overworked, I hate to have her excited by the fever of doubt which it
cannot be denied is largely prevailing in our time.
I know you must have looked on our other young friend, who has devoted
himself to the sublimest of the sciences, with as much interest as I do.
When I was a little girl I used to write out a line of Young's as a copy
in my writing-book,
“An undevout astronomer is mad”;
but I do not now feel quite so sure that the contemplation of all
the multitude of remote worlds does not tend to weaken the idea of a
personal Deity. It is not so much that nebular theory which worries me,
when I think about this subject, as a kind of bewilderment when I try to
conceive of a consciousness filling all those frightful blanks of space
they talk about. I sometimes doubt whether that young man worships
anything but the stars. They tell me that many young students of science
like him never see the inside of a church. I cannot help wishing they
did. It humanizes people, quite apart from any higher influence it
exerts upon them. One reason, perhaps, why they do not care to go to
places of worship is that they are liable to hear the questions they
know something about handled in sermons by those who know very much less
about them. And so they lose a great deal. Almost every human being,
however vague his notions of the Power addressed, is capable of being
lifted and solemnized by the exercise of public prayer. When I was a
young girl we travelled in Europe, and I visited Ferney with my parents;
and I remember we all stopped before a chapel, and I read upon its
front, I knew Latin enough to understand it, I am pleased to say,--Deo
erexit Voltaire. I never forgot it; and knowing what a sad scoffer he
was at most sacred things, I could not but be impressed with the fact
that even he was not satisfied with himself, until he had shown his
devotion in a public and lasting form.
We all want religion sooner or later. I am afraid there are some who
have no natural turn for it, as there are persons without an ear for
music, to which, if I remember right, I heard one of you comparing what
you called religious genius. But sorrow and misery bring even these to
know what it means, in a great many instances. May I not say to you, my
friend, that I am one who has learned the secret of the inner life by
the discipline of trials in the life of outward circumstance? I can
remember the time when I thought more about the shade of color in a
ribbon, whether it matched my complexion or not, than I did about my
spiritual interests in this world or the next. It was needful that
I should learn the meaning of that text, “Whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth.”
Since I have been taught in the school of trial I have felt, as I never
could before, how precious an inheritance is the smallest patrimony
of faith. When everything seemed gone from me, I found I had still one
possession. The bruised reed that I had never leaned on became my staff.
The smoking flax which had been a worry to my eyes burst into flame, and
I lighted the taper at it which has since guided all my footsteps. And I
am but one of the thousands who have had the same experience. They have
been through the depths of affliction, and know the needs of the human
soul. It will find its God in the unseen,--Father, Saviour, Divine
Spirit, Virgin Mother, it must and will breathe its longings and its
griefs into the heart of a Being capable of understanding all its
necessities and sympathizing with all its woes.
I am jealous, yes, I own I am jealous of any word, spoken or written,
that would tend to impair that birthright of reverence which becomes for
so many in after years the basis of a deeper religious sentiment. And
yet, as I have said, I cannot and will not shut my eyes to the problems
which may seriously affect our modes of conceiving the eternal truths
on which, and by which, our souls must live. What a fearful time is this
into which we poor sensitive and timid creatures are born! I suppose the
life of every century has more or less special resemblance to that of
some particular Apostle. I cannot help thinking this century has Thomas
for its model. How do you suppose the other Apostles felt when that
experimental philosopher explored the wounds of the Being who to them
was divine with his inquisitive forefinger? In our time that finger has
multiplied itself into ten thousand thousand implements of research,
challenging all mysteries, weighing the world as in a balance, and
sifting through its prisms and spectroscopes the light that comes from
the throne of the Eternal.
Pity us, dear Lord, pity us! The peace in believing which belonged to
other ages is not for us. Again Thy wounds are opened that we may know
whether it is the blood of one like ourselves which flows from them, or
whether it is a Divinity that is bleeding for His creatures. Wilt Thou
not take the doubt of Thy children whom the time commands to try
all things in the place of the unquestioning faith of earlier and
simpler-hearted generations? We too have need of Thee. Thy martyrs in
other ages were cast into the flames, but no fire could touch their
immortal and indestructible faith. We sit in safety and in peace, so
far as these poor bodies are concerned; but our cherished beliefs, the
hopes, the trust that stayed the hearts of those we loved who have
gone before us, are cast into the fiery furnace of an age which is fast
turning to dross the certainties and the sanctities once prized as our
most precious inheritance. You will understand me, my dear sir, and
all my solicitudes and apprehensions. Had I never been assailed by the
questions that meet all thinking persons in our time, I might not have
thought so anxiously about the risk of perplexing others. I know as
well as you must that there are many articles of belief clinging to the
skirts of our time which are the bequests of the ages of ignorance that
God winked at. But for all that I would train a child in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord, according to the simplest and best creed I could
disentangle from those barbarisms, and I would in every way try to keep
up in young persons that standard of reverence for all sacred subjects
which may, without any violent transition, grow and ripen into the
devotion of later years. Believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
I have thought a good deal about this letter and the writer of it
lately. She seemed at first removed to a distance from all of us,
but here I find myself in somewhat near relations with her. What has
surprised me more than that, however, is to find that she is becoming so
much acquainted with the Register of Deeds. Of all persons in the world,
I should least have thought of him as like to be interested in her, and
still less, if possible, of her fancying him. I can only say they have
been in pretty close conversation several times of late, and, if I dared
to think it of so very calm and dignified a personage, I should say that
her color was a little heightened after one or more of these interviews.
No! that would be too absurd! But I begin to think nothing is absurd
in the matter of the relations of the two sexes; and if this high-bred
woman fancies the attentions of a piece of human machinery like this
elderly individual, it is none of my business.
I have been at work on some more of the Young Astronomer's lines. I
find less occasion for meddling with them as he grows more used to
versification. I think I could analyze the processes going on in his
mind, and the conflict of instincts which he cannot in the nature of
things understand. But it is as well to give the reader a chance to find
out for himself what is going on in the young man's heart and intellect.