The Lord Answered Job
Out Of A Whirlwind.
Mr. Southard was perfectly confident in his expectation of being
able to convince Miss Hamilton of her mistake. He knew her well
enough to be sure that she would fearlessly acknowledge her error
as soon as it should be made plain to her; and he did not doubt
that the power to produce that conviction on her mind would be
given him.
He would not allow that first twinge of wounded personal pride
and dignity of office, with which he had seen how light she held
his authority in matters of religion, to stand in the way of his
endeavors. The first dignity of his office was to perform its
duties. Exacting respect was secondary.
Mr. Southard had one confident: his journal. The day the books
were left on his table he wrote in it: "Tonight I am to read
Milner's _End of Controversy_. O my God! may I read it by
the light of thy Gospel! May a ray of heavenly truth fall on each
page, expose its hidden falsehood, and teach me how best to prove
that falsehood to this stray lamb who has been lured from thy
fold into the den of the wolf."
Two or three days passed, the book was read, and read again; but
the refutation was not ready. Mr. Southard was too honest and too
manly to think that personal abuse was a proper answer to
theological argument. He remembered that when St. Michael set his
foot upon the neck of Satan, and chained him to the rock, he did
not use infernal weapons, or walk in loathsome ways; but his
sword was tempered in heaven, and there was no mire upon his
sandals.
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"When I fight for the Lord," the minister said, "I will use the
weapons of the Lord."
He laid aside the first book, and took another. Again a few days,
and yet he was not prepared to undermine his adversary.
"I am astonished at the ingenuity and subtlety of these writers,"
was the record he made in those days. "All the resources of minds
richly dowered by nature, highly cultivated by education, and
inspired by some strange infatuation for what they call the
church, have been brought to bear upon this question of polemics.
How skilfully they mingle truth with falsehood! What beautiful,
what touching, what sublime sentiments they drop in places where
one would not go save so lured! It reminds me of my boyish days,
when the scarlet blossom of a cardinal-flower would entice me
down steep banks, and into dangerous waters, or some bloomy patch
of ripe berries would draw my feet into a treacherous swamp. I
begin to perceive the attraction which the Roman Church exercises
on the unwary."
It will be perceived that Mr. Southard had the rare courtesy not
to use the word "Romish." He was so much a gentleman that he
could not call nicknames, not even in theological controversy.
But as his days of study lengthened into weeks, a change came
over him. The obstacles in his way made him nervous, feverish,
and, it must be owned, rather ill-tempered. His political
opposition to Mr. Lewis was expressed with unusual asperity. He
was very haughty with Miss Hamilton. He entirely absented himself
from luncheon, and he sometimes dined out, rather than sit beside
that smiling papist who was doubtless triumphing over him in her
heart, taking his silence for defeat. He groaned as he heard her
light step pass his door every morning on her way to early mass.
That step was his _réveil_. Should he, the Gospel watchman,
sleep while the foe was awake and at work?
"Why cannot truth inspire as much ardor as error awakens?" he
wrote one morning. "Why cannot we bring back the old days of
faith, when God was to man a power, and not a name; when the
tables of the law were stone to the touch; when he who made
flood, and fire, and death was more terrible than flood, fire, or
death? The author of _Ecce Homo_ is right; no virtue is safe
that is not enthusiastic. A cold religion is a worthless
religion. O Lord! have mercy on Zion; for it is time to have
mercy on it."
But, angry as he was with her every morning, when Mr. Southard
met Margaret coming in again from mass, her face smiling, her
cheeks red from the cold, he could but forgive her. It is hard to
frown on a bright face, happiness looks so much like goodness.
Mr. Granger took notice of these early walks, Mr. Lewis
alternately scowled upon and laughed at them. Mrs. Lewis and
Aurelia exclaimed, How dared she go out alone before light!
The wicked people, if there were any, were all asleep, Miss
Hamilton said, sitting down to breakfast with a most unromantic
appetite, and a general preponderance of rose-color and sparkle
in her countenance. At six o'clock on winter mornings no one was
abroad but papists and policemen. It was the safest hour of the
twenty-four.
"My good angel and I just go about our business, and nobody
molests us," she said with a spice of mischief; for the mention
of anything peculiarly Catholic usually had the effect of
producing a blank silence, and a general elongation of visage.
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"But such a magnificent spectacle as I saw this morning! I came
home round the Common. The sleet-storm of last evening had left
all the trees crusted with ice to the very tips of their twigs,
and set an ice-mitre on every individual arrow-head of the iron
fence. There were the ghosts of all the bishops from Peter down.
There wasn't any sky, but only a vast crystalline distance. I
took my stand on the Beacon and Charles street corner. Every
other person who was so happy as to be out looked also. Then the
sun came up. Park street steeple caught fire at the ball, and
flamed all the way down. There was a glimmer on the topmost
twigs, then the trees all over the Common were in an instant
transfigured into flashing diamonds. The malls were enough to put
your eyes out--nothing but glitter from end to end. It was a
grand display for the frost-people. The trees will talk about it
all next summer."
The winter slipped away; and Mr. Southard had not fulfilled his
promise to Miss Hamilton. Neither had he relinquished his
studies. Shut up with his books hour after hour and day after
day, in silence and solitude, he scarcely knew how the world
fared without. For him the war had suddenly dwindled. Through
long and weary vigils that wore his face thin and his eyes
hollow, he studied, and thought, and prayed, not the humble
petition of one who places himself before God, and passively
awaits an inspiration, but the impassioned and fiery petition of
one who will not doubt the justice of his cause, and will not be
denied. Then, leaning from the window to cool his heated eyes and
head in the fresh early dawning, a peace that was half exhaustion
would settle upon him. Sleep came pitifully in those hours, and
pressed on the throbbing brain too much expanded by thought, and
for a little while soothed the tormented heart.
His journal bore traces of the conflict.
"I will resist the seduction! This is my time of trial; but I
will conquer! In the name of God, I will yet confound the doctors
of the Roman Church. O God! who didst nerve the arm of David
against Goliath, strengthen thou me!"
At every step he was baffled. Catching at what appeared a mere
theological weed, thinking to fling it out of his way, he found
it rooted like an oak. Approaching dogmas with the expectation of
cutting them down like men of straw, he was confronted by mailed
giants.
He found himself among crowds and clouds of Catholic
saints--shadows, he called them--that would fly from his path
when he should hold up the torch of truth. But, looking in that
light, he saw steadfast eyes, and shining foreheads, and
palm-branches that brushed his shrinking, empty hands. And out
from among them, with a look of gentle humility that smote him
like a blow, and with a tremulous radiance gathering about her
pure forehead, came one whom he had frowned upon, and striven to
discrown. What was she saying? "All nations shall call me
blessed!" Not great, not glorious, not even lovely, but
_blessed_!
"Well--she--was blessed," admitted the minister.
The next moment he started out of his chair, muttered some kind
of exorcism, caught his hat, and went out for a walk. Though it
was mid-April, a north wind was blowing thank heaven for that!
Nothing murky about the north wind.
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It would soon blow away all these pestilential vapors that came
up from the sun-steeped lowlands of his soul; pagan places where,
though his iconoclastic will had again and again gone about
breaking images, no sooner did it rest than there they were
again, Bacchus, and Hebe, and Diana, and the rest. Or from yet
more dangerous because more deceptive regions, wide, bright
solitudes of the soul, arid and dazzling, where the unobstructed
sky seemed to lean upon the earth--the region of mirages, of New
Jerusalems, that shone and crumbled--of sacred-seeming streams
that fled from thirsty lips--of cool shadows that never were
reached.
In one of these impetuous walks, Mr. Southard came across an old
minister, and went into his study with him, and told him
something of his difficulties. He was too well aware of his own
excitement to venture on a full explanation. Moreover, there was
something soothing and silencing in the look of this man, in his
tranquil, rather sad expression, his noble face, and snowy hair.
The old doctor leaned back in his chair, and calmly listened
while his younger brother spoke, smiling indulgently now and then
at some vivid turn of expression, some flash of the eyes, some
impatient gesture.
Elderly ministers were always pleased with Mr. Southard, who
would ask advice and instruction of them with a docility that was
almost childlike. Such respect was very pleasant to those who
seemed to have fallen upon evil days, who saw the prestige of the
ministry departing, to whom boys had ceased to take off their
caps, to whom even women did not look up as of yore.
"My dear brother," said the doctor gently when the other had
ceased speaking, "you have made a mistake in attempting this
work. I tell you frankly, we can never argue down the Catholic
Church. All the old theologians know that, and avoid the contest.
For perfect consistency with itself, and for wonderful complexity
yet harmony of structure, the world has not seen, and will not
again see its equal. It is the masterwork of the arch-enemy."
"So much the more reason why we should attack it with all our
might!" exclaimed the other.
"No," replied the doctor, "That does not follow. There are
dangers which must be shunned, not met; and this is one. As with
wine, so with Romanism, 'touch not, taste not, handle not!'"
"That might be said to the laity," Mr. Southard persisted. "But
for us who teach theology, we ought to search, we ought to
examine. It is essential that we know the weapons of our
adversary in order to destroy them."
"Truth has many phases, and so has belief," was the quiet reply.
"We begin by believing that the doctrines we hold are the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that everything
else is unmitigated falsehood. But after a while, according to
the degree of candor of which we are capable, we begin to admit
that every religion on earth has something reasonable to say for
itself. There is a grain of good in Mohammedanism, in Brahminism,
in Buddhism. We are now credibly assured that the old story of
people throwing themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut is a
myth. Hindu converts say that there were sometimes accidents at
these religious celebrations, on account of the crowd, as we have
accidents on the fourth of July; but that Juggernaut was a
beneficent deity who took no pleasure in human pain, and whose
attributes were a dim reflection of Christianity.
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I used to tell that story in perfect good faith whenever a
collection was wanted for the missionaries. I don't tell it now.
At last we learn to choose what seems to us best, to present its
advantages to others, but not to insist that all shall agree with
us under pain of eternal loss. When I hear a man crying out
violently against the purely religious opinions of others, I
always set him down as a man of narrow heart and narrower head.
The principal reason for my well-known hostility to Catholicism
is a political one.
"The fact is, brother, God's light falling on the mind of man, is
like sunlight falling on a prism. It is no longer the pure white,
but is shattered into colors which each one catches according to
his humor. We ministers are not like Moses coming from the
mountain with the whole law in his two hands, and a dazzling face
to testify for him that he had been with God, he alone. I wish we
were, brother! I wish we were!"
"But faith," exclaimed the other, "is there no faith?"
"We believe in the essentials; and they are few."
"How shall we prove them?"
"As the Catholic Church proves them. She holds the whole truth
tangled in the midst of her errors, like a fly in a spider's
web."
Mr. Southard sat a moment, looking steadily, almost sternly, at
his companion.
"Then you and I have no mission," he said. "We are not divinely
called."
"Whithersoever a man goes, there is he called," said the doctor,
sighing faintly. "We among the rest. We have a mission, too, and
a noble one. We make people keep the Sabbath, which, without us,
would fall into disuse; we remind them of their duties; we check
immorality; we keep before the eyes of worldlings the fact that
there is another world than this. In short, we spend our breath
in keeping alive the sacred fire on the desecrated altar of the
human soul. Is that nothing?"
In speaking, the doctor lifted his head, and drew up his stately
form. His voice trembled with feeling, and his eyes were full of
indignant tears. His look was proud, almost defiant; yet seemed
directed less against his companion, than combating some voice in
his own soul. All the enthusiastic dreams of his youth, though
they had long since been subdued, as he thought, by common sense
and necessity, stirred in their graves at sound of the imperious
questioning, at sight of the clear, searching eyes of this young
visionary who fancied that in the troubled spirit of man the full
orb of truth was to be reflected unblurred.
"In short," Mr. Southard said, rising to go, "you believe that
the spirit of evil can propose a problem which the Holy Spirit
cannot solve."
"Not so!" was the reply; "but the spirit of evil may propose a
problem which the Holy Spirit may not choose to solve for us till
the end of time."