_To Henry Colden_
Philadelphia, November 18.
How little is the equanimity or patience that nature has allotted me!
Thy entrance now would find me quite peevish. Yet I do not fear thy
entrance. Always anxious as I am to be amiable in your eyes, I am at no
pains to conceal from you that impatience which now vexes my soul, because
it is your absence that occasions it.
I sat alone on the sofa below, for a whole hour. Not once was the bell
rung; not once did my fluttering heart answer to footsteps in the passage.
I had no need to start up at the opening of the parlour-door, and to
greet, as distinctly as the joyous tumult of my bosom would suffer me, the
much-loved, long-expected visitant.
Yet, deceived by my fond heart into momentary forgetfulness of the
interval of a hundred miles that lies between us, more than once I cast a
glance behind me, and started, as if the hoped-for peal had actually been
rung.
Tired, at length, of my solitude, where I had enjoyed your company so
often, I covered up the coals and withdrew to my chamber. "And here," said
I, "though I cannot talk to him, yet I can write."
But first, I read over again this cruel letter of my mother. I weighed
all the contents, and especially those heavy charges against you.
How does it fall out that the same object is viewed by two observers
with such opposite sensations? That what one hates, the other should dote
upon?--two of the same sex; one cherished from infancy, reared, modelled,
taught to think, feel, and even to speak, by the other: acting till now,
and even now acting in all respects but one, in inviolable harmony; that
two such should jar and thwart each other, in a point, too, in respect to
which the whole tendency and scope of the daughter's education was to
produce a fellow-feeling with the mother. How hard to be accounted for!
how deeply to be rued!
I sometimes catch myself trembling with solicitude lest I should have
erred. Am I not betrayed by passion? can I claim the respect due to that
discernment which I once boasted?
I cannot blame my mother. She acts and determines, as I sometimes
believe, without the benefits of my knowledge. Did she know as much as I
know, surely she would think as I do.
In general, this conclusion seems to be just; but there are moments
when doubts insinuate themselves. I cannot help remembering the time when
I reasoned like my mother; when the belief of a Christian seemed essential
to every human excellence. All qualities, without that belief, were not to
be despised as useless, but to be abhorred as pernicious. There would be
no virtue, no merit, divorced from religion. In proportion to the
speciousness of his qualities was he to be dreaded. The fruit, whatever
form it should assume, was nothing within but bane, and was to be detested
and shunned in proportion as the form was fair and its promises
delicious.
I seldom trusted myself to inquire how it was my duty to act towards
one whom I loved, but who was destitute of this grace; for of such moment
was the question to me, that I imagined the decision would necessarily
precede all others. I could not love till I had investigated this point,
and no force could oblige me to hold communion with a soul whom this
defect despoiled of all beauty and devoted to perdition.
But what now is the change that time and passion have wrought! I have
found a man without religion. What I supposed impossible has happened. I
love the man. I cannot give him up. The mist that is before my eyes does
not change what was once vice into virtue. I do not cease to regard
unbelief as the blackest stain, as the most deplorable calamity that can
befall a human creature; but still I _love_ the man, and that fills
me with unconquerable zeal to rescue him from this calamity.
But my mother interferes. She reminds me of the horror which I once
entertained for men of your tenets. She enjoins me to hate you, or to
abhor myself for loving one worthy of nothing but hatred.
I cannot do either. My heart is still yours, and it is a voluntary
captive. I would not free it from its thraldom, if I could. Neither do I
think its captivity dishonours it. Time, therefore, has wrought some
change. I can now discover some merit, something to revere and to love,
even in a man without religion. I find my whole soul penetrated with zeal
for his welfare. There is no scheme which I muse upon with half the
constancy or pleasure, as that of curing his errors; and I am confident of
curing them.
"Ah, Jane," says my mother; "rash and presumptuous girl, what a signal
punishment hangs over thee! Thou wilt trust thyself within the toils of
the grand deceiver. Thou wilt enter the list with his subtleties. Vain and
arrogant, thou fearest not thy own weakness. Thou wilt stake thy eternal
lot upon thy triumph in argument against one who, in spite of all his
candour and humility, has his pride and his passions engaged on the side
of his opinions.
"Subtle wretch!" does she exclaim; "accomplished villain! How nicely
does he select, how adroitly manage, his tools! He will oppose, only to
yield more gracefully. He will argue, only that the rash simpleton may the
more congratulate herself upon her seeming victory! How easy is the verbal
assent,--the equivocating accent,--the hesitating air! These he will
assume whenever it is convenient to lull your fears and gratify your
vanity; and nothing but the uniformity of his conduct, his continuance in
the same ignominious and criminal path, will open your eyes, and show you
that only grace from above can reach his obdurate heart, or dart a ray
into his benighted faculties."
Will you be surprised that I shudder when my mother urges me in this
strain, with her customary energy? Always wont to be obsequious to the
very turn of her eye, and to make her will not only the regulator of my
actions, but the criterion of my understanding, it is impossible not to
hesitate, to review all that has passed between us, and reconsider anew
the motives that have made me act as I have acted.
Yet the review always confirms me in my first opinion. You err, but are
not obstinate in error. If your opinions be adverse to religion, your
affections are not wholly estranged from it. Your understanding dissents,
but your heart is not yet persuaded to refuse. You have powers,
irresistible in whatever direction they are bent; capable of giving the
highest degree of misery or happiness to yourself and to others. At
present they are misdirected or inactive; they are either pernicious or
useless.
How can I, who have had ample opportunities of knowing you, stand by
with indifference while such is your state? I love you, it is true. All
your felicity and all your woe become mine. I have a selfish interest in
your welfare. I cannot bear the thought of passing through this world, or
of entering any future world, without you. My heart has tried in vain to
create a separate interest, to draw consolation from a different source.
Hence indifference to your welfare is impossible. But would not
indifference, even if no extraordinary tie subsisted between us, be
criminal? What becomes of our obligation to do good to others, if we do
not exert ourselves, when all the means are in our power, to confer the
most valuable of all benefits, to remove the greatest of all ills?
Of what stuff must that heart be made which can behold, unmoved, genius
and worth, destitute of the joys and energies of religion; wandering in a
maze of passions and doubts; devoured by fantastic repinings and vague
regrets; drearily conscious of wanting a foundation whereon to repose, a
guide in whom to trust? What heart can gaze at such a spectacle without
unspeakable compassion?
Not to have our pity and our zeal awakened seems to me to argue the
utmost depravity of heart. No stronger proof can be given that we
ourselves are destitute of true religion. The faith or the practice must
be totally wanting. We may talk devoutly; we may hie, in due season, to
the house of prayer; while there, we may put on solemn visages and mutter
holy names. We may abstain from profane amusements or unauthorized words;
we may shun, as infections, the company of unbelievers. We may study
homilies and creeds; but all this, without _rational_ activity for
others' good, is not religion. I see, in all this, nothing that I am
accustomed to call by that name.
I see nothing but a narrow selfishness; sentiments of fear degrading to
the Deity; a bigotry that contracts the view, that freezes the heart, that
shuts up the avenues to benevolent and generous feeling. This buckram
stiffness does not suit me. Out upon such monastic parade! I will have
none of it.
But then, it seems, there is danger to ourselves from such attempts. In
trying to save another from drowning, may we not sometimes be drawn in
ourselves? Are we not taught to deprecate, not only evil, but temptation
to evil?
What madness, to trust our convictions, in a point of such immense
importance, to the contest of argument with one of superior subtlety and
knowledge! Is there not presumption in such a trust?
Excellent advice is this to the mass of women; to those to whom habit
or childish fear or parental authority has given their faith; who never
doubted or inquired or reasoned for themselves. How easily is such a
fabric to be overturned! It can only stand by being never blown upon. The
least breath disperses it in air; the first tide washes it away.
Now, I entertain no reverence for such a bubble. In some sense, the
religion of the timorous and uninquisitive is true. In another sense it is
false. Considering the proofs on which it reposes, it is false, since it
merely originates in deference to the opinions of others, wrought into
belief by means of habit. It is on a level, as to the proof which supports
it, with the wildest dreams of savage superstition, or the fumes of a
dervise's fanaticism.
As to me, I was once just such a pretty fool in this respect as the
rest of my sex. I was easily taught to regard religion not only as the
safeguard of every virtue, but even as the test of a good understanding.
The name of _infidel_ was never mentioned but with abhorrence or
contempt. None but a profligate, a sensualist, a ruffian, could
disbelieve. Unbelief was a mere suggestion of the grand deceiver, to
palliate or reconcile us to the unlimited indulgence of our appetites and
the breach of every moral duty. Hence it was never steadfast or sincere.
An adverse fortune or a death-bed usually put an end to the illusion.
Thus I grew up, never beset by any doubts, never venturing on inquiry.
My knowledge of you put an end to this state of superstitious ignorance.
In you I found, not one that disbelieved, but one that doubted. In all
your demeanour there was simplicity and frankness. You concealed not your
sentiments; you obtruded them not upon my hearing. When called upon to
state the history of your opinions, it was candidly detailed; with no view
of gaining my concurrence, but merely to gratify my curiosity.
From my remonstrances you never averted your ear. Every proof of an
unprejudiced attention, and even of a bias favourable to my opinions, was
manifest. Your own experience had half converted you already. Your good
sense was for a time the sport of a specious theory. You became the ardent
and bold champion of what you deemed truth. But a closer and longer view
insensibly detected flaws and discords where all had formerly been glossy
smoothness and ravishing harmony. Diffidence and caution, worthy of your
youth and inexperience, had resumed their place; and those errors of which
your own experience of their consequences had furnished the antidote,
which your own reflections had partly divested of illusion, had only been
propitious to your advancement in true wisdom.
What had I to fear from such an adversary? What might I not hope from
perseverance? What expect but new clearness to my own convictions, new and
more accurate views of my powers and habits?
In order to benefit you, I was obliged to scrutinize the foundation of
my own principles. I found nothing but a void. I was astonished and
alarmed; and instantly set myself to the business of inquiry. How could I
hope to work on your convictions without a suitable foundation for my
own?
And see now, my friend, the blindness of our judgments. I, who am
imagined to incur such formidable perils from intercourse with you, am, in
truth, indebted to you alone for all my piety,--all of it that is
permanent and rational. Without those apprehensions which your example
inspired, without that zeal for your conversion which my attachment to you
has produced, what would now have been my claims to religious
knowledge?
Had I never extorted from you your doubts, and the occasion of these
doubts; had I never known the most powerful objections to religion from
your lips, I should have been no less ignorant of the topics and arguments
favourable to it.
And I think I may venture to ascribe to myself no less a progress in
candour than in knowledge. My belief is stronger than it ever was, but I
no longer hold in scorn or abhorrence those who differ from me. I perceive
the speciousness of those fallacies by which they are deluded. I find it
possible for men to disbelieve and yet retain their claims to our
reverence, our affection, and especially our good offices.
Those whom I once thought were only to be hated and shunned, I now find
worthy of compassionate efforts for their good. Those whom I once imagined
sunk beneath the reach of all succour, and to merit scarcely the tribute
of a sigh for their lost estate, now appear to be easily raised to
tranquillity and virtue, and to have irresistible claims to our help.
In no respect has your company made me a worse--in every respect it has
made me a better--woman. Not only my piety has become more rational and
fervent, but a new spring has been imparted to my languishing curiosity.
To find a soul to whom my improvement will give delight; eager to direct
and assist my inquiries; delicately liberal no less of censure when
merited than of praise where praise is due; entering, almost without the
help of language from me, into my inmost thoughts; assisting me, if I may
so speak, to comprehend myself; and raising to a steadfast and bright
flame the spark that my wayward fancy, left to itself, would have
instantaneously emitted and lost.--
But why do I again attempt this impossible theme? While reflecting on
my debt to thee, my heart becomes too big for its mansion. My hand
falters, and the characters it traces run into an illegible scrawl.
My tongue only is fitted for such an office; and Heaven grant that you
may speedily return to me, and put an end to a solitude which every hour
makes more irksome!
Adieu.