"Is it Apostolic Christianity to declare that infants should not be
baptized?"
"It is!" The reply came like a flash of lightning.
"And those who teach to the contrary violate the word of God?"
"They do!"
"Is it Apostolic Christianity to affirm that only immersion is
Christian baptism?"
"It is!"
"And those who use any other form violate the word of God?"
"They do!"
"Is it Apostolic Christianity to celebrate the Lord's Supper once every
seven days?"
"It is!"
"And all who observe a different custom violate the word of God?"
"They do!"
"Is it Apostolic Christianity to have no such officer in the church as
an Episcopal bishop?"
"It is!"
"The office of Bishop, then, is a violation of Apostolic Christianity?"
"It is!"
"Is it Apostolic Christianity to make every congregation, no matter how
small or influenced by passion, an absolute court of trial and
punishment of his members?"
"It is!"
"To give every such body control over the religious standing of its
members, so it may turn them out into the world, banish them from the
church of Christ forever, if it sees fit?"
"It is!"
"And those who frame any other system of church government violate
the--"
"They do!"
"Is it Apostolic Christianity to teach that faith precedes repentance?"
"It is!"
"Those who teach that sorrow for sin is itself the great reason why we
believe in Christ--do they violate--?"
"They do!"
"Is it Apostolic Christianity to turn people out of the church for
dancing?"
"It is!"
"The use of an organ in worship--is that a violation of Apostolic--?"
"It is!"
"Is it Apostolic Christianity to require that the believer in it shall
likewise believe everything in the old Bible?"
"It is."
"Did Christ and the Apostles themselves teach that everything contained
in what we call the old Bible must be believed?"
"They did!"
The pastor was grasping the arms of his chair, his body bent toward the
lad, his head thrown back, his face livid with sacred rage. He was a
good man, tried and true: God-fearing, God-serving. No fault lay in him
unless it may be imputed for unrighteousness that he was a stanch,
trenchant sectary in his place and generation. As he sat there in the
basement study of his church, his pulpit of authority and his baptismal
pool of regeneration directly over his head, all round him in the city
the solid hundreds of his followers, he forgot himself as a man and a
minister and remembered only that as a servant of the Most High he was
being interrogated and dishonored. His soul shook and thundered within
him to repel these attacks upon his Lord and Master. As those
unexpected random questions had poured in upon him thick and fast, all
emerging, as it seemed to him, like disembodied evil spirits from the
black pit of Satan and the damned, it was joy to him to deal to each
that same straight, God-directed spear-thrust of a reply--killing them
as they rose. His soul exulted in that blessed carnage.
But the questions ceased. They had hurried out as though there were a
myriad pressing behind--a few issuing bees of an aroused swarm. But
they ceased. The pastor leaned back in his chair and drew a quivering
breath through his white lips.
"Ask some more!"
On his side, the lad had lost divine passion as the pastor had gained
it. His interest waned while the pastor's waxed. His last questions
were put so falteringly, almost so inaudibly, that the pastor might
well believe his questioner beaten, brought back to modesty and
silence. To a deeper-seeing eye, however, the truth would have been
plain that the lad was not seeing his pastor at all, but seeing THROUGH
him into his own future: into his life, his great chosen life-work. His
young feet had come in their travels nigh to the limits of his Promised
Land: he was looking over into it.
"Ask some more! The last of them! Out with them ALL! Make an end of
this now and here!"
The lad reached for his hat, which he had laid on the floor, and stood
up. He was as pale as the dead.
"I shall never be able to preach Apostolic Christianity," he said, and
turned to the door.
But reaching it, he wheeled and came back.
"I am in trouble!" he cried, sitting down again. "I don't know what to
believe. I don't know what I do believe. My God!" he cried again,
burying his face in his hands. "I believe I am beginning to doubt the
Bible. Great God, what am I coming to! what is my life coming to! ME
doubt the Bible!". . .
The interview of that day was one of the signs of two storms which were
approaching: one appointed to reach the University, one to reach the
lad.
The storm now gathering in many quarters and destined in a few years to
burst upon the University was like its other storms that had gone
before: only, this last one left it a ruin which will stay a ruin.
That oldest, best passion of the Kentucky people for the establishment
in their own land of a broad institution of learning for their own
sons, though revived in David's time on a greater scale than ever
before, was not to be realized. The new University, bearing the name of
the commonwealth and opening at the close of the Civil War as a sign of
the new peace of the new nation, having begun so fairly and risen in a
few years to fourth or fifth place in patronage among all those in the
land, was already entering upon its decline. The reasons of this were
the same that had successively ruined each of its predecessors: the
same old sectarian quarrels, enmities, revenges; the same old political
oppositions and hatreds; the same personal ambitions, jealousies,
strifes.
Away back in 1780, while every man, woman, and child in the western
wilderness ness was in dire struggle for life itself, those far-seeing
people had induced the General Assembly of Virginia to confiscate and
sell in Kentucky the lands of British Tories, to found a public
seminary for Kentucky boys--not a sectarian school. These same
broad-minded pioneers had later persuaded her to give twenty thousand
acres of her land to the same cause and to exempt officers and students
of the institution from military service. Still later, intent upon this
great work, they had induced Virginia to take from her own beloved
William and Mary one-sixth of all surveyors' fees in the district and
contribute them. The early Kentuckians, for their part, planned and
sold out a lottery--to help along the incorruptible work. For such an
institution Washington and Adams and Aaron Burr and Thomas Marshall and
many another opened their purses. For it thousands and thousands of
dollars were raised among friends scattered throughout the Atlantic
states, these responding to a petition addressed to all religious
sects, to all political parties. A library and philosophical apparatus
were wagoned over the Alleghanies. A committee was sent to England to
choose further equipments. When Kentucky came to have a legislature of
its own, it decreed that each of the counties in the state should
receive six thousand acres of land wherewith to start a seminary; and
that all these county seminaries were to train students for this
long-dreamed-of central institution. That they might not be sent
away--to the North or to Europe. When, at the end of the Civil War, a
fresh attempt (and the last) was made to found in reality and in
perpetuity a home institution to be as good as the best in the
republic, the people rallied as though they had never known defeat. The
idea resounded like a great trumpet throughout the land. Individual,
legislative, congressional aid--all were poured out lavishly for that
one devoted cause.
Sad chapter in the history of the Kentuckians! Perhaps the saddest
among the many sad ones.
For such an institution must in time have taught what all its
court-houses and all its pulpits--laws human and divine--have not been
able to teach: it must have taught the noble commonwealth to cease
murdering. Standing there in the heart of the people's land, it must
have grown to stand in the heart of their affections: and so standing,
to stand for peace. For true learning always stands for peace. Letters
always stand for peace. And it is the scholar of the world who has ever
come into it as Christ came: to teach that human life is worth saving
and must be saved.