"The first of my books as I have arranged them, considers what we call
the physical universe as a whole--our heavens--the stars--and discusses
the little that man knows about it. I used to think the earth was the
centre of this universe, the most important world in it, on account of
Man. That is what the ancient Hebrews thought. In this room float
millions of dust-particles too small to be seen by us. To say that the
universe is made for the sake of the earth would be something like
saying that the earth was created for the sake of one of these
particles of its own dust."
He paused to see how she received this.
"That ought to be a great book," she said approvingly. "I should like
to study it."
"The second takes up that small part of the universe which we call our
solar system and sums up the little we have learned regarding it. I
used to think the earth the most important part of the solar system, on
account of Man. So the earliest natural philosophers believed. That is
like believing that the American continent was created for the sake,
say, of my father's farm."
He awaited her comment.
"That should be a great book," she said simply. "Some day let me see
THAT."
"The third detaches for study one small planet of that system--our
earth--and reviews our latest knowledge of that: as to how it has been
evolved into its present stage of existence through other stages
requiring unknown millions and millions and millions of years. Once I
thought it was created in six days. So it is written. Do you believe
that?"
There was silence.
"What is the next book?" she asked.
"The fourth," said David, with a twinkle in his eye at her refusal to
answer his question, "takes up the history of the earth's surface--its
crust--the layers of this--as one might study the skin of an apple as
large as the globe. In the course of an almost infinite time, as we
measure things, it discovers the appearance of Life on this crust, and
then tries to follow the progress of Life from the lowest forms upward,
always upward, to Man: another time infinitely vast, according to our
standards."
He looked over for some comment but she made none, and he continued,
his interest deepening, his face kindling:--
"The fifth takes up the subject of Man, as a single one of the myriads
of forms of Life that have grown on the earth's crust, and gives the
best of what we know of him viewed as a species of animal. Does this
tire you?"
Gabriella made the only gesture of displeasure he had ever seen.
"Now," said David, straightening himself up, "I draw near to the root
of the matter. A sixth book takes up what we call the civilization of
this animal species, Man. It subdivides his civilization into different
civilizations. It analyzes these civilizations, where it is possible,
into their arts, governments, literatures, religions, and other
elements. And the seventh," he resumed after a grave pause,
scrutinizing her face most eagerly, "the seventh takes up just one part
of his civilizations--the religions of the globe--and gives an account
of these. It describes how they have grown and flourished, how some
have passed as absolutely away as the civilizations that produced them.
It teaches that those religions were as natural a part of those
civilizations as their civil laws, their games, their wars, their
philosophy; that the religious books of these races, which they
themselves often thought inspired revelations, were no more inspired
and no more revelations than their secular books; that Buddha's faith
or Brahma's were no more direct from God than Buddhistic or Brahman
temples were from God; that the Koran is no more inspired than Moorish
architecture is inspired; that the ancient religion of the Jewish race
stands on the same footing as the other great religions of the
globe--as to being Supernatural; that the second religion of the
Hebrews, starting out of them, but rejected by them, the Christian
religion, the greatest of all to us, takes its place with the others as
a perfectly natural expression of the same human desire and effort to
find God and to worship Him through all the best that we know in
ourselves and of the universe outside us."
"Ah," said Gabriella, suddenly leaning forward in her chair, "that is
the book that has done all the harm."
"One moment! All these books," continued David, for he was aroused now
and did not pause to consider her passionate protest, "have this in
common: that they try to discover and to trace Law. The universe--it is
the expression of Law. Our solar system--it has been formed by Law, The
sun--the driving force of Law has made it. Our earth--Law has shaped
that; brought Life out of it; evolved Life on it from the lowest to the
highest; lifted primeval Man to modern Man; out of barbarism developed
civilization; out of prehistoric religions, historic religions. And
this one order--method--purpose--ever running and unfolding through the
universe, is all that we know of Him whom we call Creator, God, our
Father. So that His reign is the Reign of Law. He, Himself, is the
author of the Law that we should seek Him. We obey, and our seekings
are our religions."
"If you ask me whether I believe in the God of the Hebrews, I say
'Yes'; just as I believe in the God of the Babylonians, of the
Egyptians, of the Greeks, of the Romans, of all men. But if you ask
whether I believe what the Hebrews wrote of God, or what any other age
or people thought of God, I say 'No.' I believe what the best thought
of my own age thinks of Him in the light of man's whole past and of our
greater present knowledge of the Laws of His universe," said David,
stoutly, speaking for his masters.
"As for the theologies," he resumed hastily, as if not wishing to be
interrupted, "I know of no book that has undertaken to number them.
They, too, are part of Man's nature and civilization, of his never
ceasing search. But they are merely what he thinks of God--never
anything more. They often contain the highest thought of which he is
capable in his time and place; but the awful mistake and cruelty of
them is that they have regularly been put forth as the voice of God
Himself, authoritative, inviolable, and unchanging. An assemblage of
men have a perfect right to turn a man out of their church on
theological grounds; but they have no right to do it in the name of
God. With as much propriety a man might be expelled from a political
party in the name of God. In the long life of any one of the great
religions of the globe, how many brief theologies have grown up under
it like annual plants under a tree! How many has the Christian religion
itself sprouted, nourished, and trampled down as dead weeds! What do we
think now of the Christian theology of the tenth century? of the
twelfth? of the fifteenth? In the nineteenth century alone, how many
systems of theology have there been? In the Protestantism of the United
States, how many are there to-day? Think of the names they bear--older
and newer! According to founders, and places, and sources, and
contents, and methods: Arminian--Augustinian--Calvinistic--Lutheran--
Gallican--Genevan--Mercersburg--New England--Oxford--national--
revealed--Catholic--evangelical--fundamental--historical--
homiletical--moral--mystical--pastoral--practical--dogmatic--
exegetical--polemic--rational--systematic. That sounds a little
like Polonius," said David, stopping suddenly, "but there is no
humor in it! One great lesson in the history of them all is not to be
neglected: that through them also runs the great Law of Evolution, of
the widening thoughts of men; so that now, in civilized countries at
least, the churches persecute to the death no longer. You know what the
Egyptian Priesthood would have done with me at my trial. What the
Mediaeval hierarchy would have done. What the Protestant or the
Catholic theology of two centuries ago might have done. Now mankind is
developing better ideas of these little arrangements of human
psychology on the subject of God, though the churches still try to
enforce them in His name. But the time is coming when the churches will
be deserted by all thinking men, unless they cease trying to uphold, as
the teachings of God, mere creeds of their ecclesiastical founders.
Very few men reject all belief in God; and it is no man's right to
inquire in what any man's belief consists; men do reject and have a
right to reject what some man writes out as the eternal truth of the
matter."
"And now," he said, turning to her sorrowfully, "that is the best or
the worst of what I believe--according as one may like it or not like
it. I see all things as a growth, a sublime unfolding by the Laws of
God. The race ever rises toward Him. The old things which were its best
once die off from it as no longer good. Its charity grows, its justice
grows. All the nobler, finer elements of its spirit come forth more and
more--a continuous advance along the paths of Law. And the better the
world, the larger its knowledge, the easier its faith in Him who made
it and who leads it on. The development of Man is itself the great
Revelation of Him! But I have studied these things ignorantly, only a
little while. I am at the beginning of my life, and hope to grow. Still
I stand where I have placed myself. And now, are you like the others:
do you give me up?"
He faced her with the manner in which he had sat before his professors,
conceiving himself as on trial a second time. He had in him the stuff
of martyrs and was prepared to stand by his faith at the cost of all
things.
The silence in the room lasted. Her feeling for him was so much deeper
than all this--so centred, not in what his faith was to her but in what
HE was to her, that she did not trust herself to speak. He was not on
trial in these matters in the least: without his knowing it, he had
been on trial in many other ways for a long time.
He misunderstood her silence, read wrongly her expression which was
obeying with some severity the need she felt to conceal what she had no
right to show.
"Ah, well! Ah, well!" he cried piteously, rising slowly.
When she saw his face a moment later across the room as he turned, it
was the face she had first seen in the dark street. It had stopped her
singing then; it drew an immediate response from her now. She crossed
over to him and took one of his hands in both of hers. Her cheeks were
flushed, her voice trembled.
"I am not your judge," she said, "and in all this there is only one
thing that is too sad, too awful, for me to accept. I am sorry you
should have been misled into believing that the Christian religion is
nothing more than one of the religions of the world, and Christ merely
one of its religious teachers. I wish with all my strength you believed
as you once believed, that the Bible is a direct Revelation from God,
making known to us, beyond all doubt, the Resurrection of the dead, the
Immortality of the Soul, in a better world than this, and the presence
with us of a Father who knows our wants, pities our weakness, and
answers our prayers. But I believe you will one day regain your faith:
you will come back to the Church."
He shook his head.
"Don't be deceived," he said.
"Men, great men, have said that before and they have come back. I am a
woman, and these questions never trouble us; but is it not a common
occurrence that men who think deeply on such mysteries pass through
their period of doubt?"
"But suppose I never pass through mine! You have not answered my
question," he said determinedly. "Does this make no difference in your
feeling for me? Would it make none?"
"Will you bring me that book on the religions of the world?"
"Ah," he said, "you have not answered."
"I have told you that I am not your judge."
"Ah, but that tells nothing: a woman is never a judge. She is either
with one or against him."
"Which do I look like?"--she laughed evasively--"Mercy or Vengeance?
And have you forgotten that it is late--too late to ask questions?"
He stood, comprehending her doubtfully, with immeasurable joy, and then
went out to get his overcoat.
"Bring your things in here," she said, "it is cold in the hall. And
wrap up warmly! That is more important than all the Genevan and the
homiletical!"
He bade her good night, subdued with happiness that seemed to blot out
the troublous past, to be the beginning of new life. New happiness
brought new awkwardness:--
"This was not my regular night," he said threateningly. "I came
to-night instead of to-morrow night."
Gabriella could answer a remark like that quickly enough.
"Certainly: it is hard to wait even for a slight pleasure, and it is
best to be through with suffering."
He looked as if cold water and hot water had been thrown on him at the
same time: he received shocks of different kinds and was doubtful as to
the result. He shook his head questioningly.
"I may do very well with science, but I am not so sure about women."
"Aren't women science?"
"They are a branch of theology," he said; "they are what a man thinks
about when he begins to probe his Destiny!"