For the last few months, while all these various matters were going on
in Rockland, the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had been busy with the
records of ancient councils and the writings of the early fathers. The
more he read, the more discontented he became with the platform upon
which he and his people were standing. They and he were clearly in
a minority, and his deep inward longing to be with the majority was
growing into an engrossing passion. He yearned especially towards the
good old unquestioning, authoritative Mother Church, with her articles
of faith which took away the necessity for private judgment, with her
traditional forms and ceremonies, and her whole apparatus of stimulants
and anodynes.
About this time he procured a breviary and kept it in his desk under
the loose papers. He sent to a Catholic bookstore and obtained a small
crucifix suspended from a string of beads. He ordered his new coat to be
cut very narrow in the collar and to be made single-breasted. He began
an informal series of religious conversations with Miss O'Brien, the
young person of Irish extraction already referred to as Bridget, maid
of all work. These not proving very satisfactory, he managed to fall in
with Father McShane, the Catholic priest of the Rockland church.
Father McShane encouraged his nibble very scientifically. It would be
such a fine thing to bring over one of those Protestant heretics, and a
“liberal” one too!--not that there was any real difference between
them, but it sounded better, to say that one of these rationalizing
free-and-equal religionists had been made a convert than any of those
half-way Protestants who were the slaves of catechisms instead of
councils, and of commentators instead of popes. The subtle priest played
his disciple with his finest tackle. It was hardly necessary: when
anything or anybody wishes to be caught, a bare hook and a coarse line
are all that is needed.
If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty,
if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him. And
the temptation is to some natures a very great one. Liberty is often a
heavy burden on a man. It involves that necessity for perpetual choice
which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In common life we
shirk it by forming habits, which take the place of self-determination.
In politics party-organization saves us the pains of much thinking
before deciding how to cast our vote. In religious matters there are
great multitudes watching us perpetually, each propagandist ready with
his bundle of finalities, which having accepted we may be at peace.
The more absolute the submission demanded, the stronger the temptation
becomes to those who have been long tossed among doubts and conflicts.
So it is that in all the quiet bays which indent the shores of the great
ocean of thought, at every sinking wharf, we see moored the hulks
and the razees of enslaved or half-enslaved intelligences. They rock
peacefully as children in their cradles on the subdued swell which
comes feebly in over the bar at the harbor's mouth, slowly crusting with
barnacles, pulling at their iron cables as if they really wanted to be
free; but better contented to remain bound as they are. For these no
more the round unwalled horizon of the open sea, the joyous breeze
aloft, the furrow, the foam, the sparkle, that track the rushing keel!
They have escaped the dangers of the wave, and lie still henceforth,
evermore. Happiest of souls, if lethargy is bliss, and palsy the chief
beatitude!
America owes its political freedom to religious Protestantism. But
political freedom is reacting on religious prescription with still
mightier force. We wonder, therefore, when we find a soul which was
born to a full sense of individual liberty, an unchallenged right
of self-determination on every new alleged truth offered to its
intelligence, voluntarily surrendering any portion of its liberty to
a spiritual dictatorship which always proves to rest, in the last
analysis, on a majority vote, nothing more nor less, commonly an old
one, passed in those barbarous times when men cursed and murdered each
other for differences of opinion, and of course were not in a condition
to settle the beliefs of a comparatively civilized community.
In our disgust, we are liable to be intolerant. We forget that weakness
is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cowardice may call for our
most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate infirmity, Who of us
does not look with great tenderness on the young chieftain in the “Fair
Maid of Perth,” when he confesses his want of courage? All of us love
companionship and sympathy; some of us may love them too much. All of us
are more or less imaginative in our theology.
Some of us may find the aid of material symbols a comfort, if not a
necessity. The boldest thinker may have his moments of languor and
discouragement, when he feels as if he could willingly exchange faiths
with the old beldame crossing herself at the cathedral-door,--nay, that,
if he could drop all coherent thought, and lie in the flowery meadow
with the brown-eyed solemnly unthinking cattle, looking up to the sky,
and all their simple consciousness staining itself blue, then down to
the grass, and life turning to a mere greenness, blended with confused
scents of herbs,--no individual mind-movement such as men are teased
with, but the great calm cattle-sense of all time and all places that
know the milky smell of herds,--if he could be like these, he would be
content to be driven home by the cow-boy, and share the grassy banquet
of the king of ancient Babylon. Let us be very generous, then, in our
judgment of those who leave the front ranks of thought for the company
of the meek non-combatants who follow with the baggage and provisions.
Age, illness, too much wear and tear, a half-formed paralysis, may bring
any of us to this pass. But while we can think and maintain the rights
of our own individuality against every human combination, let us
not forget to caution all who are disposed to waver that there is a
cowardice which is criminal, and a longing for rest which it is baseness
to indulge. God help him, over whose dead soul in his living body must
be uttered the sad supplication, Requiescat in pace!
A knock at the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's study door called his eyes
from the book on which they were intent. He looked up, as if expecting a
welcome guest.
The Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D., entered the study of the
Reverend Chauncy Fairweather. He was not the expected guest. Mr.
Fairweather slipped the book he was reading into a half-open drawer,
and pushed in the drawer. He slid something which rattled under a paper
lying on the table. He rose with a slight change of color, and welcomed,
a little awkwardly, his unusual visitor.
“Good-evening, Brother Fairweather!” said the Reverend Doctor, in a
very cordial, good-humored way. “I hope I am not spoiling one of those
eloquent sermons I never have a chance to hear.”
“Not at all, not at all,” the younger clergyman answered, in a languid
tone, with a kind of habitual half-querulousness which belonged to
it,--the vocal expression which we meet with now and then, and which
says as plainly as so many words could say it, “I am a suffering
individual. I am persistently undervalued, wronged, and imposed upon by
mankind and the powers of the universe generally. But I endure all. I
endure you. Speak. I listen. It is a burden to me, but I even approve. I
sacrifice myself. Behold this movement of my lips! It is a smile.”
The Reverend Doctor knew this forlorn way of Mr. Fairweather's, and
was not troubled by it. He proceeded to relate the circumstances of his
visit from the old black woman, and the fear she was in about the young
girl, who being a parishioner of Mr. Fairweather's, he had thought it
best to come over and speak to him about old Sophy's fears and fancies.
In telling the old woman's story, he alluded only vaguely to those
peculiar circumstances to which she had attributed so much importance,
taking it for granted that the other minister must be familiar with
the whole series of incidents she had related. The old minister was
mistaken, as we have before seen. Mr. Fairweather had been settled in
the place only about ten years, and, if he had heard a strange hint now
and then about Elsie, had never considered it as anything more than
idle and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip. All that he fully
understood was that this had been a perverse and unmanageable child, and
that the extraordinary care which had been bestowed on her had been so
far thrown away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl, whom all
feared and almost all shunned, as if she carried with her some malignant
influence.
He replied, therefore, after hearing the story, that Elsie had always
given trouble. There seemed to be a kind of natural obliquity about
her. Perfectly unaccountable. A very dark case. Never amenable to good
influences. Had sent her good books from the Sunday-school library.
Remembered that she tore out the frontispiece of one of them, and kept
it, and flung the book out of the window. It was a picture of
Eve's temptation; and he recollected her saying that Eve was a good
woman,--and she'd have done just so, if she'd been there. A very sad
child, very sad; bad from infancy. He had talked himself bold, and
said all at once, “Doctor, do you know I am almost ready to accept your
doctrine of the congenital sinfulness of human nature? I am afraid that
is the only thing which goes to the bottom of the difficulty.”
The old minister's face did not open so approvingly as Mr. Fairweather
had expected.
“Why, yes,--well,--many find comfort in it,--I believe;--there is much
to be said,--there are many bad people,--and bad children,--I can't
be so sure about bad babies,--though they cry very malignantly at
times,--especially if they have the stomach-ache. But I really don't
know how to condemn this poor Elsie; she may have impulses that act
in her like instincts in the lower animals, and so not come under the
bearing of our ordinary rules of judgment.”
“But this depraved tendency, Doctor,--this unaccountable perverseness.
My dear Sir, I am afraid your school is in the right about human nature.
Oh, those words of the Psalmist, 'shapen in iniquity,' and the rest!
What are we to do with them,--we who teach that the soul of a child is
an unstained white tablet?”
“King David was very subject to fits of humility, and much given to
self-reproaches,” said the Doctor, in a rather dry way. “We owe you and
your friends a good deal for calling attention to the natural graces,
which, after all, may, perhaps, be considered as another form of
manifestation of the divine influence. Some of our writers have pressed
rather too hard on the tendencies of the human soul toward evil as such.
It maybe questioned whether these views have not interfered with the
sound training of certain young persons, sons of clergymen and others.
I am nearer of your mind about the possibility of educating children so
that they shall become good Christians without any violent transition.
That is what I should hope for from bringing them up 'in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord.'”
The younger minister looked puzzled, but presently answered, “Possibly
we may have called attention to some neglected truths; but, after all, I
fear we must go to the old school, if we want to get at the root of the
matter. I know there is an outward amiability about many young persons,
some young girls especially, that seems like genuine goodness; but I
have been disposed of late to lean toward your view, that these human
affections, as we see them in our children,--ours, I say, though I have
not the fearful responsibility of training any of my own,--are only a
kind of disguised and sinful selfishness.”
The old minister groaned in spirit. His heart had been softened by
the sweet influences of children and grandchildren. He thought of
a half-sized grave in the burial-ground, and the fine, brave,
noble-hearted boy he laid in it thirty years before,--the sweet,
cheerful child who had made his home all sunshine until the day when he
was brought into it, his long curls dripping, his fresh lips purpled in
death,--foolish dear little blessed creature to throw himself into the
deep water to save the drowning boy, who clung about him and carried him
under! Disguised selfishness! And his granddaughter too, whose disguised
selfishness was the light of his household!
“Don't call it my view!” he said. “Abstractly, perhaps, all natures may
be considered vitiated; but practically, as I see it in life, the divine
grace keeps pace with the perverted instincts from infancy in many
natures. Besides, this perversion itself may often be disease, bad
habits transmitted, like drunkenness, or some hereditary misfortune, as
with this Elsie we were talking about.”
The younger minister was completely mystified. At every step he made
towards the Doctor's recognized theological position, the Doctor took
just one step towards his. They would cross each other soon at this
rate, and might as well exchange pulpits,--as Colonel Sprowle once
wished they would, it may be remembered.
The Doctor, though a much clearer-headed man, was almost equally
puzzled. He turned the conversation again upon Elsie, and endeavored
to make her minister feel the importance of bringing every friendly
influence to bear upon her at this critical period of her life. His
sympathies did not seem so lively as the Doctor could have wished.
Perhaps he had vastly more important objects of solicitude in his own
spiritual interests.
A knock at the door interrupted them. The Reverend Mr. Fairweather rose
and went towards it. As he passed the table, his coat caught something,
which came rattling to the floor. It was a crucifix with a string of
beads attached. As he opened the door, the Milesian features of Father
McShane presented themselves, and from their centre proceeded the
clerical benediction in Irish-sounding Latin, Pax vobiscum!
The Reverend Doctor Honeywood rose and left the priest and his disciple
together.