ABOUT PERCIVALE.
I should like much, before in my narrative approaching a certain hard
season we had to encounter, to say a few words concerning my husband, if
I only knew how. I find women differ much, both in the degree and manner
in which their feelings will permit them to talk about their husbands. I
have known women set a whole community against their husbands by the way
in which they trumpeted their praises; and I have known one woman set
everybody against herself by the way in which she published her husband's
faults. I find it difficult to believe either sort. To praise one's husband
is so like praising one's self, that to me it seems immodest, and subject
to the same suspicion as self-laudation; while to blame one's husband, even
justly and openly, seems to me to border upon treachery itself. How, then,
am I to discharge a sort of half duty my father has laid upon me by what
he has said in "The Seaboard Parish," concerning my husband's opinions? My
father is one of the few really large-minded men I have yet known; but I
am not certain that he has done Percivale justice. At the same time, if he
has not, Percivale himself is partly to blame, inasmuch as he never took
pains to show my father what he was; for, had he done so, my father of all
men would have understood him. On the other hand, this fault, if such it
was, could have sprung only from my husband's modesty, and his horror of
possibly producing an impression on my father's mind more favorable than
correct. It is all right now, however.
Still, my difficulty remains as to how I am to write about him. I must
encourage myself with the consideration that none but our own friends, with
whom, whether they understood us or not, we are safe, will know to whom the
veiled narrative points.
But some acute reader may say,--
"You describe your husband's picture: he will be known by that."
In this matter I have been cunning--I hope not deceitful, inasmuch as I
now reveal my cunning. Instead of describing any real picture of his, I
have always substituted one he has only talked about. The picture actually
associated with the facts related is not the picture I have described.
Although my husband left the impression on my father's mind, lasting for
a long time, that he had some definite repugnance to Christianity itself,
I had been soon satisfied, perhaps from his being more open with me, that
certain unworthy representations of Christianity, coming to him with
authority, had cast discredit upon the whole idea of it. In the first year
or two of our married life, we had many talks on the subject; and I was
astonished to find what things he imagined to be acknowledged essentials
of Christianity, which have no place whatever in the New Testament; and I
think it was in proportion as he came to see his own misconceptions, that,
although there was little or no outward difference to be perceived in him,
I could more and more clearly distinguish an under-current of thought and
feeling setting towards the faith which Christianity preaches. He said
little or nothing, even when I attempted to draw him out on the matter;
for he was almost morbidly careful not to seem to know any thing he did
not know, or to appear what he was not. The most I could get out of him
was--but I had better give a little talk I had with him on one occasion.
It was some time before we began to go to Marion's on a Sunday evening,
and I had asked him to go with me to a certain, little chapel in the
neighborhood.
"What!" he said merrily, "the daughter of a clergyman be seen going to a
conventicle?"
"If I did it, I would be seen doing it," I answered.
"Don't you know that the man is no conciliatory, or even mild dissenter,
but a decided enemy to Church and State and all that?" pursued Percivale.
"I don't care," I returned. "I know nothing about it. What I know is, that
he's a poet and a prophet both in one. He stirs up my heart within me, and
makes me long to be good. He is no orator, and yet breaks into bursts of
eloquence such as none of the studied orators, to whom you profess so great
an aversion, could ever reach."
"You may well be right there. It is against nature for a speaker to be
eloquent throughout his discourse, and the false will of course quench the
true. I don't mind going if you wish it. I suppose he believes what he
says, at least."
"Not a doubt of it. He could not speak as he does from less than a thorough
belief."
"Do you mean to say, Wynnie, that he is _sure_ of every thing,--I don't
want to urge an unreasonable question,--but is he _sure_ that the story of
the New Testament is, in the main, actual fact? I should be very sorry to
trouble your faith, but"--
"My father says," I interrupted, "that a true faith is like the Pool of
Bethesda: it is when troubled that it shows its healing power."
"That depends on where the trouble comes from, perhaps," said Percivale.
"Anyhow," I answered, "it is only that which cannot be shaken that shall
remain."
"Well, I will tell you what seems to me a very common-sense difficulty.
How is any one to be _sure_ of the things recorded? I cannot imagine a man
of our time absolutely certain of them. If you tell me I have testimony,
I answer, that the testimony itself requires testimony. I never even saw
the people who bear it; have just as good reason to doubt their existence,
as that of him concerning whom they bear it; have positively no means of
verifying it, and indeed, have so little confidence in all that is called
evidence, knowing how it can be twisted, that I should distrust any
conclusion I might seem about to come to on the one side or the other. It
does appear to me, that, if the thing were of God, he would have taken care
that it should be possible for an honest man to place a hearty confidence
in its record."
He had never talked to me so openly, and I took it as a sign that he had
been thinking more of these things than hitherto. I felt it a serious
matter to have to answer such words, for how could I have any better
assurance of that external kind than Percivale himself? That I was in the
same intellectual position, however, enabled me the better to understand
him. For a short time I was silent, while he regarded me with a look of
concern,--fearful, I fancied, lest he should have involved me in his own
perplexity.
"Isn't it possible, Percivale," I said, "that God may not care so much for
beginning at that end?"
"I don't quite understand you, Wynnie," he returned.
"A man might believe every fact recorded concerning our Lord, and yet not
have the faith in him that God wishes him to have."
"Yes, certainly. But will you say the converse of that is true?"
"Explain, please."
"Will you say a man may have the faith God cares for without the faith you
say he does not care for?"
"I didn't say that God does not care about our having assurance of the
facts; for surely, if every thing depends on those facts, much will depend
on the degree of our assurance concerning them. I only expressed a doubt
whether, in the present age, he cares that we should have that assurance
first. Perhaps he means it to be the result of the higher kind of faith
which rests in the will."
"I don't, at the moment, see how the higher faith, as you call it, can
precede the lower."
"It seems to me possible enough. For what is the test of discipleship the
Lord lays down? Is it not obedience? 'If ye love me, keep my commandments.'
'If a man love me, he will keep my commandments.' 'I never knew you: depart
from me, ye workers of iniquity.' Suppose a man feels in himself that he
must have some saviour or perish; suppose he feels drawn, by conscience,
by admiration, by early memories, to the form of Jesus, dimly seen through
the mists of ages; suppose he cannot be sure there ever was such a man, but
reads about him, and ponders over the words attributed to him, until he
feels they are the right thing, whether _he_ said them or not, and that if
he could but be sure there were such a being, he would believe in him with
heart and soul; suppose also that he comes upon the words, 'If any man is
willing to do the will of the Father, he shall know whether I speak of
myself or he sent me;' suppose all these things, might not the man then say
to himself, 'I cannot tell whether all this is true, but I know nothing
that seems half so good, and I will try to do the will of the Father in
the hope of the promised knowledge'? Do you think God would, or would not,
count that to the man for faith?"
I had no more to say, and a silence followed. After a pause of some
duration, Percivale said,--
"I will go with you, my dear;" and that was all his answer.
When we came out of the little chapel,--the same into which Marion had
stepped on that evening so memorable to her,--we walked homeward in
silence, and reached our own door ere a word was spoken. But, when I went
to take off my things, Percivale followed me into the room and said,--
"Whether that man is _certain_ of the facts or not, I cannot tell yet;
but I am perfectly satisfied he believes in the manner of which you were
speaking,--that of obedience, Wynnie. He must believe with his heart and
will and life."
"If so, he can well afford to wait for what light God will give him on
things that belong to the intellect and judgment."
"I would rather think," he returned, "that purity of life must re-act on
the judgment, so as to make it likewise clear, and enable it to recognize
the true force of the evidence at command."
"That is how my father came to believe," I said.
"He seems to me to rest his conviction more upon external proof."
"That is only because it is easier to talk about. He told me once that he
was never able to estimate the force and weight of the external arguments
until after he had believed for the very love of the eternal truth he saw
in the story. His heart, he said, had been the guide of his intellect."
"That is just what I would fain believe. But, O Wynnie! the pity of it if
that story should not be true, after all!"
"Ah, my love!" I cried, "that very word makes me surer than ever that it
cannot but be true. Let us go on putting it to the hardest test; let us
try it until it crumbles in our hands,--try it by the touchstone of action
founded on its requirements."
"There may be no other way," said Percivale, after a thoughtful pause, "of
becoming capable of recognizing the truth. It may be beyond the grasp of
all but the mind that has thus yielded to it. There may be no contact for
it with any but such a mind. Such a conviction, then, could neither be
forestalled nor communicated. Its very existence must remain doubtful until
it asserts itself. I see that."