FAMILIAR SOUNDS.
The members of the club spent a whole week in trying to recover from the
bad effects of Mr. Alleman's peculiar and untimely harangue, and even
then they did not succeed.
"We were getting into such an unusual, such a heavenly state of mind,"
explained Mr. Hopper, "and the Lord knows that heavenly states of mind
are scarce enough anywhere under the best of circumstances. We were
forgetting all the tricks, the games that had been come upon us in the
discussion of other points on which the brethren had made up their
minds, and picked out their trees to hide behind; and we were having
just the happy, quiet, sympathetic time which a man knows how to
appreciate when he's knocked about the world for a little while, when
all of a sudden Alleman must come in, and spring some of his peculiar
notions upon us. I don't see why the Lord lets such men torment the
world about religious affairs. They're good enough in every other way."
Other members of the class wondered also; and when, on the following
Sunday, Deacon Bates asked if any one else had any remarks to make on
the late lesson, nobody answered. So the leader read:
"'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.' Judge
Cottaway"--the Deacon had skillfully inveigled the Judge into a front
seat before the discussion began, so as to have a strong and respectable
opening--"we would be glad to learn your views of this passage."
"I take it to mean," answered the Judge, "that meekness is a virtue so
highly esteemed by the Almighty, that he offers, as an incentive to its
cultivation, the most highly valued of earthly inducements. Meekness
seems to be the antithesis, the exact opposite of strife, and so much
of strife is so causeless and harmful, yet so attractive to the ordinary
mind, that those who indulge in it are by this passage warned by
implication. Meekness is not a virtue of such greatness as poverty of
spirit, as may be inferred from the smaller reward promised to those who
practice it, and----"
"I want to correct the gentleman right there," exclaimed Mr. Jodderel.
"What earth are they to inherit? _This_ earth? Why, everybody laughs at
that notion. A man's got to fight awfully hard to get anything in this
world, and harder yet to keep whatever he gets. The path of meekness
leads but to the poor-house. The earth alluded to evidently means the
new earth, which, in the Revelation, John beheld, in connection with the
new heaven. That new earth appeared after the destruction of the old
one; and for what could it have appeared but to be populated by the
redeemed spirits from this? _That_ was the kingdom of heaven, and the
text before us evidently refers to it. 'The meek shall inherit the
earth;' the apostles, to whom this passage was spoken, needed no more
definite expression about the matter, of which the Master doubtless had
spoken many times with them. The whole passage seems to me an exact
repetition of the one before it, just to give emphasis to the first."
"I wonder if that's exactly straight?" remarked Squire Woodhouse, more
with the air of a man in a soliloquy than one asking a question. "If
there _is_ a way of inheriting the earth, or even a little piece of it,
I'd like to know all about it; but if its only the next world that the
passage refers to----"
"If it refers only to the next world, you're not in such a hurry to
understand it," interrupted Captain Maile.
"We--ell," drawled the Squire, "that isn't exactly the way I was going
to finish off, but I guess it's pretty near the truth. It _don't_ sound
well either, does it?"
"Brother Prymm?" said Deacon Bates, and the champion of orthodoxy
responded to the invitation by saying,
"The meek are undoubtedly those who follow the non-resistant injunctions
which are found everywhere in the New Testament; they are the men who
when one cheek is struck turn the other also, who render not railing for
railing."
"And who, when the coat is taken, will offer the cloak also," added
Captain Maile.
"Certainly," said Mr. Prymm, with rather a wry face, "though I cannot,
with any present light, see how the latter course would be practical and
judicious. The other injunctions are but amplifications of the inspired
saying, 'A soft answer turneth away wrath,' but how property rights can
be maintained at all, if the injunction quoted by Captain Maile were
followed, I am unable to see."
"It wouldn't work in the steamboat business," declared Mr. Buffle. "It's
hard enough to get the worth of your money, even when men promise to
pay; but if a man were to understand that by stealing one of my
tug-boats he would have a right to expect a first-class lake packet as a
present, I'd have to go out of business within a fortnight."
"I'm inclined to think the passage in question must be an interpolation
by one of Christ's reporters," said President Lottson, who had been
taking a cautious course of Matthew Arnold.
"Why, if _I_ were to live up to that injunction," said Builder Stott,
"folks would want to modify their house plans every day. In fact they do
it now. The moment I try to oblige a man by giving a little more than
his contract calls for, he wants something else. Women in particular are
perfectly awful that way; they----"
"Ladies are present," remarked Lawyer Scott, who was considerable of a
ladies' man.
"Just think of a broker trying to do business in that way!" exclaimed
Broker Whilcher.
"Or a man whose principal crop is hay," said Squire Woodhouse.
"Or an importer of English cutlery," suggested Mr. Jodderel. "Still, the
passage ought either to be explained away or lived up to, for if going
contrary to business rules is necessary to inherit the new earth--it's
contrary to sense that _this_ earth can be got hold of by any such
unbusiness-like operation--the new earth, otherwise the kingdom of
heaven----"
"Members will please bear in mind the rule that remarks are to be made
in regular order," interposed the leader hastily. "We will hear from
Brother Hopper."
"I suppose meekness means patience," said the gentleman addressed,
nervously clutching his coat-tail pocket with its precious contents;
"not getting into a stew about everything, in fact; but how a man is to
be so, when everything goes on the way it shouldn't, is more than _I_
can tell, and how they're going to get the earth for their pains is a
bigger puzzle yet."
Mr. Lottson being called upon, said:
"I can only repeat about this passage my remarks upon the one which
preceded it. It means exactly what it says, but it means it only in a
spiritual sense, and only to those to whom it was said--to the disciples
of Christ, and those whose conditions of life are equally admirable and
peculiar. The disciples were meek--all but Peter, that is--and _he_
stopped being a man of the world after he learned that he couldn't be
that and a consistent disciple too. And look at the result! Haven't the
disciples of Christ inherited the earth? Hasn't the blood of the martyrs
been the seed of the Church? Hasn't the non-resistent, patient,
self-sacrificing course of Christian missionaries led to the conversion
of powerful heathen nations, opened avenues of trade between them and
Christian countries----"
"Which have straightway been traveled over by men who rob the heathen,
poison them with rum, and kill them off with the popular vices of
civilization," interrupted Captain Maile.
"Opened avenues of trade between them and Christian countries," resumed
President Lottson, as if no interruption had occurred, "created a demand
for the Bible and the school, discouraged war, extended the area of
production, established representative governments in the place of
irresponsible despotisms, brought from foreign lands, to study our
institutions, men whose fathers and grandfathers were brutal savages,
and hastened the coming of the day when at the name of Jesus every knee
shall bend and every tongue confess him Lord? Business alone could never
have done this; it required a special development of mind, and to those
whom he had created for this purpose Jesus enounced this promise, which
was the only one that in the nature of things could be made to them
about earthly interests."
"I declare!" whispered Squire Woodhouse to Mr. Buffle, "Lottson did that
splendidly. If it wasn't for the way he treated me about that barn I
should say that Lottson ought to have gone into the ministry." At the
same moment Deacon Bates called Mr. Prymm to the chair, took the floor
himself, and said:
"There was a remark dropped by Mr. Lottson, and followed up in his
excellent speech, which I am certain conceals a truth which is not
clearly enough realized. If it was, a number of puzzling questions that
have been before the class could have easily been answered. He said the
passage should be taken in a spiritual sense. It certainly should. God
is a Spirit; our own spirits are our only immortal parts; everything
else in us and everything around us is transient and perishable. The
meek should be meek in a spiritual way; they should not be puffed up
with knowledge, or what they think to be such, but should in humility
open their hearts to the influences of the Holy Spirit. Business has
nothing to do with our eternal welfare; it is only one of the necessary
but transient affairs of our perishable, material bodies; but the things
unseen are eternal. If we would constantly keep this fact in our minds
I am sure many of our present difficulties in studying the Scriptures
would disappear. This earth is not our abiding place; our time here is
but short; 'A thousand years are but as a day in His sight;' heaven is
our final and eternal home, and it was to instruct us how to prepare our
souls for the future state of existence that the prophets spoke and
Jesus came to earth."
"According to that, it don't matter how we do business," said Squire
Woodhouse; "every man can be just as sharp and underhanded as he
pleases. Well, it's a comfortable belief, but I think you're mistaken,
Deacon, about its being lost sight of; I think pretty much everybody
lives up to it, as far as business goes."
"Dr. Fahrenglotz," remarked the leader, in evident confusion at the
moral deduced from his theory.
"Although not attaching to the words that degree of authority that some
do," said the Doctor, "their unselfish tendency and their moral beauty
convince me that they have an important meaning. That they can apply to
the common affairs of life I cannot believe, for the theory is contrary
to reason and experience. They probably refer to some coming state of
society when the application of true reason shall have raised men above
their present physical and moral level, and enabled them to translate
the mystic sayings of the worlds great seers."
"Then the passage doesn't command anything that's really essential to
salvation?" asked young Mr. Waggett.
"Oh, no, certainly not," said Captain Maile. "Nothing does, or if it
does, our business is to get around it somehow, and look at some other
side of it."
The leader called upon Mr. Alleman, who said:
"The simple fact that this saying was given is sufficient excuse and
command to follow it, no matter what it brings us or takes from us. As,
however, the material bearing of the passage has attracted more
attention to-day than the manifest desire of Christ, I wish to recall to
notice the peculiar wording. Jesus does not say that the meek shall earn
or acquire the earth, but that they shall inherit it. An inheritance is
something that the child obtains from the parent through love and
affection. The passage means: 'Be meek, not given to strife, not
stirring up wrath, attending to your own affairs, not assuming to be
better or more deserving than others;' and God, who owns the earth and
all that is in it, who makes man his steward, who pulleth down one and
setteth up another, who knows the uses of property better than we do,
and who sooner or later puts it into proper hands, will _give_ you the
earth. Be meek, and trust to God for appreciation, even upon earth."
"One o'clock," observed President Lottson, and the session closed.
"Now _wasn't_ that just like Alleman?" asked Squire Woodhouse of Mr.
Jodderel. "Beautiful idea--perfectly heavenly; but nothing in it that a
man can take hold of without running the risk of losing some of his
property. He'd better not talk that way before the city booksellers, if
he don't want to have to pay cash for every bill of books he buys."
And Captain Maile walked out singing to himself, but in a tone loud
enough to be offensive, the old song beginning,
"Whip the devil around the stump."