"No, you are not proud, but still you have assurance. That I have not.
Do you know how I got my name?"
"Well?"
"They called me Van Vianen, became I was found near Vianen. I have no
parents."
She said this deeply humiliated and ashamed. And in my heart I laughed,
because now after all she too showed herself apprehensive of the voice
of the herd, and because she felt as a disgrace, the very thing that,
as an aureole of romance, had delighted me.
"Oh, is it only that!" I cried; "that I already knew. All week I have
thought of the poor, dear little one as crying, it was laid down upon
the grass by a desperate mother. Likely it was a royal child, Elsje!"
Elsie laughed, reassured and happy.
"They let me become a Mennonite. Not Jan Baars, but his sister who took
me into her home as a child."
"Ah! Mennonite!" said I. I hadn't the slightest idea what theological,
ethical and ritual peculiarities were attached to this creed. I only
knew that it must be one of the innumerable variations or sects of
Protestantism.
"To be sure it's a good custom of the Mennonites that they don't
baptize you as a child, when you don't yet know whether you would
rather be a Roman Catholic or an Israelite, but later, when you are
confirmed and can yourself choose. But look! when I was eighteen I knew
just as little what to choose. And now I don't know yet."
"And still you let yourself be baptized?"
"Why yes, there was surely no wrong in that. But if they would have you
choose well they would first have to let you serve an apprenticeship
with the Romans, then another with the Protestants, then another with
the Jews and then with the Mohammedans?"
"Not to mention the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Shintoists," said I.
"So that you would need seven lives before you could let yourself be
baptized, isn't it so? And yet it is so necessary, so very, very
necessary that you choose the right thing, isn't it? I never can
understand how all people just live on carelessly, and all believing
something different, and never consider that they might perhaps be
wrong, and how terrible that would be. They simply assume, and only
feign assurance, and you never hear them talk of it, so they probably
do not break their hearts about it. And if you were to believe them,
then everyone who thinks differently than they is a miserable wretch.
But they all think differently, and so one or the other must be wrong,
and yet they are all equally certain and assured. How is that possible
now? Why it's absurd!"
I thought it was already a great deal for Elsie, in her solitude, to
have arrived at the realization of this absurdity. Then I threw out my
sounding-line -
"What do you think of Christ, Elsie?"
"I love best to read of Jesus; I think it wonderful to read -
especially toward Christmas time - how he came on earth as a little
child, and about the star and the shepherds. When I think of Jesus, I
always think of him as a little child with Mary his Mother. I should
like to have a picture or an image of them, but that's considered
Catholic. Do you know more of Jesus and can you tell me all about him?"
"I asked about Christ, Elsie."
"Isn't that the same?"
"They are all only names from which we can choose. I prefer to say
Christ, because I don't believe that there lived a man called Jesus who
was Christ. But I do positively know that there is something that all
men call Christ, and that lives and knows and loves us. And this Christ
they already knew long before Jesus is said to have lived. I have seen
images of the Mother with the child exactly like the one you would like
to have, and it was thousands of years older than Jesus and made by the
Egyptians, and instead of Mary and the Christ Child they spoke of Isis
and the Horus Child, and the Chinese too made such images."
"And what do they mean by it?"
"Ordinary people mean a holy mother with a holy child, a saviour. But
the few wiser ones probably mean the earth mother and the child
humanity. I at least presume it, and when men now speak of Christ, then
I believe, Elsje, that the most and the best, those who really mean
something by the word, something real that they have felt - that they
mean something that is equivalent to humanity."
"Humanity? that means nothing to me. Jesus for me is a living, beloved
and loving being, who helps and supports me, an exalted, holy being.
Humanity - that is nothing to me, an empty word."
"Right, Elsje, I readily believe it. But empty words can be filled with
knowledge. There are learned professors to whom the word Jesus or
Christ is entirely hollow or empty. But the word humanity implies for
them a real and well-known thing, the entire human race which in its
development and growth, in its expression and forms of life they have
studied minutely. These professors again would be able to fill the word
Christ with the exalted and tender feelings which it arouses in Elsje,
if they had learned to feel like Elsje. And now it is my personal
opinion with which, so far as I know, I stand quite alone in the world,
that Elsje and the professors, were they to compare one another's
observations, would come to realize that it is precisely the same real
being that fills the word Christ and the word Humanity: the religious
word Christ and the biological, scientific word Humanity."
"But humanity - that is not a being, not a personality ? that is a lot
of people. People that I don't know. How can I care about them and how
can they care about me?"
"A tree, Elsje, is a lot of roots, branches and leaves. Yet we call it
a tree. A swarm of bees are a lot of bees, and yet one swarm. You
cannot discern humanity because you cannot see all people at the same
time, and not how they are connected. But I don't believe either that
one leaf can see the whole tree or one bee the whole swarm.
"But humanity is yet a great deal more than all men together, just as
the tree is more than all the leaves. And humanity is after all
perceived by Elsje in her own heart - all humanity. That is thus much
more even than the professors can discern of it, and why should it not
be a personal, thinking, loving being? It is that, I think, that Elsje
means when she speaks of her exalted Jesus, and it is that I prefer to
call Christ, because I like that name best."
"I am such a stupid, ignorant creature, and you are so learned. Forgive
me if I still find it somewhat too difficult."
"Of course, dear Elsje, you find it difficult, because you do not know
what the professors have observed concerning man and the human race.
But really, the professors would find what I said equally difficult and
incomprehensible, because they don't know - at least most of them do
not - what Elsje has observed concerning Christ. Only they would not be
as modest as you are; they would not recognize that it is their
ignorance. And I am no professor and no Elsje, but I stand sort of
between the two and know something of the observations of both, and I
know quite positively and see quite plainly that they both mean the
same thing and that they require each other's knowledge."
"So you do know my Jesus, my Christ too, thank God!"
"Yes, though perhaps not as well as Elsje, yet better than the
professors. And I believe that it was this Christ who brought me to
Elsje so that I should learn to know him better, - and perhaps should
better testify of him. And through him too I gained courage and
steadfastness to remain true to Elsje, and not to give up, though the
whole world stand against me."
Here the woman found good opportunity for bringing the man from his
world of speculation back to practical life.
"But does not Jesus, or Christ, want you to do it openly, before all
the world?"
"I don't know ? I don't know, Elsje. His promptings and suggestions as
they proceed clearly from out the original fount are by no means always
equally positive and distinct. But I assure you - I would swear it to
you, had I not vowed once for all never to swear again - that I shall
stop at nothing and spare nothing as soon as his light shall shine
clearly and unmistakably for me."
"We Mennonites may never swear either," said Elsje, with pretty pride
in her creed, confessed with so little conviction.
"That is good, that is indeed one of the best things the Bible Jesus is
said to have taught. Therefore it is surely followed least of all. I
not only swear no more - I even dare not promise you anything, for I
know myself too little to foretell my future actions."
"You do not promise to be true to me?" asked Elsje with mild
disappointment.
"I do better, I assure you of profound love. So profound that I do
surely believe it will be true. But what would my faithfulness be to
you if love grew weaker? It would become a lie, a feint, wouldn't it?"
"I shall be thankful for all that I get," said Elsje, "and never ask
for more than you wish to give me."
I had to laugh when I thought what my acquaintances from the diplomatic
world - friends I do not call them, I never had a friend among them -
what they would say of a gallant adventure with so much theology at the
third meeting.
But you, dear reader, will probably long have comprehended that I draw
from the same reservoir, what others keep separated in water and
air-tight compartments, and that theology, science, poetry and love to
me are not only brothers and sisters, but often merely names and masks
for one and the same inward reality. So that you will no doubt allow me
to tell yet a few more things that in my amorous theologizing with
Elsje, I learned and taught.
You will also probably understand without my remarking it that I did
not speak in quite as fluent and succinct Dutch as I have here written
down. But I could make myself understood just as well as if it had been
thus spoken, because Love served as our interpreter.