CHAPTER X.
In achieving spiritual emancipation the mind must pass from prescription to conscious reason, from mere faith to knowledge. There must be nothing lost in the transition, only a gain in the form of science to what was before held in the form of faith and tradition. But this transition is the most painful one in history, although its results are the most glorious.—Wm. T. Harris, LL. D.
One evening Mildred and I had prepared for bed, and in our dressing-gowns were sitting cosily before our open wood fire, watching the flames dance and flicker and cast weird shadows on the wall. It had been a hard day, the morning having been spent in writing and dictation and in examining a half bushel of mail matter; the afternoon we had spent in visiting tenement houses and industrial schools in Brooklyn.
After dinner, however, I had beguiled Mildred into a merry hour over some dashing Schubert duets, for music never failed to rest and soothe her. Then, turning the lights down and drawing thetête-à-têtebefore the red glow of the firelight, we fell to talking, indulging in many reminiscences of childish pranks and school-girl sentimentality.
I had been bred outside of New England, and our lives had been wholly unlike. Perhaps it was because we were so very unlike in many thingsthat we were more and more drawn to each other day by day, finding ever new delight in exploring each other’s history and thoughts.
I had seen more of the world, in a certain way, than Mildred,—that is, more of society, in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. The leisurely, easy-going life of a people to whom New England ideas and “isms” were unknown had been the limits of my social, and Presbyterianism and Episcopacy the limits of my spiritual, horizon. I had scarcely dreamed of the existence of any other way of looking at life among people in good society.
A brisk canter on my red roan, with a gay company of young people, a good dinner party, plenty of bouquets and dancing and young men, with now and then a would-be-serious talk with some of the more studiously-minded of them apropos of German poetry or Victor Hugo,—this life I had known all about, and but little of any other.
However, eight months previously, when reverses of fortune had cast my fate in Salem, Massachusetts, among a family of Unitarians who had been old-time abolitionists, and were now woman suffragists and zealous reformers in every direction, my conception of life had enlarged a little, and I was prepared not to be amazed at this radical, bookish Boston girl who upset all my previous theories of what a charming woman should be.
She was charming; no one who had seen her sitting there, in her loose gown of a delicate rose color, her dark wavy hair falling around her shouldersas she gazed steadily into the glowing embers, her fine features outlined by the firelight, but would have thought her so. We had been laughing heartily over some droll accounts of my first New England experiences and the horror which I had aroused in some precise old maids by my frivolity, while I had been equally horrified by their radical theology. I thought that it was wicked for them to read Renan, and they thought it sinful for me to wear French corsets and moderately high heels.
After a time Mildred and I began to talk of love and lovers, as girls will. I say “girls,” though I was six-and-twenty and she my senior. But in New England, where late marriages are the rule and not the exception, the term “girls,” as I have discovered, has an indefinite application.
“Mildred, were you never in love?” I asked.
I shouldn’t have dared quite so much as that, only somehow she had invited my confidence, and I had told her all about my love affairs. I couldn’t tell whether she blushed or not, for the firelight glowed on her face. At first I thought that she was offended, for she waited a minute before she answered, and we listened to the rain coming in great gusts against the window pane, and the omnibuses rattling over the paved street below.
Mildred nestled a little closer to the fire and adjusted her cushions. Then she said slowly, as she stretched out her slender fingers before the blaze, “Why, yes, I suppose I really was in love, though I didn’t know it at the time.”
“Good heavens, Mildred, not with Mr. Dunreath!” I cried; “you told me you never really cared for him.”
“No, not with Mr. Dunreath,” replied Mildred quickly, and throwing her head back she clasped her hands over her knee, swaying back and forth in the firelight. Then she stopped again. I asked no more questions, for there was a look in her eyes and a droop to the sensitive mouth which meant I knew not what. Was it possible that this woman, who seemed so enthusiastically absorbed in her plans and so cheerful and gay, was really carrying about with her a secret heart-ache? I had watched her curiously as we had been in society together, and had been amused at her absolute lack of coquetry and matter-of-fact way of talking with gentlemen, and, on the other hand, at her semi-consciousness that she must try not to say too much about her theories and hobbies, and to “learn to talk small talk,” as she said. I, who had had my fill of small talk, and whom the late years were beginning to teach some serious lessons, liked much better her simplicity and unusual earnestness about things. Her bookishness, too, which at first I had rather dreaded, did not mean pedantry or dullness. She had read but few books, she told me; far less than I. She once showed me in her diary her list of books for the past year. There were only six: Plato’s “Republic,” “Wilhelm Meister,” Stanley’s “History of the Jews,” Thackeray’s “Newcomes,” Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty,” and a volume of Fichte.
“I like to be acquainted with the best people,” she once said; “there is no reason why one should put up with the second-rate ones when one can have the best.”
“But it is not every one who can get the best society,” said I, not understanding in the least what she meant.
“Every one who can read can have the best friends of all ages,” she replied. And they were her friends. But I am digressing.
“I will tell you all about it,” said Mildred, with her eyes still fixed on the coals. “There is no reason why I should not, though I never told any one before, and I have hardly acknowledged it to myself. I think I was in love; yes, I think I really was—in love.
“It happened in this way. I had gone down to the Fitchburg station to take the early morning train for Concord. By the way, were you ever at Concord?” she asked abruptly.
“What?” I answered, “Concord, New Hampshire?”
“No, our own Massachusetts Concord; the Concord of Emerson and Hawthorne and Thoreau and the Alcotts. I had been there but once before, but since that time it has been a sort of Mecca of mine, and I have made many a pilgrimage there.
“I was going out to the Concord School of Philosophy, not, however, for any special reason. I didn’t know and didn’t care to know anything about philosophy, but I thought it might be fun tosee for once the long-haired men and short-haired women congregate and talk, as the papers said, about the ‘thisness of the then and the whichness of the where.’ Besides, I wanted to visit Hawthorne’s grave. I was full of his romances then.
“At the station I met my bosom-friend Julia Mason. ‘How fortunate!’ she exclaimed. ‘Here is my cousin, bound for the Summer School, too. You must philosophize together.’ She introduced us to each other, and then hastened to take her own train, while the young man and I made our way together to the express train for Concord.
“He pleased my fancy at once. I was just at the age when a girl always sees a possible lover in every handsome young man whom she chances to know. Not that the thought occurred to me then, for he was far from being the ideal lover whom I had dreamed of marrying. My lover must combine all the graces of an Alcibiades with the virtues of a Bayard, a knightsans peur et sans reproche, with classic features, curling locks, and a voice and smile that should melt the very stones.”
“You matter-of-fact old Mildred,” I laughed. “To think of your ever being so romantic!”
She smiled a little as she unclasped her hands from her knee and leaned back.
“Yes,” she said, “I had my dreams once.”
Then she continued:
“He was older than I, twenty-five, perhaps; tall, broad-shouldered, a manly man every inch of him; a little clumsy and awkward at first, and lackingin all the manifold little attentions which girls like. He did not offer to carry my bag, I observed, and he entered the car-door first. He was certainly not in the least like the courteous, gallant knight of my girlish fancy.
“But presently, as he began to talk in an animated way, his frank blue eyes lighted up and lent to his by no means classic features a wonderful charm. We got well acquainted on the short journey. He, it seems, had, like myself, been at Concord only once before. It was on that raw, cold day in ’75, when I, a young school-girl, with my mother, and he a Phillips Academy boy, had, unknown to each other, essayed to board the train in that same frightfully thronged station, and go to the Centennial celebration.
“I told him of my droll experience, wedged in between a dozen men and women in the smoking-car. He, it seems, was not so fortunate as I, for he took no lunch, and, like thousands of others who could buy nothing for either love or money, almost starved. I told him about our experience: how we marched with the women assembled at the town hall, led by a lady with a little flag, around the road to the tent on Battle lawn; how there we were nearly annihilated by the throng, and how at last by some good fortune I was borne up to the platform’s very edge, and stood there within a few feet of Grant and all his cabinet, and with Curtis, Emerson, and Lowell all within arm’s reach.
“How my heart beat at the sight of those faces!I have seen many famous sights since, but nothing that ever stirred my blood like that,” said Mildred, with glowing eyes. “I was scarcely more than a child, Ruby, but I stood there for two mortal hours, unable to move forward or backward, to right or left, quivering from head to foot with enthusiasm and excitement. That day my American patriotism was born. I had studied a little text-book at school, and learned names and dates; but not until under the spell of Curtis’s eloquence, and face to face with the men whose fathers had shed their blood in the brave fight one hundred years before, did I begin to realize what it all meant. I remember particularly a little old man with weather-beaten face, clad in a simple suit,—his ‘Sunday best,’—who stood beside me listening with eager, upturned face, his blue eyes filled with unshed tears. I could see his lips quiver; and once, as if carried away by the fervor of his emotion, he grasped my arm with his brown, withered hand and whispered huskily, ‘Little girl, when you get as old as I be, you’ll understand what all this means.’
“Since then,” said Mildred gravely, “the words ‘my country’ have meant something new to me. A distinctly new idea took hold of me, an idea that some time I hope to make blossom into deeds.”
I confess I was getting a little impatient for an account of the love-making, and this did not sound much like it. But after musing a bit, Mildred continued:
“This little experience which my companion andI had in common made us quickly acquainted. He frankly told me of his college life and of himself. He had been studying for the ministry, he said, though whether he was to be a clergyman or not I inferred was somewhat doubtful.
“We passed Walden Pond, gleaming like silver in the sunshine, and he talked of Thoreau, whom he seemed to know well, though I had at that time read nothing of him. Presently we rolled up to the Concord station, and while a crowd of people alighted and took the ‘barge,’ we went down one of the long, shady streets, bordered by tall hedges and close-clipped lawns, with comfortable, roomy mansions set back from the street; past the little gem of a town library, on its carpet of emerald green; past the cluster of shops and the cool-plashing fountain, and down the famous old road which saw the redcoats’ flight, and which Hosea Biglow, you remember, says he ‘most gin’ally calls “John Bull’s Run.”’
“Such a lovely, quiet old street! Dear, you must see it some day—with the broad, green meadow lands on one side, and the hill crowned with trees and vines on the other.
“‘Along this ridge lived Hawthorne’s Septimius Felton,’ said my companion.
“‘And here,’ said I, as we passed a tiny antique house on the hillside with curtains drawn, and no path through the grass that surrounded it,—‘here, I am positive, an old witch with a black cat must have lived a hundred years ago.’
“We jested and laughed as we went merrily on. We were young and happy that brilliant summer morning. I remember how every leaf sparkled with the heavy dewdrops, and the air seemed to fairly intoxicate one like a draught of wine. I was fairly brimming over with delight.
“We passed the old-fashioned white house with green blinds, peeping out from behind the pines, which I needed no one to tell me had been the home of the Concord seer; and a little further on appeared the brown-gabled house, nestled in a green hollow, and guarded by giant elms, where the Little Women lived their charming life. Just within these grounds stood the vine-covered Hillside Chapel, whither our steps were tending. We had passed little groups on our way, and now and then we caught a word of what they were saying; ‘first entelechy,’ ‘pure subjectivity,’ the ‘ding an sich,’ and so on, which in my hilarious mood served as a further theme for jest.
“As we took our seats beneath the bust of Pestalozzi and beside the comfortable arm-chair always reserved for Mrs. Emerson, I scanned the audience closely. It was not a stylish one, and I felt a little inclined to poke fun at some of the antiquated bonnets; but my attention was attracted by the evident eagerness with which my new friend was studying the face of the speaker.
“He was a middle-aged man, with close-clipped gray beard and spectacles, and a face that seemed to be the very personification of thought. Thesubject of the lecture was Immortality. I listened, vainly trying to understand, and feeling as though the essence of a thousand books was being crowded into that quiet morning’s talk. I had heard that this man was a German rationalist, and was undermining the foundations of Christianity; therefore I had prepared myself to see a cynic or a scoffer. I had thought that I would go, for once, to hear what he had to say; just to have an idea as to what it was all about. I felt all the excitement of doing something a little venturesome.
“Dear me,” laughed Mildred; “how droll it all seems now, and what an ignorant little bigot I must have been!
“I tried to follow the speaker and to get some meaning from those quiet, clear-cut sentences as they dropped from his lips, and slowly forced upon my incredulous mind the conviction that here at least was one man who spoke whereof he knew. I had never done so hard thinking in my life. He was taking me into a field of thought of which I had never dreamed, and I was as unable to follow his giant strides as a child to follow the man in seven-league boots. My temples began to throb; in despair I gave up the attempt, and fell to watching my companion as with bated breath he followed the speaker. Only one thing I remember, and that because I jotted it down on the back of an envelope at the time. He said, ‘The standpoint of absolute personality is the one to be attained. On this plane, freedom, immortality, and God are the regulativeprinciples of science as well as of life; and they are not only matters of faith, but matters of indubitable scientific certainty.’
“The lecture was nearly two hours long, and there was to be a discussion following it; but we were both exhausted with the mental strain, and quietly slipped out into the summer sunshine.
“My companion said nothing. He walked with head erect and long strides, and I felt considerably piqued to find that he seemed utterly oblivious of my presence. Presently he turned to me, and in a tone which almost startled me exclaimed, ‘Thank God for that man! More than any other man living or dead has he kept me from making utter shipwreck of my faith.’ I was surprised at his earnestness and touched by the simple frankness with which he had revealed to me, almost an utter stranger, his inmost thoughts.
“Again he seemed to forget me, and we paced on in silence, past the fountain, under gigantic elms, past the ‘town toothpick,’ as the æsthetic scoffers have dubbed the obelisk that commemorates the soldiers of the war, and turned down the road by Hawthorne’s gray old manse and through the avenue of pines, to where, stretching across the sluggish stream, we saw the
... ‘bridge that arched the flood’
... ‘bridge that arched the flood’
... ‘bridge that arched the flood’
... ‘bridge that arched the flood’
where
‘Once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.’
‘Once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.’
‘Once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.’
‘Once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.’
“Here we stopped to rest a while, under the spreading boughs of a pine-tree, beside the gravesof the two British soldiers that fell in the famous fight. We shared our sandwiches and bananas, and threw crumbs to the saucy squirrels that darted from limb to limb above our heads; and then, like two children, we trimmed our hats with daisies and buttercups from the fields close by. I watched him closely, with the pleasing consciousness that my pretty dress and new hat were noticed with evident approval on his part. Evidently he was able to enjoy some other things as well as philosophy; and when he shook back the thick blonde hair which rose from his broad forehead in a sort of Rubenstein mane, and tossed over into the fields a great stone that had fallen from the wall, I began to query whether a young man with locks and sinews like a young Norse god might not be a very fascinating type of hero.
“But I was curious to know what he meant by ‘shipwreck of his faith.’ As we picked up our various belongings (this time I noted that he asked for my bag) and walked over through the woods to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, I determined to probe him a little.
“‘Mr. Everett,’ I began, ‘don’t you think, after all, that philosophy is a rather dangerous thing for one to begin to study?’”
I smiled mischievously as Mildred inadvertently disclosed the name which hitherto she had adroitly concealed. She flushed a little, as if annoyed.
“After all,” she said, “you might as well know his name, for he has gone, heaven knows where, and I shall never see him again.”
A shade of sadness fell upon her face turned toward the firelight, but she went quietly on:
“He hesitated a moment before he answered, as if mentally to adjust himself to my plane of ignorance. Then he asked, ‘And why dangerous, Miss Brewster?’
“‘You know what I mean,’ said I, rather vexed at being obliged to put my vague thoughts into words. ‘What good can all this theorizing and speculation do? Don’t you think it would be a great deal better for all these people here to spend their time in talking about something practical? My feeling is, that people who begin to think and question about God and immortality and such things, and aren’t satisfied with the simple truths of the Bible, get to be skeptics before they know it, and are ruined for life. My mother’s religion is good enough for me. If I can live up to that I shall be satisfied, without racking my brains and reasoning over things that God intended us to take on faith.’
“To tell the truth, this didn’t exactly represent my thought; but I had often heard it said, and thought it sounded well. Besides, I was curious to see what he would reply to it.
“‘It would take hours to answer adequately what you have just said, Miss Brewster,’ replied Mr. Everett; ‘but I will try to say something; for it is precisely these same questions that I myself have been trying to answer in the last few years.’
“We were climbing the little hill that like acrescent surrounded the green hollow, where lie the sleepers in their last sleep. On the summit, beneath the tall sighing pines, beside Emerson’s grave and within a stone’s throw of the graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau, we sat down and looked over the broad valley on the other side with the hills beyond. It was so quiet, so peaceful, just where a tired soul would love to have his last resting-place.
“Mr. Everett was silent for a moment, as if to collect his thought; then, not looking at me, but afar off at the glimpses of blue between the swaying boughs, he began to speak, while I listened intently, every word fairly burning itself upon my memory. I did not rest that night until I had transmitted it all to my diary, to be read and reread over and over again.
“‘You say that your mother’s religion is good enough for you,’ he began. ‘Well, Miss Brewster, when I think of the love and devotion, of the tender prayers and wise counsels that guided my boyish waywardness, when I think of the saintliness and unselfishness of my own sainted mother, I feel like saying that, too. If I could ever have one half her spirituality and Christlikeness, I should count my life a grand success. But I cannot say, and I know that truth and justice cannot compel me to say, that my mother’s theology would be enough for me, for her life was not the outcome of much in her theology. Her unquestioning faith in a literal Adam and Eve had nothing to do with hersweetness and devotion to duty. Nor was her unwavering belief in the sacredness of everything in the sixty-six Hebrew and Christian books the cause of her infinite patience and self-sacrifice. No; I want my mother’s religion, but I cannot accept all of her theology. I should count it a sin against God if I were to so stultify my intelligence as to do it.
“‘You say, “Don’t you think all these people here had better be doing something practical?” What is more practical, I ask you, than for a human soul, to whom life is something more than meat and drink, to learn of that which more than all else concerns that soul’s welfare? And what can more help to this than the study of the wisest thought of all the ages on just these very problems of life and death, things present and things to come? As Novalis says, “Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, and Immortality.” I count that the most practical as well as the most precious help that can be offered to any questioning human soul who has come to see that man cannot live by bread alone, and whose sorest need is to know the meaning and the end of this life of ours.’
“‘But the Bible tells us that,’ I cried impatiently; ‘what more do we need?’
“‘Perhaps you need nothing more,’ he answered quietly. ‘If so, well and good. Clear insight is not essential to living a noble life. If you have really grasped the spiritual meaning of Christianityit matters little that you should hold it in a more naive and literal way than I am able to. If in this age you can accept unquestioningly everything that has been taught you, if you never have a doubt, I would be the last person to raise one, for I know what mental misery would ensue in one educated as you have been. But so long as your religious faiths have been inherited, like your hair and eyes, and you have not examined them so as to make them your own, pardon my saying that there is small virtue in your holding them, and so far as your own thought goes you might as well have been a Papist or a Mohammedan.’
“‘But what is the use of mental misery? Why should I encourage doubts and unrest? Is it not far better to trust in God and not venture to question all the strange things that he allows?’
“‘You ask two or three questions at once; let me take them one at a time. Five years ago I asked just those same questions, and I know how you feel.’ He spoke tenderly, and his voice comforted me. I was beginning to get nervous and troubled and felt myself in deep waters.
“‘No great thing is ever born into this world except by suffering. If we are put here simply for pleasure, for calm content, for peace of mind, let us banish all questioning and dread it as a precursor of the nightmare. Yes, if immediate peace of mind is the primary consideration, let us, like the ostrich, bury our heads in the sand, like the chicken refuse to pick our way through the shell, and beturned out of our warm corner into the bare, cold world outside. If peace of mind is our chief aim, let us stop thinking once for all. It is dangerous. Yes, thinking is always dangerous; dangerous to one’s love of ease and content with existing ideas. The little shoot content with its environment in the dark mould will never reach the sunlight until first it struggles upward from the conditions that surround it.
“‘Many a time in the last four years I have said to myself, in the night of horror that swept over me, when I felt as if the foundations beneath me had broken away, “whether the Bible be true, or life eternal, or God a father, I do not know; but this one thing I do know: I must be true; I must be unselfish; I must go on and seek the light;” and, thank God, I have begun to find it at last.’
“Mr. Everett spoke with a quiet intensity of feeling that awed me. However, I ventured to ask, rather timidly, ‘But you did find—you do believe in the Bible now, don’t you?’
“‘That is a question which cannot be rightly answered by a “yes” or “no,”’ he replied; ‘for neither answer would be true. I was brought up, as perhaps you were, to look upon all these matters without the slightest discrimination; to think a disbelief in Jonah’s whale synonymous with the disbelief in the divine inspiration of any part of the Bible; to think a disbeliever in the Bible necessarily a disbeliever in God; and to count a disbeliever in immortality on a par with a bigamist or a horse-thief.
“‘When I dared trust myself to think and read this book, or rather collection of books, with a calm, unprejudiced eye, I was amazed to find how much I had been taught to claim for them which they never claim for themselves. They became utterly new books to me, as if I had never read them before; wonderfully rich and helpful and inspiring and full, as I believe, of the truest religious inspiration, but not always a guide for me in history and science, and not infallible as to fact.
“‘Who shall find any authority for the doctrine that inspiration ceased with the last one of those sixty-six books? No, Miss Brewster,’ said Mr. Everett, looking at me earnestly, his shoulders thrown back, his head erect, ‘God reveals himself to man to-day just as truly in this new world as ever he did thousands of years ago to Hebrew seers.
“‘You ask why I should crave any deeper reasons for my belief in God, free will, and immortality than these writings give. Simply this: I must. At first I fought against it, fearing it to be a temptation of the devil. But I came to see that this fear, for me at least, was cowardice and folly. The command was laid upon my soul to give an adequate reason for the faith that I held, and I could not be recreant to this call of conscience. I had been told to believe the Bible because it was God’s Word, and then, following in a circle, to believe that there was a God because God’s Word proved it. It did not take me long to see the childishness of this, and though I put it off again and again,my conscience would not be stilled until I had systematically set myself to see whether or not anything could really be known, or whether inference, conjecture, and hope were all that God had vouchsafed to the creature made in his image.
“‘I suppose few women ever feel this necessity. I do not say that it is necessary for you or for any one to probe to the bottom of these things, if you are content without doing so. I think, however, that it is of the utmost importance for the thousand bewildered spirits in our day, who long to know but who cannot themselves study, to come to see that knowledge on the questions which are most vital to us all is to be had by every rational being who has time and patience and follows the right path of inquiry; and that in these matters, if we are willing to pay the cost of time and labor, we may in truth see and know.
“‘There are few who have the time or taste for any deep philosophic study. There are fewer still who have any faith in the outcome of such study, and of these few but a handful who get started on the right road and persist until they attain results. Moreover, as truly in philosophy as in religion must one be “born again”; and, unlike religious birth, it cannot be instantaneous, for it is not a matter of will. It takes years to bring about this new and deeper insight.
“‘I rarely find a person whom I would advise to study philosophy, for here, if anywhere, a little learning is a dangerous thing, and one is maddened bythe superficial talk of those who have not learned its a-b-c, but yet presume to argue as if they had mastered everything from Aristotle to Schelling. I have come to find that there are very few people who even dream of what philosophy is. The average man fancies that speculative philosophy must be simply guess-work or some vague theorizing, unworthy of a Christian man who has any practical work to do in this world in the way of earning his living and helping to hasten the kingdom of God.
“‘But the average Christian is largely materialistic in his thought. His heaven, his hell, are localities; his God a huge, anthropomorphic being, and the universe a kind of vast machine, guided by some external Power; or a sort of precipitate or sediment, as it were, of the eternal thought.
“‘If this is true of a man who professes and in some measure accepts a real spiritual faith, how much more true is it of the average worldly man of common sense! He looks upon the ground he walks on as something real. It is something that appeals to his senses, and he smiles with calm contempt if you tell him that an idea is far more real than the earth beneath his foot; that it is thought, and thought alone, that sustains this planet; and that all the things that he considers real are in fact mere passing phenomena, absolutely nothing in themselves, except as they exist in relation to other things.’
“I looked up somewhat perplexed at this and was about to ask a question, but Mr. Everett wastoo preoccupied with his own thought to notice this. Leaning his head against a gray tree-trunk, he looked with absent eyes far off at the purple hills. Presently he went on:
“‘Just as the sensualist can never understand the spiritually-minded man and his infinitely higher capacity for joy, so the man of merecommonsense can never understand the man of philosophic insight, the man of more than common sense, until he has been mentally born again, and has transcended the materialistic phase of thought in which we all begin to do our thinking, and which most of us never pass beyond. As said the man whose dust lies at our feet, “Every man’s words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part.”’
“‘But is it necessary to go through this tragic experience of which you have spoken in order to reach right results?’ I asked.
“‘Whether it be tragic or not depends upon the temperament and traditions of the individual,’ he answered.
“‘To me, brought up to know all that was possible of the loveliness of Christian character, and taught to attribute it to a theology that was more or less false, a change of belief was naturally almost as much to be dreaded as a deterioration in moral character. From the cradle I was destined for the missionary work; so you see that I had always the fear of frustrating my parents’ most cherished hopes if I should deviate from their standardof doctrine. In later years I gladly acquiesced in their desire to see me in the ministry; it seemed to me, it still seems to me, the most enviable life in the world.’
“I listened eagerly,” said Mildred, “as Mr. Everett said this. I, too, had often thought of the missionary work, but I could not leave mother then.
“‘Well, Miss Brewster,’ Mr. Everett continued; ‘I was blessed or afflicted, whichever you may please to call it, with a conscience which would not let me rest content with tacit consent to what I came to see was hardly more than a half truth, and my inward life since my senior year at Yale three years ago has been, until recently, one of bitter conflict. Night after night, after leaving the lecture-room at the seminary, have I walked my floor until morning, too wretched to pray, my brain half crazed with the ceaseless turmoil of my thoughts. “I have no message to give to others,” I said, “for I am sure of nothing; no one is sure of anything.” Like the sad Hindu king, I asked myself,
“How knowest thou aught of God,Of his favor or his wrath?Can the little fish tell what the eagle thinks,Or map out the eagle’s path?Can the finite the infinite seek?Did the blind discover the stars?Is the thought that I think a thought,Or a throb of the brain in its bars?”
“How knowest thou aught of God,Of his favor or his wrath?Can the little fish tell what the eagle thinks,Or map out the eagle’s path?Can the finite the infinite seek?Did the blind discover the stars?Is the thought that I think a thought,Or a throb of the brain in its bars?”
“How knowest thou aught of God,Of his favor or his wrath?Can the little fish tell what the eagle thinks,Or map out the eagle’s path?
“How knowest thou aught of God,
Of his favor or his wrath?
Can the little fish tell what the eagle thinks,
Or map out the eagle’s path?
Can the finite the infinite seek?Did the blind discover the stars?Is the thought that I think a thought,Or a throb of the brain in its bars?”
Can the finite the infinite seek?
Did the blind discover the stars?
Is the thought that I think a thought,
Or a throb of the brain in its bars?”
“‘But at last help came, I have told you through whom, and now as I look back upon it, I thank God for all that bitter experience. I know better how to understand and sympathize with many a one whom I have found struggling in the meshes of sophistry; earnest souls, who long for the truth more than they long for life itself, and finding no one who can do more for them than to simply say “Repent and believe.”
“‘Not that I have learned much yet. I have only begun to get glimpses of the truth. I feel sure of far less now than I did five years ago. But I know this: I do know and see beyond peradventure that it is right to probe to the uttermost the problems which confront me. I should have been false to myself, unfaithful to my highest, truest instinct, if I had listened to the tearful advice of my timid friends and turned my back and shut my eyes to what God would reveal to me. I did not know where I should be led; my knees knocked together with fear as I felt my way through the gloom. But gradually, and chiefly from the writings of that man whose teachings we heard this morning, have I learned not only to believe, but to know the truths which he taught us to-day. Some men call him skeptic, rationalist; at best they say, such talk must be unpractical. Fools! not to know that to save a soul from hopeless despair, to give life and health to an immortal spirit, is quite as practical a thing as to pave streets and cut coats.
“‘I look upon a true philosophy as the mostcompletely useful thing in the world.’ He stopped, and I looked up bewildered.
“‘Useful?’ I asked.
“‘Certainly; useful. Is not that useful which gives man a clear insight into what must otherwise be forever obscure? Is it not useful to lift him out of the domain of prejudice and mere opinion on vital matters, and give him the key to the universe by making him to know the grounds of his knowledge, of his being, and of his destiny?’
“‘But do you not believe in relying on faith at all? Do you accept nothing that you do not understand?’ I asked.
“‘I understand very few things that my reason compels me to accept,’ answered Mr. Everett. ‘I do not understand the chemical change which transmutes my food into living animal matter, and I do not understand a million things which I believe. Certainly we must have faith. All business and all life depends upon faith. But by faith I do not mean the simple credulity of my childhood in everything that I was taught. By faith I mean a steadfast reliance on what my reason tells me is true, even though I have no immediate evidence of it, and imagination and understanding fail to compass it. When I see the apparently useless suffering and cruelty which the Supreme Power has permitted, I have faith in his infinite goodness, not because any man or book has told me that it is so, but because, thank God, I see that it is so; and it is philosophic study alone which has made me seethis. He who is afraid to study and question into the nature of the universe “and trust the Rock of Ages to his chemic test” is the man who has no true faith.’
“‘But after all,’ I said, ‘you must admit that the philosophers are but little read. It is the practical, common-sense people of the world who have done the work, and they have got on very well, too, without all this theorizing.’
“‘There was never a greater mistake in the world,’ replied Mr. Everett vehemently, too deeply in earnest to remember anything but the point that he was trying to make. ‘The philosophers certainly have not been widely read, but that by no means measures their influence. It is they who have taught the teachers who have taught the masses, and as the traveler knows perhaps nothing of the inventor of the engine which carries him safely from one side of the continent to the other, and makes life larger for him in a hundred ways, so we all, reaping every day in every one of our human institutions the rich benefits which the thinkers of the ages have bestowed upon us, say ungratefully that we owe them nothing. We attribute all our speed to the visible engineer and conductor who by another man’s genius have brought us to our destinations.’
“‘Would you advise me to study philosophy?’ I inquired humbly, much impressed with the point of his reply to what I had flattered myself was a rather bright remark.
“‘That depends,’ he said, ‘on what and how you study. If you wish to study simply to be able to say or to feel that you have studied philosophy, and can quote from this or that man, I advise you not to study.’
“I must have flushed and looked a little hurt, for he quickly added, ‘Pardon me, Miss Brewster, I think that you are far too much in earnest for that; but I have seen too many begin to read philosophy as a mere amusement, a sort of fad, and with no real earnest purpose, learning just enough to make them conceited or discouraged, and doing no good to themselves or any one else, and bringing the study of philosophy into disrepute. To me my philosophy has been a search for God, for truth. I have studied for my soul’s sorest need, and in all my intellectual life I have found nothing so satisfying, nothing that gives me such hope and courage.’
“‘Should you advise me to begin with Herbert Spencer?’ I asked, thinking that I would come to something definite.
“‘No, as you value your power to grow. You are not ready for him yet. He would fascinate you, and you could not refute his fallacies; but read Plato, read Kant, Fichte, Hegel. Don’t begin with them, though. Read first, perhaps, the “Introduction to Philosophy” by the man whom we heard this morning. I will give you also an article of his which deals with Spencer in a way that opened my eyes.
“‘Don’t read much at a time, else it will utterly daunt you. Come back to it again and again at intervals. You will be astonished to see your growth. You will be surprised to find how digging at these tough problems makes such mental muscle as renders other tasks easy.
“‘It will open a new world to you; but you must have infinite patience. I have made up my mind to that. I shall be more than thankful if in twenty years I have mastered this book;’ and he drew a volume of Hegel from his pocket.
“The sun was sinking behind the trees as we rose to go homeward. Stiffened with sitting so long, I tripped and fell. He sprang and caught me in his great strong arms for one little moment; then—well—I trembled a bit with the start it had given me, and finding that my foot had really been hurt a little, I accepted his help as we descended the slope and climbed upon the other side to the road again. It seemed very pleasant to have his strong arm for a support. There had not been a word of love, but his unaffected, frank talk had touched me as no compliments or sentiment could ever have done.
“I had thought his voice rather harsh at first when he spoke so earnestly and vehemently, but it had grown very tender and quiet now, and as we came back from the woods to civilization again we lapsed into silence.”
As Mildred ceased, the clock struck midnight. The noise outside had died away, and the fire hadburned low, too low for me to distinguish her face clearly.
“And was there no love-making at all?” I asked, much disappointed at the prosaic ending of the little romance that I had been anticipating. A talk on philosophy in a graveyard was not the kind of love-making that I knew about, and I wondered if there ever were another girl like Mildred.
“Oh, I didn’t say there was any love-making,” said Mildred rather dryly. “I simply said that I think I really was in love.”
“And is that all? Did you never see him again?” I persisted.
“Yes, several times afterward,” she answered; “for I went regularly to the school after that. At first I understood almost nothing, and much of what he said was Greek to me. I met some delightful people there, but he helped me more than any one else. He loaned me books, and we had many a talk.
“I felt that we were becoming fast friends, when suddenly he went West. I received a note from him some months afterward, telling me that his parents had died; but there was very little about himself. I heard afterward that he was engaged; but after Julia died I lost all knowledge of him. Probably he has forgotten me long ago, but I owe to that talk the best things that have come to me since I was a woman. Yes, Ruby, that first April-day and that second day in midsummer in old Concord are the two red-letter days of my life.”