“‘The sermon being ended,All turned and descended;The pikes went on stealing,The eels went on eeling.Much delighted were they,But preferred the old way!’
“‘The sermon being ended,All turned and descended;The pikes went on stealing,The eels went on eeling.Much delighted were they,But preferred the old way!’
“‘The sermon being ended,All turned and descended;The pikes went on stealing,The eels went on eeling.Much delighted were they,But preferred the old way!’
“‘The sermon being ended,
All turned and descended;
The pikes went on stealing,
The eels went on eeling.
Much delighted were they,
But preferred the old way!’
“It is from St. Anthony’s sermon to the fishes, I believe, but that is all I know of the poem,” said Mr. Clare.
“Ah! there’s a deal of human nature in fishes,” said the doctor, laughing. “Well, then, what is the good of preaching?”
“There’s more good in practising, I admit; still a sermon does sometimes come back to one—like Longfellow’s Arrow, don’t you know,” replied the clergyman. “But I must say,” he added, laughing, “that I don’t set quite such a value upon preaching as some people. I should not, for example, if I had undertaken to ‘Look Backward,’ like Mr. Bellamy, have found my ideal Sunday in listening to a sermon by telephone. It doesn’t quite fulfil one’s idea of worship, however excellent the sermon.”
“Worship? why, the life they led in the year 2000 and the work they had done for the world was a better worship than if they had whined away on their knees for a month.”
“No doubt; better worship, and the best of divine service;but—I don’t believe that when men learn to work together they will cease to pray together. This new Cathedral they are going to build in New York is to me one of the grandest and most heart-cheering signs of the times; but eventhat, I hope, won’t hold the people when the day of freedom really dawns. And when poverty is abolished, and every man stands equal with his brother-man—before man and before God,—then, I believe, from that mighty host will rise such a shout of loyalty to the Captain of their Salvation as will shake the Kingdom of Death to its centre. Cannot you imagine the wild—no, not wild—the disciplined enthusiasm with which that army of industry, and therefore of liberty, shall sing,—
“‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,Great David’s greater Son,Hail, in the time appointed,His reign on earth begun.He comes to break oppression,To set the captive free;To take away transgression,And rule in equity’?
“‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,Great David’s greater Son,Hail, in the time appointed,His reign on earth begun.He comes to break oppression,To set the captive free;To take away transgression,And rule in equity’?
“‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,Great David’s greater Son,Hail, in the time appointed,His reign on earth begun.He comes to break oppression,To set the captive free;To take away transgression,And rule in equity’?
“‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,
Great David’s greater Son,
Hail, in the time appointed,
His reign on earth begun.
He comes to break oppression,
To set the captive free;
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity’?
And the new meaning there will be in so many hymns? ‘All hail the power of Jesus’ Name,’ ‘Crown Him with many crowns,’ and another, the campaign song now as then of His soldiers,—
“‘He marches in front of His banner unfurled,Which He raised that His own might find Him,And the Holy Church throughout all the worldFalls into rank behind Him.’
“‘He marches in front of His banner unfurled,Which He raised that His own might find Him,And the Holy Church throughout all the worldFalls into rank behind Him.’
“‘He marches in front of His banner unfurled,Which He raised that His own might find Him,And the Holy Church throughout all the worldFalls into rank behind Him.’
“‘He marches in front of His banner unfurled,
Which He raised that His own might find Him,
And the Holy Church throughout all the world
Falls into rank behind Him.’
Ah! Dr. Richards, you may pessimize to your heart’s content, but, nevertheless,—
“‘We march to victoryWith the Cross of the Lord before us!’”
“‘We march to victoryWith the Cross of the Lord before us!’”
“‘We march to victoryWith the Cross of the Lord before us!’”
“‘We march to victory
With the Cross of the Lord before us!’”
“I wish you did,” said the doctor. “I’d veil my crest to that Banner with the best grace in the world. But I haven’t much faith in the future.”
“You haven’t much faith in God.”
“Why, I can’t shut my eyes to facts, neither can I believe in a God who is less than omnipotent or less than perfectly good. Yet one of these hypotheses is necessary to reconcile the existence of God and the existence of evil.”
“As to omnipotence,” replied Mr. Clare, “it is a very singular thing that those whose very name for the Deity is ‘the Unknowable’ should be so ready to deny Him omnipotence, an attribute as incomprehensible by our finite minds as infinite space or everlasting time.”
“That isyourway of getting out of it,” said the doctor.
“It is simply a statement of facts. We can know of God only what He has revealed to us, through Nature, His ‘living Garment,’ through the Scriptures, and in Jesus Christ, ‘the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.’”
“Well, Nature and the Sermon on the Mount are about as much alike as chalk and cheese,” said Dr. Richards.
“‘Fire and Hail, Snow and Vapor, Wind and Storm, fulfilling His word,’” said Mr. Clare. “You’ve been reading Mill, Dr. Richards, and he has disagreed with you. I remember, too, that Tennyson represents Nature as crying,—
“‘A thousand types have gone;I care for nothing, all shall go.’
“‘A thousand types have gone;I care for nothing, all shall go.’
“‘A thousand types have gone;I care for nothing, all shall go.’
“‘A thousand types have gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.’
But Nature does care for something, and if she casts aside a thousand types, it is only as the fruit-tree casts away millions of petals which have done their work in protecting the infant fruit. Nature strives always afteronetype,oneideal; and will have attained it when man has fulfilled the command laid upon him at his creation, to ’replenish the earth and subdue it.’”
“But could not anAll-good,All-powerful Creator have prevented a great deal of sin and misery by making the world perfect in the beginning?”
“I don’t think we can reason about what God might or could have done; that belongs to the realm of the Unknowable. What we can reason about and are entirely justified—that is,made just—in trying to understand, is what He has done. He is life, therefore Nature lives, and we live. But life is evidenced by growth, and growth depends chiefly upon effort. And hence, Dr. Richards, knowledge or virtue or muscular strength must be developed in you by your own exertions, they cannot be won for you by another.”
“How about imputed righteousness?”
“There’s not a word in Scripture about imputed righteousness, though it does say that God will not impute iniquity; that is, that he sees us as we ought to be, as we will be; and that all His blows and chastisements are simply to set free this divine ideal, as a sculptor liberates the angel imprisoned in his block of marble. Does the sculptor impute roughness or lack of graceful form to the marble?”
Dr. Richards turned suddenly and looked down at his wife, who had at the moment leaned rather heavily upon his arm. Then he replied, though with lessvervethan before,—
“Well, you haven’t touchedmyspiritual optic nerve yet, Mr. Clare. How about the millions who die still in the rough, and live on in eternal torment?”
“I think you meaneverlasting, not eternal, which has nothing to do with time. And no one who used his eyes, Dr. Richards, would claim that the angel is always liberated inthislife.”
“Then, you believe”—
“What I believe, my dear friend, is of very little consequence, unless you can make it out from what Ido. And yet I do believe in the Love of God and His uncovenanted mercies, to which those He has promised and made sure are as a mote in the sunshine to the boundless atmosphere in which it floats.”
“I suppose it makes you happier,” said the doctor, with a sigh; “and I never interfere with any one’s happiness,” he added with a glance at his wife.
When the Richardses had been left at their own door, and Mr. Clare and Louis went on alone, the latter said,—
“Mr. Clare, I’d give my right hand if I could believe all you said in your sermon to-day.”
“Keep your right hand to serve God with, Louis,” was the reply. “If you were more likely to believe without it than with it, He Himself would take it from you.”
“I don’t think I am likely to believe either way,” was the boy’s reply. “You see, my father taught me to imitate Christ, to be a little Christ-child, as he called it, yet to think Christianity itself only a fairy tale. And I can’t get over the habit,” he added; “I can’tthink of Christ as alive now, or believe that He is God. To me Heis dead as King Arthur and Washington and Barbarossa are dead.”
“And when you wish to believe Him alive, is it that you may serve Him better, or that you may possess the happiness in the perpetual consciousness of His presence which others enjoy?” asked the clergyman, smiling tenderly upon the wistful face upturned to him.
“The last, of course,” returned Louis honestly, “though perhaps Icouldserve Him better, if you mean working for others,” he added.
Mr. Clare smiled. “Leave the better service to Him; He knows what He wants from you,” he said. “For the rest, Prince Louis, are you following out your father’s teaching in asking or wishinganything for yourself? Is that like Jesus Christ, who pleased not Himself?”
“Then what must I do?”
“Do what you believe,” said Mr. Clare. “In fact, neither you nor any of uscando otherwise. What we believe, that will we do; nothing else. What we do not show in our lives, we donot yetentirely believe. There is no escape from that logic, Louis, terrible though it be.” He paused, hesitated, then went on with a smile. “For I have just shown you that you have not been living up to what faith you have, which is, after all, not a little. Therefore, you see, it fails just so far of being a real faith, and you cannot ask for more until you have made the most of what you already have. Only go on working, not thinking at all of yourself, living for others, and some day—if not in this world, at least in the next—your eyes will be opened like those of the disciples at Emmaus, and you will say, ‘Did not my heart burn within me, while He talked with me by the way?’”
“In the next world!” said Louis thoughtfully. “But if there be no other world, Mr. Clare?”
“Ah! my boy, that you must be content to take—yet a while—on trust. When your eyes see the King in His beauty, the land that is very far off will become a reality to you; not until. The best—I was about to say the sole—argument for immortality is my text of this morning: ‘Because He lives, we shall live also.’ ‘And this is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.’”
“I’m like Dr. Richards,” said Louis, smiling sadly. “You don’t touch my spiritual optic nerve. But I am glad you tell meto do, Mr. Clare, for I want to believe, and cannot. Yet the Herr Pastor told me once,” he continued, smiling, “not to put my trust in anything that I did, for that my righteousness was as filthy rags, and that I must believe in order to be saved.”
“The Herr Pastor was quite right, my boy. Your righteousness, and mine also,isas filthy rags compared with His, and compared also with the wedding garment in which we shall sit down to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And have I not told you that, as your faith grows, your salvation from sin grows also? I have not told you that you will ever be able tosaythat you believe in this world, because I have known of so many whose lives have acknowledged Him while their lips, to their latest breath, denied Him. Am I a poor comforter, Louis?” he added kindly, as the boy looked down and sighed.
“No, no; I was thinking of Dr. Richards. He is one of those men you spoke of, and, perhaps, never will believe as you do.”
“Frederick Richards is one of the bravest men I ever knew,” said Mr. Clare.
He was a very silent man for the next few days; also very gentle and tender towards all around him, especiallyhis wife, whom he watched as she went about the house or sat at work beside him, with eyes of wistful comprehension. It was not until the week was nearly gone that she crept up to him one evening, in the early twilight, and silently laid her head upon his breast.
“Yes, my dear, yes,” he said tenderly. “I know all about it, Alice; there is little about yourself that you need to tell me in words, after all these years. But we had better not talk about it, I think; for I might say something to disturb your faith once more, and I should be sorry to do that.”
“I don’t think you could,now,” she replied. “It is no new thing, Fred; I think it has been growing within me for a long time. And it is not such faith as I thought I had once.”
“As you thought you had?”
“It was little more than thinking; I did not know what belief really meant. Oh, don’t say we must not talk about it, dear; I cannot bear any forbidden subjects between usnow.”
He drew her nearer, and kissed her, smiling. “Now?” he asked gently.
“It seems as though I had never loved you until now,” she replied. “Years ago—oh, Fred, can you forgive me!—I believed, as I had been taught, that it was a sin to marry an infidel; but it would have killed me to give you up, and so I did what I thought wrong in defiance.”
“Not quite that, I think,” he said tenderly. “It was only that your heart was stronger than your theology, that’s all.”
“One was true, and therefore did the truth, and the other was false,” she replied. “But then, when trouble came, I looked upon it as punishment, or, rather, vengeance, for what was no sin at all. As if I were so muchholier than you,” she cried indignantly; “you whose noble life taught me the emptiness and selfishness of my own. ‘Unequally yoked together!’ If we have been, the superiority has been on your side. If truth be life, you have more of it than I; and I have looked up to you and learned of you always.”
“Until now?” he said rather sadly.
“Oh! Fred, you have much to teach me yet. It is you who see things as they are, truly, purely, nobly; and I whose eyes are blinded by the mists of earth. Only in one thing I have the advantage of you.”
“And that?” he asked.
She rose to her feet,—for till then she had knelt beside his chair,—and, drawing his head to her bosom, kissed him with such kisses as in all their life together she had never before given him.
“Iknowthat you are mine now, and always, for life and death, for time and eternity,” she cried passionately. “I am not afraid to let myself love you now that neither life nor death can ever come between us. God has given you back to me, my husband!”