 | Dream life |  |
V.
Boy Religion.
IS any weak soul frightened, that I should write
of the Religion of the boy? How indeed could I
cover the field of his moral, or intellectual growth, if I
left unnoticed those dreams of futurity and of goodness,
which come sometimes to his quieter moments, and
oftener, to his hours of vexation and trouble? It
would be as wise to describe the season of Spring, with
no note of the silent influences of that burning Day-god,
which is melting day by day the shattered ice-drifts
of Winter;—which is filling every bud with succulence,
and painting one flower with crimson, and another with
white.
I know there is a feeling—by much too general as it
seems to me,—that the subject may not be approached,
and that the language which touches it, must not be
that every-day language which mirrors the vitality of
our thought,—but should have some twist of that
theologic mannerism, which is as cold to the boy, as to
the busy man of the world.
I know very well that a great many good souls will
call levity, what I call honesty; and will abjure that
familiar handling of the boy's lien upon Eternity, which
my story will show. But I shall feel sure that in
keeping true to Nature with word and with thought, I
shall in no way offend against those Highest truths, to
which all truthfulness is kindred.
You have Christian teachers, who speak always
reverently of the Bible: you grow up in the hearing
of daily prayers: nay, you are perhaps taught to say
them.
Sometimes they have a meaning, and sometimes they
have none. They have a meaning, when your heart is
troubled,—when a grief or a wrong weighs upon you:
then, the keeping of the Father, which you implore,
seems to come from the bottom of your soul; and your
eye suffuses with such tears of feeling, as you count
holy, and as you love to cherish in your memory.
But, they have no meaning, when some trifling
vexation angers you, and a distaste for all about you,
breeds a distaste for all above you. In the long hours
morning prayer; and only when evening deepens its
shadows, and your boyish vexations fatigue you to
thoughtfulness, do you dream of that coming, and
endless night, to which,—they tell you,—prayers soften
the way.
Sometimes upon a Summer Sunday, when you are
wakeful upon your seat in church, with some strong-worded
preacher, who says things that half fright you,
it occurs to you to consider how much goodness you
are made of; and whether there be enough of it after
all, to carry you safely away from the clutch of Evil?
And straightway you reckon up those friendships where
your heart lies: you know you are a true and honest
friend to Frank; and you love your mother, and your
father: as for Nelly, Heaven knows, you could not
contrive a way to love her better than you do.
You dare not take much credit to yourself for the
love of little Madge:—partly because you have sometimes
caught yourself trying—not to love her: and
partly because the black-eyed Jenny comes in the
way. Yet you can find no command in the Catechism,
to love one girl to the exclusion of all other
girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever do find it.
But, as for loving some half dozen you could name,
whose images drift through your thought, in dirty,
salmon-colored frocks, and slovenly shoes, it is quite
a lingering remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons,
utterly breaks down your hopes.
Yet, you muse again,—there are plenty of good
people as the times go, who have their dislikes, and
who speak them too. Even the sharp-talking clergyman,
you have heard say some very sour things about
his landlord, who raised his rent the last year. And
you know that he did not talk as mildly as he does in
the Church, when he found Frank and yourself quietly
filching a few of his peaches, through the orchard
fence.
But your clergyman will say perhaps, with what
seems to you, quite unnecessary coldness, that goodness
is not to be reckoned in your chances of safety;—
that there is a Higher Goodness, whose merit is All-Sufficient.
This puzzles you sadly; nor will you
escape the puzzle, until in the presence of the Home
altar, which seems to guard you, as the Lares guarded
Roman children, you feel—you cannot tell how,—
that good actions must spring from good sources; and
that those sources must lie in that Heaven, toward
which your boyish spirit yearns, as you kneel at your
mother's side.
Conscience too, is all the while approving you for
deeds well done; and,—wicked as you fear the preacher
might judge it,—you cannot but found on those deeds,
more freely, and more holily toward “Our Father in
Heaven.” Nor indeed, later in life,—whatever may be
the ill-advised expressions of human teachers—will you
ever find that Duty performed, and generous endeavor
will stand one whit in the way either of Faith, or of
Love. Striving to be good, is a very direct road
toward Goodness; and if life be so tempered by high
motive as to make actions always good, Faith is
unconsciously won.
Another notion that disturbs you very much, is
your positive dislike of long sermons, and of such
singing as they have when the organist is away.
You cannot get the force of that verse of Dr. Watts
which likens heaven to a never-ending Sabbath; you
do hope—though it seems a half wicked hope—that
old Dr. —, will not be the preacher. You think
that your heart in its best moments, craves for something
more lovable. You suggest this perhaps to
some Sunday teacher, who only shakes his head sourly,
and tells you it is a thought that the Devil is putting
in your brain. It strikes you oddly that the Devil
should be using a verse of Dr. Watts to puzzle you!
But if it be so, he keeps it sticking by your thought
very pertinaciously, until some simple utterance of
your mother about the Love that reigns in the other
waft away your doubts like a cloud.
It excites your wonder not a little, to find people
who talk gravely and heartily of the excellence of
sermons and of Church-going, do sometimes fall asleep
under it all. And you wonder—if they really like
preaching so well,—why they do not buy some of the
minister's old manuscripts, and read them over on
week-days;—or, invite the Clergyman to preach to
them in a quiet way in private?
—Ah, Clarence, you do not yet know the poor
weakness of even maturest manhood, and the feeble
gropings of the soul toward a soul's paradise, in the
best of the world! You do not yet know either that
ignorance and fear will be thrusting their untruth and
false show into the very essentials of Religion.
Again, you wonder,—if the Clergymen are all such
very good men as you are taught to believe, why it is,
that every little while people will be trying to send
them off; and very anxious to prove that instead of
being so good, they are in fact, very stupid and bad
men. At that day, you have no clear conceptions
of the distinction between stupidity and vice; and
think that a good man must necessarily say very
eloquent things. You will find yourself sadly mistaken
on this point, before you get on very far in life.
Heaven, when your mother peoples it with friends
she says, took Charlie in his arms, and is now his
Father, above the skies, seems a place to be loved, and
longed for. But—to think that Mr. Such-an-one, who
is only good on Sundays, will be there too; and to
think of his talking as he does, of a place which you
are sure he would spoil if he were there,—puzzles you
again; and you relapse into wonder, doubt and
yearning.
—And there, Clarence, for the present I shall
leave you. A wide, rich Heaven hangs above you,
but it hangs very high. A wide, rough world is
around you, and it lies very low!
I am assuming in these sketches no office of a
teacher. I am seeking only to make a truthful analysis
of the boyish thought and feeling. But having
ventured thus far into what may seem sacred ground,
I shall venture still farther, and clinch my matter with
a moral.
There is very much Religious teaching, even in so
good a country as New England, which is far too
harsh, too dry, too cold for the heart of a boy. Long
sermons, doctrinal precepts, and such tediously-worded
dogmas as were uttered by those honest, but hard-spoken
men—the Westminster Divines, fatigue, and
puzzle, and dispirit him.
They may be well enough for those strong souls
which strengthen by task-work, or for those mature
people whose iron habit of self-denial has made patience
a cardinal virtue; but they fall (experto crede) upon
the unfledged faculties of the boy, like a winter's rain
upon Spring flowers,—like hammers of iron upon lithe
timber. They may make deep impression upon his
moral nature, but there is great danger of a sad
rebound.
Is it absurd to suppose that some adaptation is
desirable? And might not the teachings of that Religion,
which is the Ægis of our moral being, be
inwrought with some of those finer harmonies of speech
and form—which were given to wise ends;—and lure
the boyish soul, by something akin to that gentleness,
which belonged to the Nazarene Teacher; and which
provided—not only, meat for men, but “milk for
babes?”
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