LETTER XII.
Extract from a letter from Charles Clarence.
Somewhersburgh, Intermediate Purchase.
Dear Robert,— * * * but you have turned theologian.
Suppose we tax your time and patience on some of
our clerical topics? What if I ask whether you believe in
Special Providences?
By the way, how do you get so much into company with
learned doctors of medicine? Do you go among the learned
gentlemen of the law, too, dear Robert? I know you like
our cloth as well as ever; but our model Bishop, poor Shrub,
is gone clean over the dam. Alas! I had learned to love
him, from many years' intimate acquaintance, and I love him
yet; but being an orthodox man myself, of the stern old
school divinity, I can but condemn the bishop now. His
mind seems of such a nature as to fill entirely up with one
idea at a time, to the exclusion of all cautions, exceptions, and
consequences; making him forgetful, that in most matters,
the truth and its value to us, is in the whole and not the part;
as if a man should contend that the hand or the foot was all.
Separately, things may be useless, or pernicious, or false,
which, when combined, are the whole truth and nothing but
the truth. Our friend seems not to take the whole at once;
although like your circumferential men he bids fair to go the
whole figure in another way. And yet, we may rather call
him tangential, for he flies off continually, first in one direction,
and then in another. Let us hope, however, that after
having fairly run down all his hobbies he will, weary with the
exercise, return to the good old way. Perhaps if his friends
prayed more for him, and scolded less, we should again have
him among us, preaching as before. For my part, Robert,
I dare not say he went out from us because he was not of us;
because his spirit is so like that of a Christian, as to make
one hope all his aberrations may yet be consistent with grace
in the heart—at all events I will never voluntarily tear him
from our charity—God be his judge.
You draw occasionally, dear Robert, incorrect inferences
from certain remarks in my letters. With you I full well
know how easy it is for “the mighty to fall,” and “the fine
gold to become dim;” but I act not from mere curiosity,
philosophy is often my aim. You need not fancy yourself a
nonpareil, so infallible and immaculate, and talk to your fellows
as if ninnies, and the like. Set not up for a Pope, or we
will send you an old lady's scarlet undergown and her night
cap for a tiara—fit vestments for infallibility, Mr. Carlton.
Robert, is there nobody in your settlement able to write
down Fourierism? Are you aware that, stripped from all disguises
and under any name, and all modifications, it is a
covert system of bideous infidelity? We have looked into
the thing more narrowly since the vile community was established
at Squabbleton, near Somewhersburg, and the result
of our peep is, among other matters, a conviction that their
women will become in time as shameless as the ancient Spartan
women, who were notorious and infamous throughout all
Greece. A community in goods does very well to start with,
but it becomes before long a community in persons. The
fellows at Squabbleton cultivate their passions! hence it is
not very surprising that they learn to
indulge the same. But
some of these shameless immoralists do not blush, in admitting
consequences, and that for a very good reason—they
have discovered that lewdness is a virtue! A church allowing
such virtues would be wonderfully crowded! That is a
very ingenious philosophy that makes evil good, and calls
darkness light; and it has the advantage of enlisting human
nature in its favor and may plead that it is the most
natural
philosophy.
But some of the discoveries are beyond even the vastness
of the great nineteenth itself:—they have discovered
the dirt age! If association succeeds, all juveniles from
nine to twelve or thereabouts, will as naturally fall to cleaning
gutters, hog-sties and the like, as the seniors will to lying,
stealing, and licentiousness! In that case, these philosophers
will have the glory of commencing the dirt century, and of
“glorying in shame!” Then all the legitimate illegitimates
may riot in the warm sunshine of their life as maggots in a
rotten carcass! And then—stupendous thought!—orphanage
will cease!—the tears of widows be unknown!—the
mourning of fathers ended!—for every child, instead of being
fatherless and motherless, may claim any of a thousand
men and women as progenitors!—and thousands of men and
women will even smile with parental love on swarms of
interesting little ones, all brothers, all sisters, like so many
small pigs squealing and grunting through community.
Infidelity! Behind thy smooth, hypocritical blandness,
some see thee as thou art—a fool and a liar! The wicked
and the godless thou wilt ever beguile, but the prayerful
never. May Heaven confound thee, and blight and scatter
all thy shallow schemes and plots. Farewell!
