LETTER XXXIV.
To Henry Colden.
Philadelphia, November 18.
How little is the equanimity or patience that nature has
allotted me? thy entrance now would find me quite peevish.
Yet I do not fear thy entrance. Always anxious as I am
to be amiable in your eyes, I am at no pains to conceal from
you that impatience which now vexes my soul, because it
is your absence that occasions it.
I sat alone on the sofa below, for a whole hour. Not
once was the bell rung—not once did my fluttering heart
answer to footsteps in the passage. I had no need to start
up at the opening of the parlor door, and to greet, as distinctly
as the joyous tumult of my bosom would suffer me,
the much loved, long expected visitant.
Yet deceived, by my fond heart, into momentary forgetfulness
of the interval of a hundred miles that lies between
us, more than once cast I a glance behind me, and started,
as if the hoped-for peal had actually been rung.
Tired, at length, of my solitude, where I had enjoyed
your company so often, I covered up the coals, and withdrew
to my chamber. And here, said I, though I cannot
talk to him, yet I can write.
But first, I read over again this cruel letter of my mother.
I weighed all the contents, and especially those
heavy charges against you.
How does it fall out that the same object is viewed by
two observers with such opposite sensations. That what
one hates, the other should doat upon? two of the same
sex; one cherished from infancy; reared; modelled;
taught to think; feel, and even to speak, by the other;
acting till now, and even now, acting, in all respects bu
one, in inviolable harmony; that two such should jar and
thwart each other, in a point, too, in respect to which, the
whole tendency and scope of the daughter's education was
to produce a fellow feeling with the mother. How hard to
be accounted for! how deeply to be rued!
I sometimes catch myself trembling with solicitude lest I
should have erred. Am I not betrayed by passion? can I
claim the respect due to that discernment which I once
boasted?
I cannot blame my mother. She acts and determines,
as I sometimes believe, without the benefits of my knowledge.
Did she know as much as I know, surely she would
think as I do.
In general, this conclusion seems to be just; but there
are moments when doubts insinuate themselves. I cannot
help remembering the time when I reasoned like my mother;
when the belief of a christian seemed essential to
every human excellence. All qualities, without that belief,
were not to be despised as useless, but to be abhorred as
pernicious. There would be no virtue, no merit, divorced
from religion. In proportion to the speciousness of his
qualities was he to be dreaded. The fruit, whatever form
it should assume, was nothing within but bane, and was to
be detested and shunned in proportion as the form was fair
and its promises delicious.
I seldom trusted myself to inquire how it was my duty to
act towards one whom I loved, but who was destitute of this
grace, for of such moment was the question to me, that I
imagined the decision would necessarily precede all others.
I could not love, till I had investigated this point, and no
force could oblige me to hold communion with a soul, whom
this defect despoiled of all beauty and devoted to perdition.
But what now is the change that time and passion have
wrought. I have found a man without religion. What I
supposed impossible, has happened. I love the man. I
cannot give him up. The mist that is before my eyes, does
not change what was once vice into virtue. I do not cease
to regard unbelief as the blackest stain; as the most deplorable
calamity that can befall a human creature, but still
I love the man, and that fills me with unconquerable zeal
to rescue him from this calamity.
But my mother interferes. She reminds me of the horror
which I once entertained for men of your tenets. She
enjoins me to hate you, or to abhor myself for loving one
worthy of nothing but hatred.
I cannot do either. My heart is still yours, and it is a
voluntary captive. I would not free it from its thraldom, if
I could. Neither do I think its captivity dishonors it.
Time, therefore, has wrought some change. I can now discover
some merit; something to revere and to love, even
in a man without religion. I find my whole soul penetrated
with zeal for his welfare. There is no scheme which I
muse upon with half the constancy or pleasure, as that of
curing his errors, and I am confident of curing them.
"Ah Jane!" says my mother; "rash and presumptuous
girl! What a signal punishment hangs over thee. Thou wilt
trust thyself within the toils of the grand deceiver. Thou
wilt enter the list with his subtleties. Vain and arrogant,
thou fearest not thy own weakness. Thou wilt stake thy
eternal lot upon thy triumph in argument against one, who,
in spite of all his candor and humility, has his pride and his
passions engaged on the side of his opinions.
"Subtle wretch!" does she exclaim, "accomplished villain!
How nicely does he select; how adroitly manage his
tools! He will oppose, only to yield more gracefully. He
will argue, only that the rash simpleton may the more congratulate
herself upon her seeming victory! How easy is
the verbal assent! the equivocating accent. The hesitating
air! These he will assume whenever it is convenient to lull
your fears and gratify your vanity, and nothing but the uniformity
of his conduct, his continuance in the same ignominious
and criminal path, will open your eyes, and shew
you that only grace from above can reach his obdurate
heart, or dart a ray into his benighted faculties."
Will you be surprised that I shudder when my mother
urges me in this strain, with her customary energy. Always
wont to be obsequious to the very turn of her eye, and to
make her will, not only the regulator of my actions, but the
criterion of my understanding; it is impossible not to hesitate;
to review all that has passed between us, and reconsider
anew the motives that have made me act as I have
acted.
Yet the review always confirms me in my first opinion.
You err, but are not obstinate in error. If your opinions be
adverse to religion, your affections are not wholly estranged
from it. Your understanding dissents, but your heart is
not yet persuaded to refuse. You have powers, irresistible
in whatever direction they are bent; capable of giving the
highest degree of misery or happiness to yourself and to
others. At present they are misdirected or inactive. They
are either pernicious or useless.
How can I, who have had ample opportunities of knowing
you, stand by with indifference while such is your state?
I love you, it is true. All your felicity and all your woe
become mine. I have a selfish interest in your welfare. I
cannot bear the thought of passing through this world, or of
entering any future world, without you. My heart has tried
in vain to create a separate interest; to draw consolation
from a different source. Hence indifference to your welfare
is impossible. But would not indifference, even if no
extraordinary tie subsisted between us, be criminal? What
becomes of our obligation to do good to others, if we do not
exert ourselves, when all the means are in our power, to confer
the most valuable of all benefits; to remove the greatest
of all ills?
Of what stuff must that heart be made which can behold,
unmoved, genius and worth, destitute of the joys and energies
of religion; wandering in a maze of passions and
doubts; devoured by fantastic repinings and vague regrets.
Drearily conscious of wanting a foundation whereon to repose;
a guide in whom to trust. What heart can gaze at
such a spectacle without unspeakable compassion.
Not to have our pity and our zeal awakened, seems to
me to argue the utmost depravity of heart. No stronger
proof can be given that we ourselves are destitute of true
religion. The faith or the practice must be totally wanting.
We may talk devoutly; we may hie, in due season, to the
house of prayer; while there, we may put on solemn visages
and mutter holy names. We may abstain from profane
amusements, or unauthorized words; we may shun, as infectious,
the company of unbelievers. We may study homilies
and creeds; but all this, without
rational activity for
others' good, is not religion. I see, in all this, nothing that
I am accustomed to call by that name.
I see nothing but a narrow selfishness; sentiments of fear
degrading to the Deity; a bigotry that contracts the view;
that freezes the heart; that shuts up the avenues to benevolent
and generous feeling. This buckram stiffness does not
suit me. Out upon such monastic parade. I will have
none of it.
But then, it seems, there is danger to ourselves from
such attempts. In trying to save another from drowning,
may we not sometimes be drawn in ourselves? Are we
not taught to deprecate, not only evil, but temptation to
evil?
What madness to trust our convictions, in a point of such
immense importance, to the contest of argument with one of
superior subtlety and knowledge. Is there not presumption
in such a trust?
Excellent advice is this to the mass of women; to those
to whom habit or childish fear or parental authority has
given their faith; who never doubted or inquired or reasoned
for themselves. How easily is such a fabric to be overturned.
It can only stand by being never blown upon.
The least breath disperses it in air; the first tide washes it
away.
Now, I entertain no reverence for such a bubble. In
some sense, the religion of the timorous and uninquisitive, is
true. In another sense it is false. Considering the proofs
on which it reposes, it is false, since it merely originates in
deference to the opinions of others, wrought into belief by
means of habit. It is on a level, as to the proof which
supports it, with the wildest dreams of savage superstition,
or the fumes of a dervise's fanaticism.
As to me, I was once just such a pretty fool in this respect,
as the rest of my sex. I was easily taught to regard religion
not only as the safeguard of every virtue, but even as the
test of a good understanding. The name of infidel was
never mentioned but with abhorrence or contempt. None
but a profligate, a sensualist, a ruffian, could disbelieve.
Unbelief was a mere suggestion of the grand deceiver, to
palliate or reconcile us to the unlimited indulgence of our
appetites, and the breach of every moral duty. Hence it
was never steadfast or sincere. An adverse fortune or a
death-bed, usually put an end to the illusion.
Thus I grew up, never beset by any doubts; never venturing
on inquiry. My knowledge of you, put an end to
this state of superstitious ignorance. In you I found, not
one that disbelieved, but one that doubted. In all your demeanor
there was simplicity and frankness. You concealed
not your sentiments; you obtruded them not upon my
hearing. When called upon to state the history of your
opinions, it was candidly detailed; with no view of gaining
my concurrence, but merely to gratify my curiosity.
From my remonstrances you never averted your ear.
Every proof of an unprejudiced attention, and even of a
bias favorable to my opinions, was manifest. Your own experience
had half converted you already. Your good sense
was for a time the sport of a specious theory. You became
the ardent and bold champion of what you deemed truth.
But a closer and longer view insensibly detected flaws and
discords where all had formerly been glossy smoothness and
ravishing harmony. Diffidence and caution, worthy of your
youth and inexperience, had resumed their place; and those
errors, of which your own experience of their consequences
had furnished the antidote, which your own reflections had
partly divested of illusion, had only been propitious to your
advancement in true wisdom.
What had I to fear from such an adversary? What might
I not hope from perseverence? What expect but new clearness
to my own convictions; new and more accurate views
of my powers and habits?
In order to benefit you, I was obliged to scrutinize the
foundation of my own principles. I found nothing but a
void. I was astonished and alarmed; and instantly set myself
to the business of inquiry. How could I hope to work
on your convictions without a suitable foundation for my
own?
And see now my friend the blindness of our judgments.
I who am imagined to incur such formidable perils from intercourse
with you, am, in truth, indebted to you alone for
all my piety; all of it that is permanent and rational. Without
those apprehensions which your example inspired, without
that zeal for your conversion which my attachment to
you has produced, what would now have been my claims to
religious knowledge?
Had I never extorted from you your doubts, and the
occasion of these doubts; had I never known the most powerful
objections to religion from your lips, I should have been
no less ignorant of the topics and arguments favorable to it.
And I think I may venture to ascribe to myself no less a
progress in candor than in knowledge. My belief is stronger
than it ever was, but, I no longer hold in scorn or abhorrence
those who differ from me. I perceive the speciousness of
those fallacies by which they are deluded. I find it possible
for men to disbelieve and yet retain their claims to our reverence,
our affection, and especially our good offices.
Those whom I once thought were only to be hated and
shunned, I now find worthy of compassionate efforts for their
good. Those whom I once imagined sunk beneath the
reach of all succor, and to merit scarcely the tribute of a
sigh for their lost estate, now appear to be easily raised to
tranquillity and virtue, and to have irresistible claims to our
help.
In no respect has your company made me a worse, in
every respect it has made me a better woman. Not only
my piety has become more rational and fervent, but a new
spring has been imparted to my languishing curiosity. To
find a soul, to whom my improvement will give delight;
eager to direct and assist my inquiries; delicately liberal no
less of censure when merited, than of praise where praise is
due; entering, almost without the help of language from me,
into my inmost thoughts; assisting me, if I may so speak,
to comprehend myself; and raising to a steadfast and bright
flame, the spark that my wayward fancy, left to itself, would
have instantaneously emitted and lost.—
But why do I again attempt this impossible theme. While
reflecting on my debt to thee, my heart becomes too big for
its mansion. My hand falters, and the characters it traces,
run into an illegible scrawl.
My tongue only is fitted for such an office; and Heaven
grant that you may speedily return to me, and put an end
to a solitude, which every hour makes more irksome.
