University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
THE REVEREND DOCTOR CALLS ON BROTHER FAIRWEATHER.

For the last few months, while all these various
matters were going on in Rockland, the Reverend
Chauncy Fairweather had been busy with
the records of ancient councils and the writings
of the early fathers. The more he read, the more
discontented he became with the platform upon
which he and his people were standing. They
and he were clearly in a minority, and his deep
inward longing to be with the majority was
growing into an engrossing passion. He yearned
especially towards the good old unquestioning,
authoritative Mother Church, with her articles of
faith which took away the necessity for private
judgment, with her traditional forms and ceremonies,
and her whole apparatus of stimulants
and anodynes.

About this time he procured a breviary and
kept it in his desk under the loose papers. He
sent to a Catholic bookstore and obtained a small
crucifix suspended from a string of beads. He
ordered his new coat to be cut very narrow in

the collar and to be made single-breasted. He
began an informal series of religious conversations
with Miss O'Brien, the young person of
Irish extraction already referred to as Bridget,
maid of all work. These not proving very satisfactory,
he managed to fall in with Father McShane,
the Catholic priest of the Rockland church.
Father McShane encouraged his nibble very scientifically.
It would be such a fine thing to bring
over one of those Protestant heretics, and a
“liberal” one too! — not that there was any real
difference between them, but it sounded better
to say that one of these rationalizing free-and-equal
religionists had been made a convert than
any of those half-way Protestants who were the
slaves of catechisms instead of councils and of
commentators instead of popes. The subtle
priest played his disciple with his finest tackle.
It was hardly necessary: when anything or anybody
wishes to be caught, a bare hook and a
coarse line are all that is needed.

If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish
to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon
becoming a slave, nothing can stop him. And the
temptation is to some natures a very great one.
Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves
that necessity for perpetual choice which is
the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In
common life we shirk it by forming habits, which
take the place of self-determination. In politics
party-organization saves us the pains of much

thinking before deciding how to cast our vote.
In religious matters there are great multitudes
watching us perpetually, each propagandist ready
with his bundle of finalities, which having accepted
we may be at peace. The more absolute the
submission demanded, the stronger the temptation
becomes to those who have been long tossed
among doubts and conflicts.

So it is that in all the quiet bays which indent
the shores of the great ocean of thought, at every
sinking wharf, we see moored the hulks and the
razees of enslaved or half-enslaved intelligences.
They rock peacefully as children in their cradles
on the subdued swell which comes feebly in over
the bar at the harbor's mouth, slowly crusting
with barnacles, pulling at their iron cables as if
they really wanted to be free, but better contented
to remain bound as they are. For these no more
the round unwalled horizon of the open sea,
the joyous breeze aloft, the furrow, the foam, the
sparkle that track the rushing keel! They have
escaped the dangers of the wave, and lie still
henceforth, evermore. Happiest of souls, if lethargy
is bliss, and palsy the chief beatitude!

America owes its political freedom to religious
Protestantism. But political freedom is reacting
on religious prescription with still mightier
force. We wonder, therefore, when we find a
soul which was born to a full sense of individual
liberty, an unchallenged right of self-determination
on every new alleged truth offered to its

intelligence, voluntarily surrendering any portion
of its liberty to a spiritual dictatorship which always
proves to rest, in the last analysis, on a
majority vote, nothing more nor less, commonly
an old one, passed in those barbarous times
when men cursed and murdered each other for
differences of opinion, and of course were not in
a condition to settle the beliefs of a comparatively
civilized community.

In our disgust, we are liable to be intolerant.
We forget that weakness is not in itself a sin.
We forget that even cowardice may call for our
most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate
infirmity. Who of us does not look with great
tenderness on the young chieftain in the “Fair
Maid of Perth,” when he confesses his want of
courage? All of us love companionship and sympathy;
some of us may love them too much. All
of us are more or less imaginative in our theology.
Some of us may find the aid of material
symbols a comfort, if not a necessity. The
boldest thinker may have his moments of languor
and discouragement, when he feels as if he
could willingly exchange faiths with the old beldame
crossing herself at the cathedral-door, —
nay, that, if he could drop all coherent thought,
and lie in the flowery meadow with the brown-eyed
solemnly unthinking cattle, looking up to
the sky, and all their simple consciousness staining
itself blue, then down to the grass, and life
turning to a mere greenness, blended with confused

scents of herbs,— no individual mind-movement
such as men are teased with, but the great
calm cattle-sense of all time and all places that
know the milky smell of herds, — if he could be
like these, he would be content to be driven home
by the cow-boy, and share the grassy banquet of
the king of ancient Babylon. Let us be very
generous, then, in our judgment of those who
leave the front ranks of thought for the company
of the meek non-combatants who follow with the
baggage and provisions. Age, illness, too much
wear and tear, a half-formed paralysis, may bring
any of us to this pass. But while we can think
and maintain the rights of our own individuality
against every human combination, let us not
forget to caution all who are disposed to waver
that there is a cowardice which is criminal, and
a longing for rest which it is baseness to indulge.
God help him, over whose dead soul in his living
body must be uttered the sad supplication,
Requiescat in pace!

A knock at the Reverend Mr. Fairweather's
study-door called his eyes from the book on which
they were intent. He looked up, as if expecting
a welcome guest.

The Reverend Pierrepont Honeywood, D. D.,
entered the study of the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather.
He was not the expected guest. Mr.
Fairweather slipped the book he was reading into
a half-open drawer, and pushed in the drawer.

He slid something which rattled under a paper
lying on the table. He rose with a slight change
of color, and welcomed, a little awkwardly, his
unusual visitor.

“Good evening, Brother Fairweather!” said
the Reverend Doctor, in a very cordial, good-humored
way. “I hope I am not spoiling one of
those eloquent sermons I never have a chance to
hear.”

“Not at all, not at all,” the younger clergyman
answered, in a languid tone, with a kind of habitual
half-querulousness which belonged to it, —
the vocal expression which we meet with now
and then, and which says as plainly as so many
words could say it, “I am a suffering individual.
I am persistently undervalued, wronged, and imposed
upon by mankind and the powers of the
universe generally. But I endure all. I endure
you. Speak. I listen. It is a burden to me, but
I even approve. I sacrifice myself. Behold this
movement of my lips! It is a smile.”

The Reverend Doctor knew this forlorn way of
Mr. Fairweather's, and was not troubled by it.
He proceeded to relate the circumstances of his
visit from the old black woman, and the fear she
was in about the young girl, who being a parishioner
of Mr. Fairweather's, he had thought it best
to come over and speak to him about old Sophy's
fears and fancies.

In telling the old woman's story, he alluded
only vaguely to those peculiar circumstances to

which she had attributed so much importance,
taking it for granted that the other minister must
be familiar with the whole series of incidents she
had related. The old minister was mistaken, as
we have before seen. Mr. Fairweather had been
settled in the place only about ten years, and,
if he had heard a strange hint now and then
about Elsie, had never considered it as anything
more than idle and ignorant, if not malicious, village-gossip.
All that he fully understood was
that this had been a perverse and unmanageable
child, and that the extraordinary care which had
been bestowed on her had been so far thrown
away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl,
whom all feared and almost all shunned, as if she
carried with her some malignant influence.

He replied, therefore, after hearing the story,
that Elsie had always given trouble. There
seemed to be a kind of natural obliquity about
her. Perfectly unaccountable. A very dark case.
Never amenable to good influences. Had sent
her good books from the Sunday-school library.
Remembered that she tore out the frontispiece of
one of them, and kept it, and flung the book out
of the window. It was a picture of Eve's temptation;
and he recollected her saying that Eve
was a good woman, — and she'd have done just
so, if she'd been there. A very sad child, — very
sad; bad from infancy. — He had talked himself
bold, and said all at once, —

“Doctor, do you know I am almost ready to

accept your doctrine of the congenital sinfulness
of human nature? I am afraid that is the only
thing which goes to the bottom of the difficulty.”

The old minister's face did not open so approvingly
as Mr. Fairweather had expected.

“Why, yes, — well, — many find comfort in it,
— I believe; — there is much to be said, — there
are many bad people, — and bad children, — I
can't be so sure about bad babies, — though they
cry very malignantly at times, — especially if
they have the stomach-ache. But I really don't
know how to condemn this poor Elsie; she may
have impulses that act in her like instincts in the
lower animals, and so not come under the bearing
of our ordinary rules of judgment.”

“But this depraved tendency, Doctor, — this
unaccountable perverseness. My dear Sir, I am
afraid your school is in the right about human nature.
Oh, those words of the Psalmist, `shapen
in iniquity,' and the rest! What are we to do
with them, — we who teach that the soul of a
child is an unstained white tablet?”

“King David was very subject to fits of humility,
and much given to self-reproaches,” said the
Doctor, in a rather dry way. “We owe you and
your friends a good deal for calling attention to
the natural graces, which, after all, may, perhaps,
be considered as another form of manifestation
of the divine influence. Some of our writers have
pressed rather too hard on the tendencies of the
human soul toward evil as such. It may be questioned

whether these views have not interfered
with the sound training of certain young persons,
sons of clergymen and others. I am nearer of
your mind about the possibility of educating
children so that they shall become good Christians
without any violent transition. That is what I
should hope for from bringing them up `in the
nurture and admonition of the Lord.'”

The younger minister looked puzzled, but presently
answered, —

“Possibly we may have called attention to
some neglected truths; but, after all, I fear we
must go to the old school, if we want to get at
the root of the matter. I know there is an outward
amiability about many young persons, some
young girls especially, that seems like genuine
goodness; but I have been disposed of late to
lean toward your view, that these human affections,
as we see them in our children, — ours, I
say, though I have not the fearful responsibility
of training any of my own, — are only a kind of
disguised and sinful selfishness.”

The old minister groaned in spirit. His heart
had been softened by the sweet influences of
children and grandchildren. He thought of a
half-sized grave in the burial-ground, and the
fine, brave, noble-hearted boy he laid in it thirty
years before, — the sweet, cheerful child who had
made his home all sunshine until the day when
he was brought into it, his long curls dripping, his
fresh lips purpled in death, — foolish dear little

blessed creature to throw himself into the deep
water to save the drowning boy, who clung about
him and carried him under! Disguised selfishness!
And his granddaughter too, whose disguised
selfishness was the light of his household!

“Don't call it my view!” he said. “Abstractly,
perhaps, all natures may be considered vitiated;
but practically, as I see it in life, the divine
grace keeps pace with the perverted instincts from
infancy in many natures. Besides, this perversion
itself may often be disease, bad habits transmitted,
like drunkenness, or some hereditary misfortune,
as with this Elsie we were talking about.”

The younger minister was completely mystified.
At every step he made towards the Doctor's recognized
theological position, the Doctor took just
one step towards his. They would cross each
other soon at this rate, and might as well exchange
pulpits, — as Colonel Sprowle once wished
they would, it may be remembered.

The Doctor, though a much clearer-headed man,
was almost equally puzzled. He turned the conversation
again upon Elsie, and endeavored to
make her minister feel the importance of bringing
every friendly influence to bear upon her at this
critical period of her life. His sympathies did
not seem so lively as the Doctor could have
wished. Perhaps he had vastly more important
objects of solicitude in his own spiritual interests.

A knock at the door interrupted them. The

Reverend Mr. Fairweather rose and went towards
it. As he passed the table, his coat caught something,
which came rattling to the floor. It was a
crucifix with a string of beads attached. As he
opened the door, the Milesian features of Father
McShane presented themselves, and from their
centre proceeded the clerical benediction in Irish-sounding
Latin, Pax vobiscum!

The Reverend Doctor Honeywood rose and left
the priest and his disciple together.