University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
I JOIN A CHURCH THAT LEAVES OUT MR. BRADFORD AND
MILLIE.

How shall I write the history of the few weeks that followed
my new experience? I had risen, as on wings, from the depths
of despair to the heights of hope. I had emerged from a valley
of shadows, haunted by ten thousand forms of terror and shapes
of anguish, and sat down upon the sunny hills of peace. The
world, which had become either mocking or meaningless to me,
was illuminated with loving expression in every feature. Far
above the deep blue of the winter skies my imagination caught
the sheen of winged forms and the far echoes of happy angel-voices.
I lifted my face to the sun, and, shutting my eyes, felt
the smile of God upon me. Every wind that blew brought its
ministry of blessing. Every cloud that swept the sky bore its
message of good-will from heaven. I loved life, I loved the
world, I loved every living thing I saw, and, more than all, I
loved the Great Father who had bestowed upon me such gracious
gifts of hope and healing.

Mrs. Sanderson, though she had said little, and had received
no confidence from me, had been troubled for many weeks.
She had seen in my haggard eyes and weary look the evidences
of a great trial and struggle; but without the power to enter
into it, or to help me out of it, she had never done more than
to ask me if, for my health's sake, it would not be better for
me to attend fewer meetings and take more sleep. The weeks
that followed were only more satisfactory to her from the conviction
that I was happier, for I gave myself with hearty zeal
to the work which I felt had been imposed upon me.

My father was happy in my new happiness, never doubting

that it had come to me through the Grace of Heaven. I was
assured on every hand that I had passed through that change
of regeneration which was the true basis in me, and in many at
least, of the new life. Meeting Mr. Bradford, I spoke freely to
him of my change, and he told me with a sigh that he was glad
I was at peace. He evidently did not say all that he felt, but
he said nothing to discourage me.

It soon became known to Mr. Grimshaw and the members
of his church that I had become a convert, and I found abundant
opportunities at once to exercise such gifts as I possessed
to induce others to drink at the fountain from which I had
drawn such draughts of peace and pleasure, I prayed in public;
I exhorted; I went from one to another of my own age
with personal persuasions. Nay, I was alluded to and held up,
in public and private, as one of the most notable of the trophies
which had been won in the great struggle with the powers of
darkness through which the church had passed.

I look back now upon the public life that I lived in those
youthful days with wonder. Audiences that I then faced and
addressed without embarrassment would now send fever into
my lips and tongue, or strike me dumb. I rejoiced then in a
prominence from which I should now shrink with a sensitiveness
of pain quite insupportable. I was the youthful marvel of the
town; and people flocked again to the church where I was to
be seen and heard as if a new Bedlow had come down to them
from the skies.

This publicity did not please Mrs. Sanderson, but she saw
farther, alas! than I did, and knew that such exaltation could
not be perpetual. Could I have had a wise counsellor then,
it would have saved me years of wandering and years of sorrow.
The tendency of this public work was to make me vain, and
induce a love of the sound of my own voice. Without experience,
flattered by attention, stimulated by the assurance that I
was doing a great deal of good, and urged on by my own delight
in action, I fairly took the bit in my teeth, and ran such a
race as left me at last utterly exhausted. I went from meeting

to meeting all over the city. There was hardly a church in
which my voice was not heard. Everywhere I was thanked
and congratulated. I did not realize then as I do now that I
was moved by a thirst for praise, and that motives most human
mingled strangely and strongly with the divine in urging me
forward. O Heaven! to think that I, a poor child in life and
experience, should have labored in Thy name to win a crown
to my personal vanity!

I shudder now at the cruelty practiced upon the young nearly
everywhere, in bringing them to the front, and exposing them
to such temptations as those which then had the power to
poison all my motives, to brush away from my spirit the bloom
of youthful modesty, and to expose me to a process which was
certain to ultimate in spiritual torpor and doubt. I always
tremble and sicken when I behold a child or youth delighting
in the exercises of a public exhibition; and when I see, inside
or outside of church walls, children bred to boldness through
the public show of themselves and their accomplishments, and
realize what part of their nature is stimulated to predominance
by the process, and what graces are extinguished by it, I do
not wonder at the lack of reverence in American character,
and that exhaustion of sensibility which makes our churches so
faint and fitful in feeling.

Having given up all my earlier ideas of religion, and learned
to regard them as wholly inadequate and unworthy, I could be
in my new work little more than a parrot. I had passed
through but a single phase of what I had learned to regard as a
genuine religious experience, and my counsels were but the
repetitions of what I had heard. If some wise man or woman
could have told me of myself—of the proprieties that belong to
the position of a neophyte—of the dangers of public labor, and of
being publicly petted and exhibited, how well for me would it have
been! But I had no such counsellor. On the contrary, I was
seized upon at once as a fresh instrumentality for carrying on a
work already waning. I am ashamed to think of the immodesty
of some of my personal approaches to my elders whom I

regarded as needing my ministry, and humiliated by the memory
of the considerate forbearance with which I was treated for
religion's and my motive's sake.

It was in labors and experiences like these that a few weeks
passed away. Another in-gathering of the great spiritual harvest
approached. I, among others, was to make a public profession
of my faith, and become a member of the church. Mr.
Grimshaw put upon me the task of persuading the young of my
own age to join me in this solemn self-dedication, and I had
great success in my mission.

Among the considerable number whom I had selected as
proper subjects of my counsels and persuasions, was my interesting
friend Millie Bradford: but I knew she was quite too
young to decide so momentous a question, and that her father
would not permit her to decide it for herself. To tell the
truth, I did not like to meet Mr. Bradford with my proposition,
for I anticipated objections, and did not feel qualified to argue
with him. I consulted with Mr. Grimshaw in regard to the
case, and it was finally decided that we should visit Mr. Bradford
together.

Accordingly we called upon him, and spent an evening in
conversation, which, although it won no new members to my
group, left a deep impression upon my mind and memory.

The conversation was begun by Mr. Grimshaw, who said:
“We have called, Mr. Bradford, with the purpose of conferring
with you in regard to your daughter Millie. I know but little
of her, but I learn through Arthur that she is a sharer in the
blessings of our great revival. Have you any objection to her
union with our church, provided she shall choose to become a
member?”

“Have you no invitation for any one else in the family?”
inquired Mr. Bradford, with a smile.

“I was not aware that there were other converts in the
family,” responded the minister.

“I speak it with great humility, Mr. Grimshaw,” said Mr.
Bradford, “but I count myself a disciple. I am a learner at the

feet of your Master and mine; and I have been a learner for
years. I do not regard myself as having attained, or fully apprehended,
but I follow on, and I should like society on the
way, as well as any one.”

“But your views do not accord with those professed by our
church,” said Mr. Grimshaw.

“I do not know what business the church may legitimately
have with my private opinions. I learn from the New Testament
that he who repents and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ
shall be saved. A man who does this belongs at least to the
invisible church, and I do not recognize the right of a body of
men calling themselves a church to shut out from their communion
any man or woman who belongs to the church invisible,
or any one whom the Master counts among his disciples.”

“But we must have some standard of faith and belief,” said
Mr. Grimshaw.

“I suppose you must,” responded Mr. Bradford, “but why
should you construct it of non-essential materials? Why
should you build a high fence around your church, and insist
that every man shall climb every rail, when the first is all that
the Master asks him to climb. I recognize repentance and
trust as the basis of a Christian character and life, and I regard
character as the one grand result at which the Author of Christianity
aimed. He desired to make good men out of bad men;
and repentance and trust form the basis of the process. When
you go beyond this, with your dogmas and your creeds, you infringe
upon the liberty of those whom repentance and trust
have made free. Personally, I feel that I am suffering a great
wrong, inflicted in ignorance and with good motives no doubt,
but still a wrong, in that I am shut out from Christian sympathy
and fellowship. I will not profess to believe any more than I
do believe. It is simply impossible for me, a rational, honest,
mature man, to accept that which you prescribe for me. I am
perfectly willing that you should believe what seems to you to
be true, touching all these points of doctrine. I only insist
that you shall be a Christian in heart and life—an honest disciple.

If you cannot give me the same liberty, under the same
conditions, we can never get any nearer together.”

“You seem to forget,” responded the minister, “that our
creed is the product of whole ages of Christian wisdom—that
it has been framed by men of wide and profound experience,
who have learned by that experience what is essential to the
stability and purity of the church.”

“And you seem to forget,” said Mr. Bradford, “that the
making and defense of creeds have rent the seamless garment
of the Lord into ten thousand fragments—that they have been
the instruments for the destruction of the unity of the church in
fact and feeling—that they have not only been the subjects of
controversies that have disgraced the church before the world,
and embittered the relations of large bodies of Christians, but
have instigated the cruelest persecutions and the most outrageous
murders and martyrdoms. You are not so bigoted as
to deny that there are Christians among all the sects; and you
are liberal enough to give to the different sects the liberty of
faith which they claim. The world is growing better in this
thing, and is not so intolerant as it was. Now, why will you
not give me the same liberty, as a man, that you give to churches
founded on creeds at variance with yours? You invite the
teachers of other sects into your pulpit. You invite their people
to your communion table, while you shut me away by conditions
that are just as impossible to me as they would be to
them.”

I could see that Mr. Grimshaw was not only overwhelmed in
argument but deeply moved in feeling. He grasped Mr. Bradford's
hand, and said: “My dear sir, it would give me one of
the greatest pleasures of my life to receive you into our communion,
for I believe in your sincerity and in your character,
but I could not if I would.”

“I know it,” responded Mr. Bradford: “your sympathies
go beyond your creed, and your most earnest convictions stop
short of it. Your hands are tied, and your tongue must be
dumb. You and your church will go on in the old way. The

young who do not think, and the mature who will not try to
think, or do not dare to try, will accept what you prescribe for
them. Women, more trustful and religious than men, will constitute
the majority of your members. In the mean time, the
thinking men—the strong, influential, practical men of society
—the men of culture, enterprise, and executive power—will remain
outside of the church—shut out by a creed which their
reason refuses to accept.”

“I am afraid the creed is not altogether to blame for their
exclusion,” said the minister. “`Not many wise'—you remember
the quotation.”

“When Christianity was an apostasy from a church to which
all the wise and mighty were attached,” replied Mr. Bradford,
“you quotation was doubtless true as a statement of fact, but
we belong to another nation and age. I hold myself a type
and representative of a large class, who cannot enter the church
without self stultification and a sacrifice of that liberty of
thought and opinion which is their birthright. We cannot
afford to do without you, and you cannot afford to do without
us. It is your business to make a home for us, for we are all
passing on to that stage and realm of being where opinions will
be of small account, and where character will decide everything.”

“We have wandered very far from your daughter, Mr. Bradford,
about whom we came to talk,” said Mr. Grimshaw.

An expression of pain passed over Mr. Bradford's face.
Then he rose, and walking to a door which closed another
room, opened it, and called his daughter. Millie entered the
room with a question in her eyes, and shaking hands with us,
went to her father's side, where she stood with his arm around
her during the remainder of the interview.

“Millie,” said her father, “Mr. Grimshaw and Arthur have
come here to invite you to join the church. Would you like
to do so?”

“If you and mamma think I ought to,” she replied.

At this moment, Mrs. Bradford, conjecturing, I suppose, the
object of our visit, entered the room, and giving us a most

friendly greeting, took a seat near her daughter. Mr. Bradford
repeated our proposal to her, and Millie's reply to it.

“I should regard it as one of the sweetest satisfactions of my
life to have my child with me in church communion,” she said,
looking down to hide the tears that she felt filling her eyes.

“And I sympathize with you entirely in your feeling,” added
Mr. Bradford.

“Then,” said Mr. Grimshaw, “nothing will stand in the way,
provided, upon examination, your daughter gives evidence of
an intelligent entrance upon a Christian experience.”

“Which means, I suppose,” said Mr. Bradford, “that if she
will accept your whole creed and scheme on trust, as well as
give evidence of having determined upon a Christian life, you
will endow her with the privileges of membership.”

“We have but one condition for all, as you know,” responded
the minister.

“I suppose so; and it is my duty to tell you that it is a very
cruel thing; for her intelligence reaches no further than the one
essential thing which makes her a Christian child, viz., personal
loyalty to the Master. Beyond this she knows absolutely
nothing, and for her it is enough. To insist that she shall receive
a whole body of divinity about which she is utterly
ignorant, and which, at present, has no relation to her
Christian character and life, is to do that which you have no
right to do. When Jesus took little children in his arms and
blessed them, and declared that of such was the kingdom of
heaven, he did not impose any conditions upon them. It was
sufficient for him that they were in his arms, and had trust and
confidence enough to nestle and be contented and happy
there. You take the responsibility of going beyond him, and
of making conditions which cannot be complied with without a
surrender of all future liberty of thought and opinion. You
have members in your church to-day who committed themselves
to opinions when young, or under excitement, that they now
hold most loosely, or with questionings that are a constant torture
to them. I know it, for they have told me so; and I cannot

consent that my child shall be denied the free and
unrestrained formation of opinions when her maturer mind
becomes able to form them. The reason that has no range
but the bounds of a creed, constructed by human hands, will
become dwarfed as certainly as the wings of a bird are weakened
by the wires of a cage.”

Mr. Grimshaw listened attentively to the speaker, and then
said: “I fear that your ideas would form a very poor basis for
a church. We should be deprived of any principle or power
of cohesion, without unity of belief. Such liberty as you desire,
or seem to think desirable, would soon degenerate into license.
The experience of the church has proved it, and the united
wisdom of the church has declared it.”

“My ideas of the true basis of the church are very simple,”
said Mr. Bradford. “I would make it an organization of
Christian disciples—of Christian learners; you would make it
a conservatory of those who have arrived at the last conclusions
in dogmatic theology. I would make it a society of
those who have accepted the Master, and pledged their hearts
and lives to him, with everything to learn and the liberty to
learn it by such means as they can command; you would frame
it with limits to all progress. You would make it a school
where all are professors; I would make it a school where all
are learners. In short, you would make a sectarian church,
and I would make a Christian church; and I cannot but believe
that there is such a church awaiting us in the future—a
church which will receive both me and my daughter, to give
me the rest and fellowship I long for, and her the nurture,
restraint and support which she will need among the world's
great temptations.”

I do not know what the minister thought of all this, for he
said but little. He had been accustomed to these discussions
with Mr. Bradford, and either deemed them unfruitful of good
or found it difficult to maintain his position. He felt sure of
me, and did not regard it of consequence to talk on my
account. As Mr. Bradford closed, he sighed and said:

“Well, Millie, I suppose you will do as your father wishes,
and stay away from us.”

Millie looked at her father and then at her mother, with a
quick, earnest glance of inquiry.

Mrs. Bradford said: “Mr. Bradford and I never differ on
anything relating to our child. So far as our creed is concerned
I am entirely content with it; but I have no wish to
commit my child to it, though I freely instruct her in it.”

“Very well,” said the minister, “perhaps it will be better to
leave her with you for the present.”

Then he advanced to Mr. Bradford for a private conference
upon some other subject, apparently, and Millie started quickly
and walked to the window where I joined her.

“Are n't you sorry?” I inquired.

“No.”

“I thought you would be,” I said.

“No, it is all right. Father knows. Don't you think he's
splendid?”

“I suppose he thinks he is right,” I responded.

“Why, I know he's right,” she said warmly. “He's always
right; and isn't it sweet of him to let me hear him talk about
everything?”

Here was the personal loyalty again. Beyond this the girl
could not go. She could trust her father and her Master.
She could obey both and love both, and it was all of religion
that she was capable of. I supposed that the minister must
know better than any of us, but I had no doubt of Millie's fitness
for the church, and wondered why it was that a baptized
child should be shut out of the fold by a creed she was utterly
incapable of comprehending. I confess, too, that I sympathized
with Mr. Bradford's view of the church as it related to himself,
yet I had given my trust to the minister, and it was only my
personal loyalty to him that reconciled me to his opposing
opinions. Then there flashed upon me the consciousness that
I was to profess before God and men a belief in dogmas that I
had not even examined, and was entirely without the power of

explaining or defending to myself or others. The fact made
me tremble, and I dismissed it as soon as possible.

I fear that I should weary my reader by dwelling upon the
spiritual experiences that attended the assumption of my vows.
Since the memorable day on which I stood among twenty
others, and publicly pledged my life to the Redeemer, and
gave my unqualified assent to the doctrines of the creed, I have
never been able to witness a similar scene without tears.
With all the trust natural to youth I received that which was
presented to me, and with all the confidence of youth in its
own power to fulfill its promises, I entered into the most
solemn covenant which man can make. There was no suspicion
in me of a possible reaction. There was no anticipation
of temptations before which I should tremble or fall. There
was no cloud that portended darkness or storm. I regarded
myself as entering a fold from which I should go out no more,
save under the conduct and ward of a Shepherd who would
lead me only through green pastures and beside still waters.

All my friends, including Mrs. Sanderson, were present.
Mr. Bradford and his family sat near me, and I saw that he
had been deeply moved. He read the future better than I,
and saw before my intense and volatile spirit that which I could
not see. He knew the history of one human heart, and he
interpreted the future of mine by his own. At the close of the
services Mrs. Sanderson drove home alone with Jenks; and the
Bradfords with Henry and my own family walked home together.
As I left my father at his door, with Henry and
Claire, I found myself with Millie. We fell behind her father
and mother, and after she had looked around to make sure that
she was not observed, she unfolded her handkerchief and
showed me a crumb of the sacramental bread.

“Where did you get it?” I inquired.

“I prayed that it might drop when it was handed to my
mother, and it did,” she replied.

“What are you going to do with it?” I inquired.

“I am going to my room when I get home, and have a
communion all by myself.”

“But do you think it will be right?” I inquired.

“I don't think He will care. He knows that I love him, and
that it is the only chance I have. It is his bread, and came
from his table, and Mr. Grimshaw has nothing to do with it.”

I was dumb with astonishment, and could offer no remonstrance.
Indeed I sympathized with her so much that I could
not have deprived her of her anticipated enjoyment.

Then I asked her what she would do for wine.

“I shall kiss my mother's lips,” she replied, and then added:
“I wonder if she will know that anything is gone, as the
Saviour did when the woman touched him?”

I think if I could have retired with Millie to her seclusion,
and shared her crumb away from the eyes of a curious world,
and the distractions of the public gaze, I should have come
out stronger and purer for the feast. I left her at her door,
and went slowly home, imagining the little girl at prayer, and
tasting the crumb which had fallen from the Master's table.
The thought of the reverent kiss which the mother was to receive
that night, all unconscious of the draught of spiritual
comfort which her child would quaff there, quite overcame me.

And it was this child, with her quick insight and implicit
faith, that had been shut out of the fold because she had no
opinions! It was her father, too, carefully seeking and prayerfully
learning, who had been refused admittance, because he
would not surrender his reason and his liberty of thought!
Already I began to doubt the infallibility of my Pope. Already
there had crept into my mind the suspicion that there
was something wrong in a policy which made more of sound
opinions than of sound character. Already I felt that there
was something about these two persons that was higher in
Christian experience than anything I could claim. Already I
had become dimly conscious of a spiritual pride in myself, that
I did not see in them, and convinced that they were better
fitted to adorn a Christian profession than myself.

So the struggle was over, and I was called upon by the rapidly
advancing spring to resume the studies which had long
been interrupted. As I addressed myself with strong determination
to my work, I was conscious of a greatly impaired
power of application. The effect of the winter's excitement
and absorption had been to dissipate my mental power, and
destroy my habits of mental labor. It took me many weeks
to get back upon my old track, and I was led through many
discouragements. When I had fairly accomplished my purpose
and felt that I was making genuine progress, I discovered that
it was impossible to keep up the public life I had been leading,
and the zeal which had spurred me on in my Christian work.
For weeks I faithfully continued my attendance on the meetings
of the church, which, by becoming less frequent, had adapted
themselves somewhat to my new circumstances, but to my great
sorrow I found my zest in their exercises gradually dying
away. I prayed often and long that I might not become a
back-slider, and that the joy and comfort of the early days might
abide with me. It was all in vain. The excitement of sympathetic
crowds and the predominance of a single topic in the
public mind had passed away, and, unsupported by those stimuli,
I was left to stand alone—an uncertain, tottering, self-suspicious
youth—with the great work of life all before me.

Gradually the old motives which had actuated me came back
and presented themselves; and to my sad surprise they found
that in me which responded to them. The wealth which had
held before me its glittering promise still possessed its charming
power, and suggested its worldly delights. The brilliant
college career which I had determined to achieve for honor's
and glory's sake came up to me among my suspended purposes,
and shone with all its old attractions. The pride of dress and
social position was not dead—it had only slept, and waited but
a touch and a nod to spring into life again. The temptations
which the world held for my sensuous nature found my appetites
and passions still unsubdued.

Then there came upon me first the conviction and the consciousness

that my life was to be one of warfare, if it was to
be a Christian life at all—that I was really back upon my old
ground, and that whatever of genuine progress I should make
would be through prayerful, rigid, persistent culture. That
there was something unspeakably discouraging in this, I need
not affirm. It had the power to make the experiences through
which I had so recently passed seem altogether hollow and
unreal. I had only dreamed of regeneration, after all. The
new birth had only been the birth of a purpose, which needed
nursing and strengthening and educating like an infant.

Still I would not, could not, admit that I had not made the
genuine beginning of a religious life. If I had done this, I
should have grown callous or desperate at once.

And now I beg the privilege of saying to those who may be
interested in this narrative, that I have not addressed myself to
the task of writing down revivals. I am detailing the experiences
of a human soul. That revivals are useful in communities
where great excitements are necessary to attract the attention
of the careless and the vicious, I can well believe. That
multitudes begin a religious life through their influence there is
no doubt. That they are dangerous passages for the church to
pass through would seem also to be well established, as by the
laws of the human mind all great excitements and all extraordinary
labors are followed by corresponding depressions and exhaustions.
I seriously doubt whether Christian growth is
greatly forwarded by these exceptional agencies. All true
growth in the realm of nature is the result of a steady unfolding
from a germ: and the realm of grace is ruled by the same
Being who perfects the flower and builds the tree. I can afford
to be misconstrued, misunderstood and misrepresented if I can
do anything to direct the attention of the church to the fact
that there are better methods of progress than those which are
attended with such cost and such danger, and that in the Christian
nurture of children and the wide opening of the Christian
fold to them abides the hope of the church and the world. I
shall be ten thousand times repaid for any suspicion of my motives,

if I can bring a single pastor, or a single church, to the
realization of the fact that true Christian beginnings are not necessarily
conformed to any special dramatic experience; that a
pastor can lead his flock better than a stranger whose voice they
do not know, and that their creeds are longer and more elaborate
than they have any right to make. If the labor expended
upon revivals were spread evenly over greater space, and
applied with never-flagging persistency to the shaping and the
nurture of the plastic and docile minds of the young, I am sure
that the Christian kingdom would increase in numbers and advance
in power by a progress at once natural, healthy and irresistible.
The fiery shower that pours its flood upon the earth
in an hour, leaves the ground fresh for the day, but it also leaves
it scarred and seamed, the swollen torrents carrying half its
wealth into the sea, while the steady rain of days sinks into the
earth to nourish the roots of all things, and make the springs
perennial.