University of Virginia Library

X The Tendency to Testify

People and periods sometimes think strange things about themselves. I am constantly astounded by the contrast between my view of my friend and his view of himself. Tact is the bridge that spans the chasm between a man's opinion of himself and his neighbor's opinion of him. In truth each opinion suffers from the lie of the label. There is nothing so volatile as human personality, yet it has a passion for ranging itself in bottles on a shelf, each with its little gummy ticket. If the peril of the pigeon-hole is great for the individual, it is even greater for a whole period, which is but the aggregate of personalities, each of them only a breath, a vapor, the shaping of a cloud.

One of the largest, loudest labels with which we placard the present age is its irreligion. Because we don't build cathedrals? But let any one of us look about into the hearts of say twenty of his immediate friends: are there no churches building there? As for me, I am quite dinned by their hammers, and often,

when I want to steal into some one's soul, for a little quiet communion, I am incommoded by the obtrusive scaffolding. No religion? Never so many religions, and from that very fact, never so genuine. Obviously, if you make a religion yourself, it's your business to believe it. There is an analogy between clothes and creeds: you wear with a different air those your father has bought for you and those you have earned for yourself.

I do not find people indifferent to religion, I find them profoundly responsible for it; my friends stand each at the door of a temple exacting tribute, although there is not one who would not be horrified by the blatancy of the metaphor. They do not call themselves religious, but they do call to me to come in. The trouble perhaps is with my listening ear. I was born with it, and without my will, or knowledge, it has become an inconveniently obvious appendage. It takes a great deal of time to have a listening ear. It has heard so many creeds of late that I must perforce counter-label this irreligious age devout. I am not inventing the list, and I do not believe the variety among my acquaintance exceptional,—Neo-Hellenic, Neo-Hebrew, Catholic, Christian Scientist, Episcopal, high, hot, and holy, Episcopal, low, hot, and holy, Swe

denborgian, Baptist, Presbyterian, and, latest, a sect that scorns a name, but that I would call Destinarian. Miss Sinclair is of this communion, for, in "The Three Brontes," does she not call upon Destiny to account for every mystery of those three strange lives? The religion of the Destinarian consists in not having one, yet not one of my friends pronounces so reverently the name of deity as my friend of this no-faith murmurs the word, Destiny. "It is ordained, she says of some circumstance, and says it with awe, the humility before omniscience with which the Hebrew prophets spoke his name Jah.

There they stand, my twenty men and women, beckoning me to the doors of their temples; and yes, of course, I go in; it saves argument. I go into each and each friend is so busy pointing out the architecture that no one ever notices when I slip out, out into the open. When one stops to think of it, it is curiously old-fashioned and orthodox, the open, whether it is sea or sun. The planets are conspicuously conservative, but the morning stars still sing together.

Now, not one of my friends here listed is that good old-fashioned work of God, a shouting Methodist, and yet, in effect, there is not one of them who is not exactly this. As a child,

I attended camp-meetings, I heard people testify. The tendency to testify is older than camp-meetings, and it will outlast them. Today, though long grown-up, I find my friends still shouting their experiences, I find myself still the shy and wondering congregation. As in the word "camp-meeting" there is military reminiscence, so the "professor" is lineal descendant of miles gloriosus, his survivor in the church militant. A puzzling number of people still like to exhibit their scars; a larger number like to exhibit the particular philosophic armor by which they—by implication—win in the battle of life still ever merrily waging. But he who shows a scar deserves another, and no sword ever equally fitted two hands.

It is the implication that I resent in all testifying,—super-sensitive doubtless. I do not want to be converted. I grow shy and secret when I suspect my friend of wanting to remodel me to the pattern of his creed. The most perilous thing in friendship is to let a friend know that we want to reform him. The very essence of friendship is in the lines,—

"Take me as you find me, quick,
If you find me good!"

and in a recent dedication to one who was "Guide, philosopher, but friend." In all testi

fying, there is an implied "Copy me," which our own skittish ego resents. We all incorporate in ourselves our friends' virtues, but only those of which they are most unconscious; whereas people are always conscious of their battles; they always want to talk about them; and yet how many different ways there are of winning the same battle. If I admire your bravery, I may copy the creed that created it, but you need not hold up that creed for my inspection, for it is you yourself who are under my inspection. You are your sole argument, you need no testifying.

I have been much talked to of late, and much talked at. I have seen the fanatic spark in eyes that would have been aghast to know its presence there. Once upon a time there was only one church, and excommunication from that was a simple and straightforward matter; it can hardly be an irreligious age when one can feel, in listening to the testimony from the score of temples one's friends have built, that one is in danger of being excommunicated from all twenty. But better excommunication than that, entering and accepting, I, too, might feel called upon to testify.

I, too, could testify,—I, a mere sunworshiper. I could point out the vaulted sky of

my private chapel, most ancient and most orthodox. I could repeat for you the liturgies the wind has made, much the same that it chanted for Moses on Sinai; for are any of your creeds so new, my friends? I could point out to you altar-lights genial and tolerant, the taper-flames of stars. There was once One long ago who went to the mountain for prayer, for there is nothing new about the temple of out-of-doors; but if I, its worshiper, do not carry forth some peace from its great silence, some joy from its godly mirth, then would not even my infinite temple shrink to the size of words, if I should testify?