"Oh, Brother Cross, don"t be thinking that I"m over and above satisfied with the goodness that"s in me. I know I"m not so good. I have a great deal of evil; but then it seems to me there"s a difference in good and a difference in evil. One has most of one and one has most of another.
None of us have much good, and all of us have a great deal of sin. G.o.d help me, for I need his help--I have my own share; but as for that Mrs.
Thackeray, she"s as full of wickedness as an an egg"s full of meat."
"It is not the part of Christianity, Sister Cooper," said John Cross mildly, "to look into our neighbors" accounts and make comparisons between their doings and our own. We can only do so at great risk of making a false reckoning. Besides, Sister Cooper, it is business enough on our hands, if we see to our own short-comings. As for Mrs. Thackeray, I have no doubt she"s no better than the rest of us, and we are all, as you said before, children of suffering, and p.r.o.ne to sin as certain as that the sparks fly upward. We must only watch and pray without ceasing, particularly that we may not deceive ourselves with the most dangerous sin of being too sure of our own works. The good deeds that we boast of so much in our earthly day will shrivel and shrink up at the last account to so small a size that the best of us, through shame and confusion, will be only too ready to call upon the rocks and hills to cover us. We are very weak and foolish all, Sister Cooper. We can"t believe ourselves too weak, or too mean, or too sinful. To believe this with all our hearts, and to try to be better with all our strength, is the true labor of religion. G.o.d send it to us, in all its sweetness and perfection, so that we may fight the good fight without ceasing."
"But if you could only hear of the doings of Mrs. Thackeray, Brother Cross, you"d see how needful it would be to put forth all your strength to bring her back to the right path."
"The Lord will know. None of us can hide our evil from the eyes of the Lord. I will strive with our sister, when I seek her, which will be this very noon, but it is of yourself, Sister Cooper, and your daughter Margaret, that I would speak. Where is she that I see her not?"
This was the question that made our quasi hierophant look up with a far greater degree of interest than he had felt in the long and random t.w.a.ttle to which he had been compelled to listen. Where was she--that fair daughter? He was impatient for the answer. But he was not long detained in suspense. Next to her neighbors there was no subject of whom the mother so loved to speak as the daughter, and the daughter"s excellences.
"Ah! she is up-stairs, at her books, as usual. She does so love them books, Brother Cross, I"m afraid it"ll do harm to her health. She cares for nothing half so well. Morning, noon, and night, all the same, you find her poring over them; and even when she goes out to ramble, she must have a book, and she wants no other company. For my part I can"t see what she finds in them to love so; for except to put a body to sleep I never could see the use they were to any person yet."
"Books are of two kinds," said Brother Cross gravely. "They are useful or hurtful. The useful kinds are good, the hurtful kinds are bad. The Holy Bible is the first book, and the only book, as I reckon it will be the book that"ll live longest. The "Life of Whitefield" is a good book, and I can recommend the sermons of that good man, Brother Peter c.u.mmins, that preached when I was a lad, all along through the back parts of North Carolina, into South Carolina and Georgia. I can"t say that he came as far back into the west as these parts; but he was a most faithful shepherd. There was a book of his sermons printed for the benefit of his widow and children. He died, like that blessed man, John Rogers, that we see in the primer-books, leaving a wife with eleven children and one at the breast. His sermons are very precious reading.
One of them in particular, on the Grace of G.o.d, is a very falling of manna in the wilderness. It freshens the soul, and throws light upon the dark places in the wilderness. Ah! if only such books are printed, what a precious world for poor souls it would be. But they print a great many bad books now-a-days."
The natural love of mischief which prevailed in the bosom of Alfred Stevens now prompted him to take part in the conversation at this happy moment. The opportunity was a tempting one.
"The printers," said he, "are generally very bad men. They call themselves devils, and take young lads and bring them up to their business under that name!"
The old lady threw up her hands, and John Cross, to whom this intelligence was wholly new, inquired with a sort of awe-struck gravity--
"Can this be true, Alfred Stevens? Is this possible?"
"The fact, sir. They go by no other name among themselves; and you may suppose, if they are not ashamed of the name, they are not unwilling to perform the doings of the devil. Indeed, they are busy doing his business from morning to night--and night to morning. They don"t stop for the sabbath. They work on Sunday the same as any other day, and if they take any rest at all it is on Sat.u.r.day, which would show them to be a kind of Jews."
"Good Lord deliver us!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the widow.
"Where, O! where?" exclaimed the Brother Cross with similar earnestness.
The game was too pleasant for Alfred Stevens. He pursued it.
"In such cities," he continued, "as New York and Philadelphia, thousands of these persons are kept in constant employ sending forth those books of falsehood and folly which fill the hearts of the young with vain imaginings, and mislead the footsteps of the unwary. In one of these establishments, four persons preside, who are considered brothers; but they are brothers in sin only, and are by some supposed to be no other.
They have called themselves after the names of saints and holy men; even the names of the thrice blessed apostles, John and James, have been in this fashion abused; but if it be true that the spirits of evil may even in our day as of old embody themselves in mortal shape for the better enthralling and destruction of mankind, then should I prefer to believe that these persons were no other than the evil demons who ruled in Ashdod and a.s.syria. Such is their perseverance in evil--such their busy industry, which keeps a thousand authors (which is but another name for priests and prophets) constantly at work to frame cunning falsehoods and curious devices, and winning fancies, which when printed and made into books, turn the heads of the young and unwary, and blind the soul to the wrath which is to come."
The uplifted hands of the widow Cooper still attested her wonder.
"Lord save us!" she exclaimed, "I should not think it strange if Sister Thackeray had some of these very books. Do ask, Brother Cross, when you go to see her. She speaks much of books, and I see her reading them whenever I look in at the back window."
John Cross did not seem to give any heed to the remark of the old woman.
There was a theological point involved in one of the remarks of Alfred Stevens which he evidently regarded as of the first importance.
"What you say, Alfred Stevens, is very new and very strange to me, and I should think from what I already know of the evil which is sometimes put in printed books, that there was indeed a spirit of malice at work in this way, to help the progress and the conquests of Satan among our blind and feeble race. But I am not prepared to believe that G.o.d has left it to Satan to devise so fearful a scheme for prosecuting his evil designs as that of making the demons of Ashdod and a.s.syria take the names of mortal men, while teeming to follow mortal occupations. It would be fearful tidings for our poor race were this so. But if so, is it not seen that there is a difference in the shapes of these persons.
If either of these brothers who blasphemously call themselves John and James, after the manner of the apostles, shall be in very truth and certainty that Dagon of the Philistines whom Jehovah smote before his altar, will he not be made fishlike from the waist downward, and will this not be seen by his followers and some of the thousands whom he daily perverts to his evil purposes and so leads to eternal destruction?"
"It may be that it is permitted to such a demon to put on what shape he thinks proper," replied Stevens; "but even if it is not, yet this would not be the subject of any difference--it would scarcely prevent the prosecution of this evil purpose. You are to remember, Mr. Cross--"
"John Cross--plain John Cross, Alfred Stevens," was the interruption of the preacher.
"You are to remember," Stevens resumed, "that when the heart is full of sin, the eyes are full of blindness. The people who believe in these evil beings are incapable of seeing their deformities."
"That is true--a sad truth."
"And, again," continued Stevens, "there are devices of mere mortal art, by which the deformities and defects of an individual may be concealed.
One of these brothers, I am told, is never to be seen except seated in one position at the same desk, and this desk is so constructed, as to hide his lower limbs in great part, while still enabling him to prosecute his nefarious work."
"It"s clear enough, Brother Cross," exclaimed the widow Cooper, now thoroughly convinced--"it"s clear enough that there"s something that he wants to hide. Lord help us! but these things are terrible."
"To the weak and the wicked, Sister Cooper, they are, as you say, terrible, and hence the need that we should have our lamps trimmed and lighted, for the same light which brings us to the sight of the Holy of Holies, shows us the shape of hatefuless, the black and crouching form of Satan, with nothing to conceal his deformity. Brother Stevens has well said that when the heart is full of sin, the eyes are full of blindness; and so we may say that when the heart is full of G.o.dliness, the eyes are full of seeing. You can not blind them with devilish arts.
You can not delude them as to the true forms of Satan, let him take any shape The eye of G.o.dliness sees clean through the mask of sin, as the light of the sun pierces the thickest cloud, and brings day after the darkest night."
"Oh! what a blessed thing to hear you say so."
"More blessed to believe, Sister Cooper, and believing, to pray with all your heart for this same eye of G.o.dliness. But we should not only pray but work. Working for G.o.d is the best sort of prayer. We must do something in his behalf: and this reminds me, Sister Cooper, that if there is so much evil spread abroad in these books, we should look heedfully into the character of such as fall into the hands of the young and the unmindful of our flock."
"That is very true; that is just what I was thinking of, Brother Cross.
You can not look too close, I"m thinking into such books as you"ll find at the house of Widow Thackeray. I can give a pretty "cute guess where she gets all that sort of talk, that seems so natural at the end of her tongue."
"Verily, I will speak with Sister Thackeray on this subject," responded the pastor--"but your own books, Sister Cooper, and those of your daughter Margaret--if it is convenient, I should prefer to examine them now while I am here."
"What! Margaret"s books! examine Margaret"s books!"
"Even so, while I am present and while Brother Stevens is here, also, to give me his helping counsel in the way of judgment."
"Why, bless us, Brother Cross, you don"t suppose that my daughter Margaret would keep any but the properest books? she"s too sensible, I can tell you, for that. She"s no books but the best; none, I"ll warrant you, like them you"ll find at Widow Thackeray"s. She"s not to be put off with bad books. She goes through "em with a glance of the eye. Ah! she"s too smart to be caught by the contrivances of those devils, though in place of four brothers there was four thousand of "em. No, no! let her alone for that--she"s a match for the best of "em."
"But as Brother Stevens said," continued John Cross, "where sin gets into the heart, the eye is blinded to the truth. Now--"
"Her eye"s not blinded, Brother Cross, I can tell you. They can"t cheat her with their books. She has none but the very best. I"ll answer for them. None of them ever did me any harm; and I reckon none of them"ll ever hurt her. But I"m mistaken, if you don"t have a real burning when you get to Mrs. Thackeray"s."
"But, Sister Cooper--" commenced the preacher.
"Yes, Brother Cross," replied the dame.
"Books, as I said before, are of two kinds."
"Yes, I know--good and bad--I only wonder there"s no indifferent ones among "em," replied the lady.
"They should be examined for the benefit of the young and ignorant."
"Oh, yes, and for more besides, for Mrs. Thackeray"s not young, that"s clear enough; and I know there"s a good many things that she"s not ignorant of. She"s precious knowing about many things that don"t do her much good; and if the books could unlearn her, I"d say for one let her keep "em. But as for looking at Margaret"s books--why, Brother Cross, you surely know Margaret?"
The preacher answered meekly, but negatively.
"Ain"t she about the smartest girl you ever met with?" continued the mother.
"G.o.d has certainly blessed her with many gifts," was the reply, "but where the trust is great, the responsibility is great also."
"Don"t she know it?"