We must get her married as soon as ever we can!"
Lydia gives a reception. Here is part of the description:
Standing as they were, tightly pressed in between a number of different groups, their ears were a.s.saulted by a disjointed ma.s.s of stentorian conversation that gave a singular illusion as if it all came from one inconceivably voluble source, the individuality of the voices being lost in the screaming enunciation which, as Mrs. Sandworth had pointed out, was a prerequisite of self-expression under the circ.u.mstances.
They heard: "_For over a month and the sleeves were too see you again at Mrs. Elliott"s I"m pouring there from four I"ve got to dismiss one with plum-colored bows all along five dollars a week and the washing out and still impossible! I was there myself all the time and they neither of thirty-five cents a pound for the most ordinary ferns and red carnations was all they had, and we thought it rather skimpy under the brought up in one big braid and caught down with at Peterson"s they were pink and white with--" ... "Oh, no, Madeleine! that was at the Burlingame"s_." Mrs. Sandworth took a running jump into the din and sank from her brother"s sight, vociferating: "_The Petersons had them of old gold, don"t you remember, with little_--"
The doctor, worming his way desperately through the ma.s.ses of femininity, and resisting all attempts to engage him in the local fray, emerged at length into the darkened hall where the air was, as he told himself in a frenzied flight of imagination, less like a combination of a menagerie and a perfume shop. Here, in a quiet corner, sat Lydia"s father alone. He held in one hand a large platter piled high with wafer-like sandwiches, which he was consuming at a Gargantuan rate, and as he ate, he smiled to himself.
"Well, Mr. Ogre," said the doctor, sitting down beside him with a gasp of relief; "let a wave-worn mariner into your den, will you?"
Provided with an auditor, Judge Emery"s smile broke into an open laugh. He waved the platter toward the uproar in the next rooms: "A boiler factory ain"t in it with woman, lovely woman, is it?" he put it to his friend.
"Gracious powers! There"s nothing to laugh at in that exhibition!" the doctor reproved him, with an acrimonious savagery. "I don"t know which makes me sicker; to stay in there and listen to them, or come out here and find you thinking they"re _funny_!"
They are funny!" insisted the Judge tranquilly. "I stood by the door and listened to the sc.r.a.ps of talk I could catch, till I thought I should have a fit. I never heard anything funnier on the stage."
"Looky here, Nat," the doctor stared up at him angrily, "they"re not monkeys in a zoo, to be looked at only on holidays and then laughed at! They"re the other half of a whole that we"re half of, and don"t you forget it! Why in the world should you think it funny for them to do this tomfool trick all winter and have nervous prostration all summer to pay for it? You"d lock up a _man_ as a dangerous lunatic if he spent his life so. What they"re like, and what they do with their time and strength concerns us enough sight more than what the tariff is, let me tell you."
"I admit that what your wife is like concerns you a whole lot!" The Judge laughed good-naturedly in the face of the little old bachelor. "Don"t commence jumping on the American woman so! I won"t stand it! She"s the n.o.blest of her s.e.x!"
"Do you know why I am bald?" said Dr. Melton, running his hand over his shining dome.
"If I did, I wouldn"t admit it," the Judge put up a cautious guard, "because I foresee that whatever I say will be used as evidence against me."
"I"ve torn out all my hair in desperation at hearing such men as you claim to admire and respect and wish to advance the American woman. You don"t give enough thought to her--real thought--from one year"s end to another to know whether you think she has an immortal soul or not!"
Later Lydia"s husband insists that they give a dinner.
It was to be a large dinner--large, that is, for Endbury--of twenty covers, and Lydia had never prepared a table for so many guests. The number of objects necessary for the conventional setting of a dinner table appalled her. She was so tired, and her attention was so fixed on the complicated processes going on uncertainly in the kitchen, that her brain reeled over the vast quant.i.ty of knives and forks and plates and gla.s.ses needed to convey food to twenty mouths on a festal occasion. They persistently eluded her attempts to marshal them into order. She discovered that she had put forks for the soup--that in some inexplicable way at the plate destined for an important guest there was a large kitchen spoon of iron, a wild sort of whimsical humor rose in her from the ferment of utter fatigue and anxiety. When Paul came in, looking very grave, she told him with a wavering laugh, "If I tried as hard for ten minutes to go to Heaven as I"ve tried all day to have this dinner right, I"d certainly have a front seat in the angel choir. If anybody here to-night is not satisfied, it"ll be because he"s harder to please than St. Peter himself."
During the evening:
Lydia seemed to herself to be in an endless bad dream. The exhausting efforts of the day had reduced her to a sort of coma of fatigue through which she felt but dully the successive stabs of the ill-served unsuccessful dinner. At times, the table, the guests, the room itself, wavered before her, and she clutched at her chair to keep her balance. She did not know that she was laughing and talking gaily and eating nothing. She was only conscious of an intense longing for the end of things, and darkness and quiet.
When it was all over and her husband was compelled to recognize that it had been a failure, his mental att.i.tude is thus expressed:
He had determined to preserve at all costs the appearance of the indulgent, non-critical, over-patient husband that he intensely felt himself to be. No force, he thought grimly, shutting his jaws hard, should drag from him a word of his real sentiments. Fanned by the wind of this virtuous resolution, his sentiments grew hotter and hotter as he walked about, locking doors and windows, and reviewing bitterly the events of the evening. If he was to restrain himself from saying, he would at least allow himself the privilege of feeling all that was possible to a man deeply injured.
And that night Lydia felt for the "first time the quickening to life of her child. And during all that day, until then, she had forgotten that she was to know motherhood." Can words more forcefully depict the _worry of the squirrel-cage_ than this--that an unnecessary dinner, given in unnecessary style, at unnecessary expense, to visitors to whom it was unnecessary should have driven from her thought, and doubtless seriously injured, the new life that she was so soon to give to the world?
Oh, men and women of divine descent and divine heritage, quit your squirrel-cage stage of existence. Is life to be one mere whirling around of the cage of useless toil or pleasure, of mere imagining that you are doing something? Work with an object. Know your object, that it is worthy the highest endeavor of a human being, and then pursue it with a divine enthusiasm that no obstacle can daunt, an ardor that no weariness can quench. Then it is you will begin to live. There is no life in _worry_. Worry is a waste of life. If you are a worrier, that is a proof you (in so far as you worry) do not appreciate the value of your own life, for a worthy object, a divine enthusiasm, a n.o.ble ardor are in themselves the best possible preventives against worry. They dignify life above worry. Worry is undignified, petty, paltry. Where you know you have something to do worth doing, you are conscious of the Divine Benediction, and who can worry when the smile of G.o.d rests upon him? This is a truism almost to triteness, and yet how few fully realize it. It is the unworthy potterers with life, the dabblers in life-stuff, those who blind themselves to their high estate, those who are unsure of their footing who worry. The true aristocrat is never worried about his position; the orator convinced of the truth of his message worries not as to how it will be received; the machinist sure of his plans hesitates not in the construction of his machinery; the architect a.s.sured of his accuracy pushes on his builders without hesitancy or question, fear, or alarm; the engineer knowing his engine and his destination has no heart quiver as he handles the lever. It is the doubter, the unsure, the aimless, the dabbler, the frivolous, the dilettante, the uncertain that worry. How n.o.bly Browning set this forth in his Epilogue:
What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel --Being--Who?
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man"s worktime Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,--fight on, fare ever There as here!"
And this is not "mere poetry." Or rather it is because it is "mere poetry" that it is _real life_. Browning had nearly seventy years of it. He knew. Where there are those to whom "G.o.d has whispered in the ear," there is no uncertainty, no worry. The musician who knows his instrument, knows his music, knows his key, and knows his time to play never hesitates, never falters, never worries. With tone clear, pure, strong, and certain, he sends forth his melodies or harmonies into the air. Cannot you, in your daily life, be a true and sure musician?
Cannot you be _certain_--absolutely, definitely certain--of your right to play the tune of life in the way you have it marked out before you, and then go ahead and play! Play, in G.o.d"s name, as G.o.d"s and man"s music-maker.
CHAPTER XIII
RELIGIOUS WORRIES AND WORRIERS
Misunderstandings, misconceptions, and ignorance in regard to what really is religion have caused countless millions to mourn--and worry; indeed, far more to worry than to mourn. Religion should be a joyous thing, the bringing of the son and daughter into close relationship with the Father. Instead, for centuries, it has been a battle for creeds, for mental a.s.sent to certain doctrines, rather than a growth in brotherhood and loving relationship, and those who could not see eye to eye with one another deemed it to be their duty to fight and worry each other--even to their death.
This is not the place for any theological discussion; nor is it my intent to present the claims of any church or creed. Each reader must do that for himself, and the less he worries over it, the better I think it will be for him. I have read and reread Cardinal Newman"s wonderful _Pro Apologia_--his statement as to why and how he entered the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, and it has thrilled me with its pathos and evidence of deep spiritual endeavor. Charles Warren Stoddard"s _Troubled Heart and How It Found Rest_ is another similar story, though written by an entirely different type of man. Each of these books revealed the inner thought and life of men who were worried about religion, and by worry I mean anxious to the point of abnormality, disturbed, distressed unnecessarily. Yet I would not be misunderstood. Far be it from me, in this age of gross materialism and worship of physical power and wealth, to decry in the least a proper degree of solicitude for one"s personal salvation. The religious life of the individual--the real, deep, personal, hidden, unseen, inner life of a human soul--is a wonderfully delicate thing, to be touched by another only with the profoundest love and deepest wisdom. Hence I have little to say about one"s own inner struggles, except to affirm and reaffirm that wisdom, sanity, and religion itself are _all_ against worrying about it. Study religion, consider it, accept it, follow it, earnestly, seriously, and constantly, but do it in a rational manner, seeking the essentials, accepting them and then _resting_ in them to the full and utter exclusion of all worry.
But there is another cla.s.s of religious worriers, viz., those who worry themselves about _your_ salvation. Again I would not be misunderstood, nor thought to decry a certain degree of solicitude about the spiritual welfare of those we love, but here again the caution and warning against worry more than ever holds good. Most of these worriers have found comfort, joy, and peace in a certain line of thought, which has commended itself to them as _Truth_--the one, full, complete, indivisible Truth, and it seems most natural for human nature to be eager that others should possess it. This is the secret of the zeal of the street Salvationist, whose flaming ardor is bent on reaching those who seldom, if ever, go to church. The burden of his cry is that you must flee from the wrath to come--h.e.l.l--by accepting the vicarious atonement made by the "blood of Jesus." In season and out of season, he urges that you "come under the blood." His face is tense, his brow wrinkled, his eyes strained, his voice raucous, his whole demeanor full of worry over the salvation of others.
Another friend is a Seventh Day Adventist, who is full of zeal for the declaration of the "Third Angel"s Message," for he believes that only by heeding it, keeping sacred the hours from sunset on Friday to Sat.u.r.day sunset, in accordance with his reading of the fourth commandment, and also believing in the speedy second coming of Christ, can one"s soul"s salvation be attained.
The Baptist is a.s.sured that his mode of baptism--complete immersion--is the only one that satisfies the demands of heaven, and the more rigorous members of the sect refuse communion with those who have not obeyed, as they see the command. The members of the "Christian" Church--as the disciples of Alexander Campbell term themselves--while they a.s.sent that they are tied to no creed except the New Testament, demand immersion as a prerequisite to membership in their body. The Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, and many others, are "evangelical" in their belief, as is a large portion of the Church of England, and its American offshoot, both of which are known as the Episcopal Church. Another portion, however, of this church is known as "ritualistic," and the two branches in England recently became so involved in a heated discussion as to the propriety of certain of their bishops partaking in official deliberations with ministers of the other, but outside, evangelistic churches, that for a time it seemed as if the whole Episcopal Church would be disrupted by the fierceness and anger gendered in the differences of opinion.
To my own mind, all this worry was much ado about nothing. Each man"s brain and conscience must guide him in matters of this kind, and the worry, fret, stew, evolved out of the matter, seem to me a proof that real religion had little to do with it.
Recently one good brother came to me with tears in his voice, if not in his eyes, worried seriously as to my own religious belief because I had a.s.serted in a public address that I believed the earnest prayer of a good Indian woman reached the ear of G.o.d as surely as did my own prayers, or those of any man, woman, minister, or priest living. To him the only effective prayers were "evangelical" prayers--whatever that may mean--and he was deeply distressed and fearfully worried because I could not see eye to eye with him in this matter. And a dear, good woman, who heard a subsequent discussion of the subject, was so worried over my att.i.tude that she felt impelled to a.s.sure me when I left that "she would pray for me."
I have friends who are zealous Roman Catholics, and a number of them are praying that I may soon enter the folds of "Mother Church," and yet my Unitarian and Universalist friends wonder why I retain my membership in any "orthodox" church. On the other hand, my New Thought friends declare that I belong to them by the spirit of the messages I have given to the world. Then, too, my Theosophist friends--and I have many--present to me, with a force I do not attempt to controvert, the doctrine of the Universal Brotherhood of Mankind, and urge upon me acceptance of the comforting and helpful doctrine, to them, of Reincarnation.
Not long prior to this writing a good earnest man b.u.t.tonholed me and held me tight for over an hour, while he outlined his own slight divergencies from the teachings of the Methodist Church, to which he belongs, and his interpretation of the symbolism of Scripture, none of which had the slightest interest to me. In our conversation, he expressed himself as quite willing--please note the condescension--to allow me the privilege of supposing the Catholic was honest and sincere in his faith and belief, _but he really could not for one moment_ allow the same to the Christian Scientist, who, from his standpoint, denied the atonement and the Divinity of Christ. I suppose if he ever picks up this booklet and reads what I am now going to write, he will regard me as a reprobate and lost beyond the possibility of salvation. Nevertheless, I wish to put on record that I regard his att.i.tude as one of intolerance, bigotry, fanaticism, and impudence--sheer, unadulterated impertinence. Who made him the judge of the thoughts and acts of other men"s inner lives? Who gave to him the wisdom and power of discernment to know that _he_ was right and these others wrong? Poor, arrogant fool. His worries were not the result of genuine affection and deep human sympathy, the irrepressible and uncontrollable desires and longings of his heart to bring others into the full light of G.o.d"s love, but of his overweening self-confidence in his own wisdom and judgment. And I say this in no personal condemnation of him, for I have now even forgotten who it was, but in condemnation of the spirit in which he and all his ilk ever act.
Hence, my dear reader, if you are of his cla.s.s, I say to you earnestly: Don"t worry about other people"s salvation. It may be they are nearer saved than you are. No man can" be "worried" into accepting anything, even though _you_ may deem it the only Truth. I have known men whom others regarded as agnostics who had given more study to the question of personal religion than any ten of their critics. I can recall three--all of whom were men of wonderful mentality and great earnestness of purpose. John Burroughs"s first essays were written for his own soul"s welfare--the results of his long-continued mental struggles for light upon the subject. Major J.W. Powell, the organizer and director for many years of the United States Geological Survey and Bureau of American Ethnology, was brought up by a father and mother whose intense longing was that their son should be a Methodist preacher. The growing youth wished to please his parents, but was also compelled to satisfy his own conscience. The more he studied the creeds and doctrines of Methodism, the less he felt he could accept them, and much to the regret of his parents, he refused to enter the ministry. Yet, in relating the story to me, he a.s.serted that his whole life had been one long agony of earnest study to find the highest truth. Taking me into his library, where there were several extended shelves filled from end to end with the ponderous tomes of the two great government bureaus that he controlled, he said: "Most people regard this as my life-work, and outwardly it is. Yet I say to you in all sincerity that the real, inner, secret force working through all this, has been that I might satisfy my own soul on the subject of religion." Then, picking up two small volumes, he said: "In these two books I have recorded the results of my years of agonizing struggle.
I don"t suppose ten men have ever read them through, or, perhaps, ever will, but these are the real story of the chief work of my inner life."
I am one of the few men who have read both these books with scrupulous care, and yet were it not for what my friend told me of their profound significance to him, I should scarcely have been interested enough in their contents to read them through. At the same time, I _know_ that the men who, from the standpoint of their professionally religious complacency would have condemned Major Powell, never spent one-thousandth part the time, nor felt one ten-thousandth the real solicitude that he did about seeking "the way, the truth, and the life."
Another friend in Chicago was Dr. M.H. Lackersteen, openly denounced as an agnostic, and even as an infidel, by some zealous sectaries.
Yet Dr. Lackersteen had personally translated the whole of the Greek Testament, and several other sacred books of the Hebrews and Hindoos, in his intense desire to satisfy the demands of his own soul for the Truth. He was the soul of honor, the very personification of sincerity, and as much above some of his critics--whom I well knew--in these virtues, as they were above the sc.u.m of the slums.
The longer I live and study men the more I am compelled to believe that religion is a personal matter between oneself and G.o.d and is more of the spirit than most people have yet conceived. It is well known to those who have read my books and heard my lectures on the Old Franciscan Missions of California, that I revere the memory of Padres Junipero Serra, Palou, Crespi, Catala, Peyri, and others of the founders of these missions. I have equal veneration for the goodness of many Catholic priests, nuns, and laymen of to-day. Yet I am not a Catholic, though zealous sectaries of Protestantism--even of the church to which I am supposed to belong--sometimes fiercely a.s.sail me for my open commendation of these men of that faith. They are _worried_ lest I lean too closely towards Catholicism, and ultimately become one of that fold. Others, who hear my good words in favor of what appeals to me as n.o.ble and uplifting in the lives of those of other faiths of which they do not approve, worry over and condemn my "breadth" of belief. Indeed, I have many friends who give themselves an immense lot of altogether unnecessary worry about this matter. They have labelled themselves according to some denominational tag, and accept some form of belief that, to them, seems incontrovertible and satisfactory. Many of them are praying for me, and each that I may see the TRUTH from _his_ standpoint. For their prayers I am grateful. I cannot afford to lose the spirit of love behind and in every one of them. But for the _worry_ about me in their minds, I have neither respect, regard, toleration, nor sympathy. I don"t want it, can do without it, and I resent its being there. To each and all of them I say firmly: _Quit Your Worrying_ about my religion, or want of it.
I am in the hands of the same loving G.o.d that you are. I have the promise of G.o.d"s Guiding Spirit as much as you have. I have listened respectfully and with an earnest and sincere desire to see and know the Truth, to all you have said, and now I want to be left alone. I have come to exclaim with Browning in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_:
Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me. We all surmise, They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?
For myself I have concluded that no one shall choose my religion for me, and all the worrying in the world shall not change my att.i.tude.
And it is to the worrying of my friends that they owe this state of mind. For this reason, I found myself one day counting up the number of people of different beliefs who had solemnly promised to pray for me. There were Methodists, Campbellites, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Seventh Day Adventists, Presbyterians, Nazarenes, Holy Rollers, and others. Then the query arose: Whose prayers will be answered on my behalf? Each is sure that _his_ are the ones that can be effective; yet their prayers differ; they are, to some degree, antagonistic, and insofar as they pet.i.tion that I become one of their particular fold, they nullify each other, as it is utterly impossible that I accept the specific form of faith of each. The consequent result in my own mind is that as I cannot possibly become what all these good people desire I should be, as their desires and prayers for me controvert each other, I must respectfully decline to be bound by any one of them. I _must_ and _will_ do my own choosing. Hence all the worry on my behalf is energy, strength, and effort wasted.
Let me repeat, then, to the worrier about the salvation of others: You are in a poor business. _Quit Your Worrying_. Hands off! This is none of your concern. Believe as little or as much and what you will for your own soul"s salvation, but do not put forth _your_ conceptions as the _only_ conceptions possible of Divine Truth before another soul who may have an immeasurably larger vision than you have. Oh, the pitiableness of man"s colossal conceit, the arrogance of his ignorance. As if the G.o.d of the Universe were so small that one paltry, finite man could contain in his pint measure of a mind all the ocean of His power, knowledge, and love. Let your small and wretched worries go. Have a little larger faith in the Love of the Infinite One. Tenderly love and trust those whose welfare you seek, and trust G.o.d at the same time, but don"t worry when you see the dear ones walking in a path you have not chosen for them. Remember your own ignorance, your own frailties, your own errors, your own mistakes, and then frankly and honestly, fearlessly and directly ask yourself the question if you dare to take upon your own ignorant self the responsibility of seeking to control and guide another living soul as to his eternal life.
Brother, Sister, the job is too big for you. It takes G.o.d to do that, and you are not yet even a perfect human being. Hence, while I long for all spiritual good for my sons and daughters, and for my friends, and I pray for them, it is in a large way, without any interjection of my own decisions and conclusions as to what will be good for them.