A Man's World

V

Of course I never questioned the Father's religious dogmas. I did not even know that they might be questioned. But two things troubled me persistently.

I had been taught that our Saviour was the Prince of Peace, that His chief commandment was the law of love. But when adults got together there was always talk of the war. I do not think there was any elder or deacon in our church who had not served. How often I listened to stories of the wave of murder and rapine that had swept through our mountains only a few years before!

I remember especially the placing of a battle monument just outside our village and the horde of strangers who came from various parts of the state for the ceremony. The heroes were five men in gray uniforms, all who were left of the company which had stood there and had been shot to pieces. One was an old man, three were middle aged, and one was so young that he could not have been more than sixteen on the day of the fight. The man who had been their captain stayed at the parsonage. After supper the principal men of the village gathered in our parlor. I stood by the Father's chair and listened wide-eyed as, in his cracked voice, the Captain told us all the details of that slaughter. I remember that in the excitement of his story-telling the old soldier became profane, and the Father did not rebuke him.

Somehow I could not feel any romance in modern warfare, there seemed no similarity between these men and the chivalric heroes of The Round Table. Perhaps if Launcelot had been a real person, there in the parsonage parlor, and had told me face to face and vividly how he had slain the false knight Gawaine, had made me see the smear of blood on his sword blade, the cloven headed corpse of his enemy, that also they might have seemed abhorrent.

As a little boy I could not understand how a follower of Jesus could be a soldier. I did not know that grown men were also asking the same question. Years afterwards I remember coming across Rossetti's biting sonnet – "Vox ecclesiæ, vox Christi" —

I do not know what the Father would have thought of those words, for, like some of the Roundhead leaders of Cromwell's time, he had been Chaplain as well as Captain of his company. If the war had broken out again, as the "Irreconcilables" believed it surely would, and if Oliver had refused to enlist on the ground that he was studying for Christ's ministry, I think the Father would have cursed him.

The other thing which worried me was a "gospel hymn," which we sang almost every Sunday. It had a swinging tune, but the words were horrible.

Such a gory means of salvation seemed much more frightful to my childish imagination than the most sulphurous hell.

These things I was told I would understand when I grew up. This was the answer to so many questions, that I got out of the habit of asking them. I believed that the Father was very wise and was willing to take his word for everything.

At eleven he persuaded me "to make a profession of faith" and join the church. It is only within these latter, mellower years that I can look back on this incident without bitterness. It was so utterly unfair. The only thing I was made to understand was that I was taking very serious and irrevocable vows. This was impressed on me in every way. I was given a brand new outfit of clothes. I had never had new underwear and new shoes simultaneously with a new suit and hat before. Such things catch a child's imagination. I had to stand up before the whole congregation and reply to un-understandable questions with answers I had learned by rote. Then for the first time I was given a share of the communion bread and wine. The solemnity of the occasion was emphasized. But there was no effort – at least no successful one – to make me understand what it was all about. When I became old enough to begin to think of such things, I found that I had already sworn to believe the same things as long as I lived. Try as hard as I can to remember the many kindnesses of my adoptive parents, realizing, as I surely do, how earnestly and prayerfully they strove to do the best for me, this folly remains my sharpest recollection of them. It was horribly unfair to a youngster who took his word seriously.

But I never had what is called a "religious experience" until that summer in camp meeting when I was sixteen.

In after years, I have learned that the older and richer sects have developed more elaborate and artistic stage-settings for their mysteries. I cannot nowadays attend a service of the Paulist Fathers, or at Saint Mary the Virgin's without feeling the intoxication of the heavy incense and the wonderful beauty of the music. But for a boy, and for the simple mountain folk who gathered there, that camp was sufficiently impressive.

It stood on the edge of a mirror lake, under the shadow of Lookout Mountain, in one of the most beautiful corners of Tennessee. Stately pines crowded close about the clearing and beyond the lake the hill dropped away, leaving a sweeping view out across the valley. Man seemed a very small creature beneath those giant trees, in the face of the great distances to the range of mountains beyond the valley. There was nothing about the camp to recall one's daily life. The thousand and one things which insistently distract one's attention from religion had been excluded.

Every care had been taken to make the camp contrast with, and win people from, "The Springs," – a fashionable and worldly resort nearby. There was no card playing nor dancing, as such things were supposed to offend the Deity. The stage to the railroad station did not run on Sunday.

After breakfast every day the great family – a hundred people or more – gathered by the lake-side and the Father led in prayer. During the morning there were study courses, most of which were Bible classes. I only remember two which were secular. One was on Literature and the King James Version was taken as a model of English prose. No mention was made of the fact that much of the original had been poetry. There was also a course on "Science." A professor of Exigesis from a neighboring Theological Seminary delivered a venomous polemic against Darwin. The "Nebular Hypothesis" was demolished with many convincing gestures.

My little love affair with Margot had put me in a state of exaltation. Other things conspired to make me especially susceptible to religious suggestion. Oliver was back from his second year in the seminary. My dislike for him was forgotten. He seemed very eloquent to me in the young people's meetings, which he conducted.

Mary was there with her three children and had taken for the summer the cottage at one end of the semi-circle overlooking the lake. Her husband, Prof. Everett, had been away for several months on the geological expedition to Alaska, which was, I believe, the foundation of the eminence he now holds in that science. Mary also had been caught up in the religious fervor of the place. To me she seemed wonderfully spiritualized and beautiful beyond words. Oliver and I used often to walk home with her after the evening meetings and, sitting out on her porch over the water, talk of religion.

Sundays were continuous revival meetings. Famous fishers-of-souls came every week. All methods from the most spiritual to the coarsest were used to wean us from our sins. It was "Salvation" Milton, who landed me.

He was the star attraction of the summer's program. He stayed in the camp two weeks, fourteen days of tense emotion, bordering on hysteria. To many people "Salvation" Milton has seemed a very Apostle. His message has come to them as holy words from the oracle of the Most High. To such it may, I fear, seem blasphemous for me – a criminologist – to write of him as a specimen of pathology. But I have met many who were very like him in our criminal courts.

I have no doubt of his sincerity – up to the limit of his poor distorted brain. He had moments of exaltation when he thought that he talked face to face with God. He believed intensely in his mission. He had lesser moments, which he regretted as bitterly as did his friends who, like the sons of Noah, covered him with a sheet that his drunken nakedness might not be seen by men. He was pitifully unbalanced. But I think that if he had been given the strength of will to choose, he would have always been the ardent servant of God we saw in him at the camp meeting.

He was a master of his craft. By meditation and fasting and prayer he could whip himself into an emotional state when passionate eloquence flowed from his lips with almost irresistible conviction. He was also adept at the less venerable tricks of his trade.

It was his custom in the afternoon about four to walk apart in the woods and spend an hour or more on his knees. Once he took me with him. I remember the awe of sitting there on the pine needles, in the silence of the forest and watching him "wrestle with the Spirit." I tried to pray also, but I could not keep my mind on it so long. Suddenly he began to speak, asking Christ's intercession on my behalf. And walking home, he talked to me about my soul. For the first time I was "overtaken by a conviction of sin." That night he preached on the Wages of Sin.

I will never forget the horror of fear which held me through that service. Milton was in the habit of dealing with and overcoming men of mature mind. Such a lad as I was putty in his hands. When, out of the shivering terror of it, came the loud-shouted promise of salvation, immunity from all he had made me feel my just deserts, I stumbled abjectly up the aisle and took my place among the "Seekers." I must say he had comfort ready for us. I remember he put his arm over my shoulder and told me not to tremble, not to be afraid. God was mighty to save. Long before the world was made He had builded a mansion for me in the skies. He would wash away all my sins in the blood of the Lamb. Milton had scared me into a willingness to wade through an ocean filled with blood if safety lay beyond.

The next morning brought me peace. I suppose my overstrained nerves had come to the limit of endurance. I thought it was the promised "peace which passeth all understanding." I was sure of my salvation. Several weeks of spiritual exaltation followed. I read the Bible passionately, sometimes alone, more often with Oliver or Mary, for it was the fashion to worship in common. Whenever the opportunity offered in the meetings, I made "public testimony."

But I would have found it hard to define my faith. I had been badly frightened and had recovered. This, I thought, came from God. I had only a crude idea of the Deity. In general, I thought of Him as very like the Father, with white hair and a great beard. I thought of Him as intimately interested in all I did and thought, jotting it all down in the tablets of judgment – a bookkeeper who never slumbered. I was not at all clear on the Trinity. These mountain Presbyterians were Old Testament Christians. The Christ had a minor role in their Passion Play. They talked a good deal of the Holy Ghost, but God, the Father, the King of Kings, the jealous Jehovah of Israel was their principal deity. We were supposed to love Him, but in reality we all feared Him. However, I was very proud in the conviction that I was one of His elect.

Advancing years bring me a desire for a more subtle judgment on things than the crude verdict of "right" or "wrong." I look back on my religious training, try to restrain the tears and sneers and think of it calmly. I doubt if any children are irreligious. Some adults claim to be, but I think it means that they are thoughtless – or woefully discouraged. We live in the midst of mystery. We are born from it and when we die we enter it again. Anyone who thinks must have some attitude towards the Un-understandable – must have a religion. And loving parents inevitably will try to help their children to a clean and sweet emotional relation towards the unknown. Evidently it is not an easy undertaking. For the adults who surrounded me in my childhood, in spite of their earnest efforts, in spite of their prayers for guidance, instead of developing my religious life, distorted it horribly. They were sincerely anxious to lead me towards Heaven. I do not think it is putting it too strongly to say they were hounding me down the road which is paved with good intentions.

I can think of no more important task, than the development of a sane and healthy "course of religious education for children." The one supplied in our Sunday schools seems to me very far below the mark. It is a work which will require not only piety, but a deep knowledge of pedagogics.

Certainly the new and better regime will discourage precocious "professions of faith." I do not think it will insist that we are born in sin and born sinful. Above all it will take care not to make religion appear ugly or fearsome to childish imagination. Even the most orthodox Calvinists will learn – let us hope – to reserve "the fountain filled with blood" and the fires of Hell for adults. The Sunday school of the future will be held out in the fields, among the flowers, and the wonder of the child before this marvelous universe of ours will be cherished and led into devotion – into natural gratitude for the gift of the earth and the fulness thereof. Surely this is wiser than keeping the children indoors to learn the catechism. I can think of nothing which seems to me less of a religious ceremony than those occasions, when Bibles are given to all the Sunday school scholars who can recite the entire catechism. What have youngsters to do with such finespun metaphysics? Oh! the barren hours I wasted trying to get straight the differences between "Justification," "Sanctification," and "Adoption" – or was it "Redemption." One would suppose that Jesus had said "Suffer the little children, who know the catechism, to come unto me."

But, of course, at sixteen, I had no such ideas as these. I knew of no religious life except such as I saw about me. I had been carefully taught to believe that a retentive memory and a glib tongue were pleasing to the Most High. I was very contemptuous towards the children of my age who were less proficient.

VI

In the midst of this peace a bolt fell which ended my religious life. Its lurid flame momentarily illumined the great world beyond my knowing. And the visioning of things for which I was unprepared was too much for me. I may not be scientifically correct, but it has always seemed to me that what I saw that July night stunned the section of my brain which has to do with "Acts of faith." Never since have I been able to believe, religiously, in anything.

It was a Sunday. At the vesper service, all of us seated on the grass at the edge of the lake, the Father had preached about our bodies being the temples of God. As usual, Oliver led the young people's meeting after supper. These more intimate gatherings meant more to me than the larger assemblies. Our text was "Blessed are the pure in heart." I remember clearly how Oliver looked, tall and stalwart and wonderful in his young manhood. He has a great metropolitan church now and he has won his way by oratory. The eloquence on which he was to build his career had already begun to show itself.

Mary sang. I have also a sharp picture of her. She wore a light lawn dress, which the brilliant moon-light turned almost white. Her years seemed to have fallen from her and she looked as she had done on her wedding night. In her rich, mellow contralto she sang the saddest of all church music: "He was despised."

Something delayed me after the service and when I looked about for Oliver and Mary they were gone. I went to her house but the maid said they had not come. The mystery of religious fervor and the glory of the night kept me from waiting on the verandah, called me out to wander down by the water's edge. But I wearied quickly of walking and, coming back towards the house, lay down on the grass under a great tree. The full moon splashed the country round with sketches of ghostly white and dense black shadows.

Two ideas were struggling in my mind. There was an insistent longing that Margot might be with me to share this wonder of religious experience. Conflicting with this desire, compelled, I suppose, by the evening's texts, was a strong push towards extreme asceticism. I was impatient for Oliver's return. I wanted to ask him why our church had abandoned monasticism.

How long I pondered over this I do not know. Perhaps I fell asleep, but at last I heard them coming back through the woods. There was something in Oliver's voice, which checked my impulse to jump up and greet them. It was something hot and hurried, something fierce and ominous. But as they came out into a patch of moonlight, although they fell suddenly silent, I knew they were not quarreling. Mary cautioned him with a gesture and went into the house. Through the open windows I heard her tell the negro maid that she might go home. I heard her say "Good night" and lock the back door. The girl hummed a lullaby as she walked away. All the while Oliver sat on the steps.

I do not know what held me silent, crouching there in the shadow. I had no idea of what was to come. But the paralyzing hand of premonition was laid upon me. I knew some evil was approaching, and I could not have spoken or moved.

"Oliver," she said, in a voice I did not know, as she came out on the porch, "you must go away. It is wrong. Dreadfully wrong."

But he jumped up and threw his arms about her.

"It's sin, Oliver," she said, "you're a minister."

"I'm a man," he said, fiercely.

Then they went into the house. It was not till years afterwards, when I read Ebber's book – "Homo Sum" that I realized, in the story of that priest struggling with his manhood, what the moment must have meant to Oliver.

I tiptoed across the grass to the shade of the house. A blind had been hurriedly pulled down – too hurriedly. A thin ribbon of light streamed out below it.

I could not now write down what I saw through that window, if I tried. But in the frame of mind of those days, with my ignorance of life, it meant the utter desecration of all holiness. Oliver and Mary had stood on my highest pedestal, a god and goddess. I saw them in the dust. No. It seemed the veriest mire.

I turned away at last to drown myself. It was near the water's edge that they picked me up unconscious some hours later. The doctors called it brain fever. Almost a month passed before I became rational again. I was amazed to find that in my delirium I had not babbled of what I had seen. Neither Oliver nor Mary suspected their part in my sickness. More revolting to me than what they had done was the hypocrisy with which they hid it.

Above all things I dreaded any kind of an explanation and I developed an hypocrisy as gross as theirs. I smothered my repugnance to Mary's kisses and pretended to like to have Oliver read the Bible to me. And when I was able to get about again, I attended meetings as before. There was black hatred in my heart and the communion bread nauseated me. What was left of the summer was only a longing for the day when I should leave for school. Nothing mattered except to escape from these associations.

I am not sure what caused it – the weeks of religious hysteria which accompanied my conversion, what I saw through the crack below the window curtain, or the fever – but some time between the coming of "Salvation" Milton and my recovery, that little speck of gray matter, that minute ganglia of nerve-cells, with which we believe, ceased to function.

BOOK II