CHAPTER VII.
A DISENCHANTED COLLEGIAN-PREACHER.
Previous to my arrival at this ancient seat of learning, founded and endowed for the perpetuation and propagation of the doctrines of our denomination, I had never entertained the faintest shadow of doubt as to the infallibility of our creed; but now all faith in it vanished like the baseless fabric of a dream. Here at the fountain head of wisdom, from which streams were supposed to flow for the healing of the nations, my faith in the beliefs of my ancestors fled, nevermore to return; here, where lived the great high priests of the sect, I had expected to find the whole air roseate with divine love and grace, all souls lifted to sublime heights on the breath of unceasing prayer and praise.
The disenchantment was appalling; my brothers in Christ, the grave and reverend professors, were cold as icebergs, evidently caring nothing for the souls or bodies of their Christian or pagan students; the preacher at the college church was an ecclesiastical icicle, who, in his manner at least, continually cried: "Procul, procul, oh, Profani!"
The prayer meetings were dead and formal, no enthusiasm; it was like being in a spiritual refrigerator—with perhaps one exception, when, through the cracks in the floor from the room of a frugal freshman who boarded himself, came the overwhelming stench of cooking onions, and a wag brother who was quoting scripture to the Lord in prayer, suddenly opened his eyes, and sniffing the unctuous odors, shouted: "Brethren, let us now sing 'From whence doth this onion (union) arise?'" and roars of laughter would put an end to the solemn farce.
Within the dismal college dormitories were herded a few hundred youths, entirely free from all moral and social restraints, abandoned to all orgies into which many characters in the formative state are most likely to drift. I frequently saw a professing Christian teacher torture with biting sarcasm his brother church-member, who had done his best, though he failed to grasp some intricate mathematical problem, until the poor fellow abandoned the college in despair.
Is it strange that I and many others lost all faith in a religion that brought forth such bitter fruit? When I strayed from the lifeless dulness of the college church into the light and warmth of the "liberal sanctuary," where the old man eloquently discoursed of the ascent instead of the descent of man, and pictured the sublime development of the race by heroic endeavor from the animal to the archangel; when this good man welcomed us warmly as brothers to his hearth and home and loaned me his silken surplice to cover my seedy clothes when I delivered my orations at the class exhibitions, is it strange that I embrace his Darwinian theory instead of the mythological story of the fall of man tempted by a snake in the garden of Eden?
I usually preached on Sundays, during my four years' course, in the pulpits of the surrounding towns, but it was not of the total depravity nor flaming brimstone; far grander themes engrossed my thoughts and speech; the true heroism of keeping ourselves unspotted from the world, the sublime possibilities of our natures if we would walk in the footsteps of the only perfect One ever seen on earth.
By trimming the midnight lamp and ruining my eyes, I won a scholarship which paid my tuition fees and room rent, so that I was released from the necessity of drawing on the hard-earned savings of my father. The usual college pranks were played, tubs of water were poured from upper windows upon the heads of freshmen who insisted upon wearing stove-pipe hats and the forbidden canes; we tore each others' clothes to the verge of nakedness, and broke each others' heads in frantic football rushes; we indulged in ghost-like sheet and pillow-case parades, during which we fought the police and made night hideous with yells and scrimmages with the "townies"; we burned unsightly shanties, and thus improved the appearance of the city.
We tripped up unpopular professors with ropes in the night, on the icy, steep sidewalk of college street, sending them bumping down the long hill, hatless and with badly torn pants till they brought up with dull thuds against the barber shop on South Main Street; we of course stole the college bell so there was nothing to call us to prayers or recitations; we howled for hours under their respective windows:
"Here's to old Harkness, for he is an imp of darkness!
Here's to old Cax., for his nose is made of wax!
Here's to old Prex—for he likes his double x!"
until some of us were thrust by the police into the nauseating dens of the stationhouse.
Thus, like pendulums, we swung twixt studies and pranks till the boom of the rebel cannon bombarding Fort Sumpter thundered upon our ears. Suddenly our books were forgotten: the university cadets unanimously tendered their services to the government; were at once accepted, and it was the proudest day of my life when, as an officer in our battalion, I marched with the rest to the drill camp on the historic training ground.
The citizens turned out en masse to do us honor, and frantically cheered us on our way to do or die; every house was gay with old glory; our best girls, inspired with patriotic fervor, applauded while they bedewed the streets with their tears; the air resounded with martial music and the boom of saluting cannon; the young war governor, who went up like a rocket and down like a stick, led the way on a prancing charger; the people vied with each other in tendering hospitalities, and every corner afforded its liquid refreshments. We thought it lemonade, but it "had a stick in it" and, presto!—we were no longer seedy theologues, but young heroes all, resplendent with brilliant uniforms and flashing bayonets, marching to defend our great and glorious republic.
We, unsuspecting, imbibed freely the seductive fluids, and soon our heads were in a whirl. We wildly sang the war songs and gave the college yells. It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. That night, Jupiter Pluvius burst upon our frail tents in all his fury, and I awoke the next morning half covered with water, and in a raging fever. I was taken to the hospital, and as I was a minor my father took me from the service.
For weeks I was a wreck, and all my dreams of martial glory vanished, alas,—like the many which have bloomed in the summer of my heart. Before I regained the little strength I ever had, the war was over, but I had done my best to serve my country, and the rapture of pursuing is the prize the vanquished know. The few remaining students plodded along through the curriculum; but our hearts were far away on the battle-fields, from the glory of which, cruel fate debarred us.
In my senior year I was forced by the necessity for securing lucre to pay the increasing graduation expenses, to teach the high school in Bristol, Conn., and returned to the university to "cram" for the final examinations. For days and nights the merciless grind went on until, as by a miracle, I escaped the lunatic asylum. I knew but little of the higher mathematics, but the "Green" professor was a strong sectarian if not an humble Christian, and when the hour for my private examination arrived, I contrived to waste the most of it telling him about the Bristol Church. It was near his dinner hour, and he yearned for its delights to such an extent, that he did not detect me in copying the "Pons Asinorum" onto the blackboard from a paper hidden in my bosom, and as he glanced at the figures on the board, he said: "That's right, I suppose you know the rest," passed me, and hasted to his walnuts and his wine.
The good president, of blessed memory, had another pressing engagement, as I well knew, when I called for his examination, he asked for but little, was too preoccupied to hear whether my answers were correct, passed me, and my "A.B." was won.
We spoke our pieces on graduation day, rejoiced in the applause of our "mulierculae," took our sheepskins, and went forth from "alma mater" conquering and to conquer the unsympathizing world. I had acquired here but a modicum of that learning which was supposed to flow from this "Pierian Spring," but I rejoiced in the fact that I had cast away forever my belief in the "total depravity" of the human race, that in "Adam's fall we sin-ned all, that in Cain's murder, we sin-ned furder," and could now look hopefully upon my fellow-men in the full assurance that
There lies in the centre of each man's heart
A longing and love for the good and pure,
And if but an atom, or larger part,
I know that this shall forever endure.
After the body has gone to decay—
Yes, after the world has passed away.
The longer I live and the more I see
Of the struggles of souls towards heights above,
The stronger this truth comes home to me,
That the universe rests on the shoulders of love—
A love so limitless, deep and broad
That men have renamed it, and called it God.