CHAPTER V. FAMILIAR SOUNDS.
The members of the club spent a whole week in trying to recover from the bad effects of Mr. Alleman's peculiar and untimely harangue, and even then they did not succeed.
"We were getting into such an unusual, such a heavenly state of mind," explained Mr. Hopper, "and the Lord knows that heavenly states of mind are scarce enough anywhere under the best of circumstances. We were forgetting all the tricks, the games that had been come upon us in the discussion of other points on which the brethren had made up their minds, and picked out their trees to hide behind; and we were having just the happy, quiet, sympathetic time which a man knows how to appreciate when he's knocked about the world for a little while, when all of a sudden Alleman must come in, and spring some of his peculiar notions upon us. I don't see why the Lord lets such men torment the world about religious affairs. They're good enough in every other way."
Other members of the class wondered also; and when, on the following Sunday, Deacon Bates asked if any one else had any remarks to make on the late lesson, nobody answered. So the leader read:
"'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.' Judge Cottaway"—the Deacon had skillfully inveigled the Judge into a front seat before the discussion began, so as to have a strong and respectable opening—"we would be glad to learn your views of this passage."
"I take it to mean," answered the Judge, "that meekness is a virtue so highly esteemed by the Almighty, that he offers, as an incentive to its cultivation, the most highly valued of earthly inducements. Meekness seems to be the antithesis, the exact opposite of strife, and so much of strife is so causeless and harmful, yet so attractive to the ordinary mind, that those who indulge in it are by this passage warned by implication. Meekness is not a virtue of such greatness as poverty of spirit, as may be inferred from the smaller reward promised to those who practice it, and——"
"I want to correct the gentleman right there," exclaimed Mr. Jodderel. "What earth are they to inherit? This earth? Why, everybody laughs at that notion. A man's got to fight awfully hard to get anything in this world, and harder yet to keep whatever he gets. The path of meekness leads but to the poor-house. The earth alluded to evidently means the new earth, which, in the Revelation, John beheld, in connection with the new heaven. That new earth appeared after the destruction of the old one; and for what could it have appeared but to be populated by the redeemed spirits from this? That was the kingdom of heaven, and the text before us evidently refers to it. 'The meek shall inherit the earth;' the apostles, to whom this passage was spoken, needed no more definite expression about the matter, of which the Master doubtless had spoken many times with them. The whole passage seems to me an exact repetition of the one before it, just to give emphasis to the first."
"I wonder if that's exactly straight?" remarked Squire Woodhouse, more with the air of a man in a soliloquy than one asking a question. "If there is a way of inheriting the earth, or even a little piece of it, I'd like to know all about it; but if its only the next world that the passage refers to——"
"If it refers only to the next world, you're not in such a hurry to understand it," interrupted Captain Maile.
"We—ell," drawled the Squire, "that isn't exactly the way I was going to finish off, but I guess it's pretty near the truth. It don't sound well either, does it?"
"Brother Prymm?" said Deacon Bates, and the champion of orthodoxy responded to the invitation by saying,
"The meek are undoubtedly those who follow the non-resistant injunctions which are found everywhere in the New Testament; they are the men who when one cheek is struck turn the other also, who render not railing for railing."
"And who, when the coat is taken, will offer the cloak also," added Captain Maile.
"Certainly," said Mr. Prymm, with rather a wry face, "though I cannot, with any present light, see how the latter course would be practical and judicious. The other injunctions are but amplifications of the inspired saying, 'A soft answer turneth away wrath,' but how property rights can be maintained at all, if the injunction quoted by Captain Maile were followed, I am unable to see."
"It wouldn't work in the steamboat business," declared Mr. Buffle. "It's hard enough to get the worth of your money, even when men promise to pay; but if a man were to understand that by stealing one of my tug-boats he would have a right to expect a first-class lake packet as a present, I'd have to go out of business within a fortnight."
"I'm inclined to think the passage in question must be an interpolation by one of Christ's reporters," said President Lottson, who had been taking a cautious course of Matthew Arnold.
"Why, if I were to live up to that injunction," said Builder Stott, "folks would want to modify their house plans every day. In fact they do it now. The moment I try to oblige a man by giving a little more than his contract calls for, he wants something else. Women in particular are perfectly awful that way; they——"
"Ladies are present," remarked Lawyer Scott, who was considerable of a ladies' man.
"Just think of a broker trying to do business in that way!" exclaimed Broker Whilcher.
"Or a man whose principal crop is hay," said Squire Woodhouse.
"Or an importer of English cutlery," suggested Mr. Jodderel. "Still, the passage ought either to be explained away or lived up to, for if going contrary to business rules is necessary to inherit the new earth—it's contrary to sense that this earth can be got hold of by any such unbusiness-like operation—the new earth, otherwise the kingdom of heaven——"
"Members will please bear in mind the rule that remarks are to be made in regular order," interposed the leader hastily. "We will hear from Brother Hopper."
"I suppose meekness means patience," said the gentleman addressed, nervously clutching his coat-tail pocket with its precious contents; "not getting into a stew about everything, in fact; but how a man is to be so, when everything goes on the way it shouldn't, is more than I can tell, and how they're going to get the earth for their pains is a bigger puzzle yet."
Mr. Lottson being called upon, said:
"I can only repeat about this passage my remarks upon the one which preceded it. It means exactly what it says, but it means it only in a spiritual sense, and only to those to whom it was said—to the disciples of Christ, and those whose conditions of life are equally admirable and peculiar. The disciples were meek—all but Peter, that is—and he stopped being a man of the world after he learned that he couldn't be that and a consistent disciple too. And look at the result! Haven't the disciples of Christ inherited the earth? Hasn't the blood of the martyrs been the seed of the Church? Hasn't the non-resistent, patient, self-sacrificing course of Christian missionaries led to the conversion of powerful heathen nations, opened avenues of trade between them and Christian countries——"
"Which have straightway been traveled over by men who rob the heathen, poison them with rum, and kill them off with the popular vices of civilization," interrupted Captain Maile.
"Opened avenues of trade between them and Christian countries," resumed President Lottson, as if no interruption had occurred, "created a demand for the Bible and the school, discouraged war, extended the area of production, established representative governments in the place of irresponsible despotisms, brought from foreign lands, to study our institutions, men whose fathers and grandfathers were brutal savages, and hastened the coming of the day when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend and every tongue confess him Lord? Business alone could never have done this; it required a special development of mind, and to those whom he had created for this purpose Jesus enounced this promise, which was the only one that in the nature of things could be made to them about earthly interests."
"I declare!" whispered Squire Woodhouse to Mr. Buffle, "Lottson did that splendidly. If it wasn't for the way he treated me about that barn I should say that Lottson ought to have gone into the ministry." At the same moment Deacon Bates called Mr. Prymm to the chair, took the floor himself, and said:
"There was a remark dropped by Mr. Lottson, and followed up in his excellent speech, which I am certain conceals a truth which is not clearly enough realized. If it was, a number of puzzling questions that have been before the class could have easily been answered. He said the passage should be taken in a spiritual sense. It certainly should. God is a Spirit; our own spirits are our only immortal parts; everything else in us and everything around us is transient and perishable. The meek should be meek in a spiritual way; they should not be puffed up with knowledge, or what they think to be such, but should in humility open their hearts to the influences of the Holy Spirit. Business has nothing to do with our eternal welfare; it is only one of the necessary but transient affairs of our perishable, material bodies; but the things unseen are eternal. If we would constantly keep this fact in our minds I am sure many of our present difficulties in studying the Scriptures would disappear. This earth is not our abiding place; our time here is but short; 'A thousand years are but as a day in His sight;' heaven is our final and eternal home, and it was to instruct us how to prepare our souls for the future state of existence that the prophets spoke and Jesus came to earth."
"According to that, it don't matter how we do business," said Squire Woodhouse; "every man can be just as sharp and underhanded as he pleases. Well, it's a comfortable belief, but I think you're mistaken, Deacon, about its being lost sight of; I think pretty much everybody lives up to it, as far as business goes."
"Dr. Fahrenglotz," remarked the leader, in evident confusion at the moral deduced from his theory.
"Although not attaching to the words that degree of authority that some do," said the Doctor, "their unselfish tendency and their moral beauty convince me that they have an important meaning. That they can apply to the common affairs of life I cannot believe, for the theory is contrary to reason and experience. They probably refer to some coming state of society when the application of true reason shall have raised men above their present physical and moral level, and enabled them to translate the mystic sayings of the worlds great seers."
"Then the passage doesn't command anything that's really essential to salvation?" asked young Mr. Waggett.
"Oh, no, certainly not," said Captain Maile. "Nothing does, or if it does, our business is to get around it somehow, and look at some other side of it."
The leader called upon Mr. Alleman, who said:
"The simple fact that this saying was given is sufficient excuse and command to follow it, no matter what it brings us or takes from us. As, however, the material bearing of the passage has attracted more attention to-day than the manifest desire of Christ, I wish to recall to notice the peculiar wording. Jesus does not say that the meek shall earn or acquire the earth, but that they shall inherit it. An inheritance is something that the child obtains from the parent through love and affection. The passage means: 'Be meek, not given to strife, not stirring up wrath, attending to your own affairs, not assuming to be better or more deserving than others;' and God, who owns the earth and all that is in it, who makes man his steward, who pulleth down one and setteth up another, who knows the uses of property better than we do, and who sooner or later puts it into proper hands, will give you the earth. Be meek, and trust to God for appreciation, even upon earth."
"One o'clock," observed President Lottson, and the session closed.
"Now wasn't that just like Alleman?" asked Squire Woodhouse of Mr. Jodderel. "Beautiful idea—perfectly heavenly; but nothing in it that a man can take hold of without running the risk of losing some of his property. He'd better not talk that way before the city booksellers, if he don't want to have to pay cash for every bill of books he buys."
And Captain Maile walked out singing to himself, but in a tone loud enough to be offensive, the old song beginning,
"Whip the devil around the stump."