A DAUGHTER OF THE PURITANS.
Rose Standish Howson—that was her name, and very proud she was of it. Back of the Mayflower, she knew little about her ancestors; but certain it was that in that well-filled vessel one of her forefathers had come to America, and, marrying a distant connection of the veritable Standish family, had handed this name down to all succeeding generations. Rose boasted, so far as it is proper for a well-bred New England girl to boast, that, however it might have been outside of her own country, here at least her lineage was most democratically noble; she belonged—and could prove it, too, out of a little book compiled by her grandfather—thoroughly to the old Puritan race. In all her books the name was written in full—Rose Standish Howson; and it was her unfailing source of regret that her only brother had not been called Miles. John Howson laughed good-naturedly at his sister’s foible, but was really quite as proud as she, though in a more passive way.
Their home was not in Boston. Let this important fact receive our
prompt attention. But, since it could not be there, it was in the next best place—an old academic town; in which New England State matters little to our story. There for thirty years Rose Howson’s father had been the academy’s honored principal. His wife had died young, leaving only this son and daughter. John fitted for Harvard at the academy; Rose went steadily through grammar-school and high-school in her native place, then went to Boston with hopes of at least a two years’ added course of study there. It resolved itself into one brilliant winter and spring of hard work and exhausting pleasure, symphony concerts, Shakspere clubs, Parker Fraternity lectures, abstruse reading, and keenly exciting conversation; one merry June, one gay class-day, one delightful commencement, when Dr. Howson came to Cambridge to meet old pupils and friends, and see his son bear off the highest honors; then they went home for vacation, and before it was over Dr. Howson sickened and died.
The whole town was in a fervor
of excitement; there was a funeral, to which people came from far and near; resolutions were passed, and in the flush of enthusiasm John Howson, young as he was and just out of college, was elected on trial to fill his father’s place. So the brother and sister still lived on in their old home, but into it they infused a new manner of living. Fresh from the intellectual arena, they sought to shape society about them into some likeness to that they loved so well, and they found their old friends and playmates more than ready to meet them half-way. A book club was started, into which the current literature of the day was crowded, and from which, it was placidly affirmed, all “trash” was excluded; but Mill was there, and Darwin, and a strange mixture of German philosophy, which the young men, but more especially the young women, read, or fancied they read, and about which they talked much, after a fashion revealing more ideas than thought. There were “musicals” too, and a Shakspere club, and German and French conversations and readings, and the second winter after Dr. Howson’s death there were dramatic entertainments and concerts; and it came to pass that almost every afternoon and evening of Rose’s life was filled with some sort of intellectual work or pleasure. She was a capital housekeeper, and so her early mornings were occupied with household cares; but, later, she was always ready for a walk or talk, and her reading was done in snatches by day and by long hours of steady work late at night.
About religion “experimentally” she knew little. The old meeting-house, which the Puritan settlers had built, was still standing, but it had been enlarged and made over, though not beautified. There Rose
had been accustomed to go Sunday after Sunday as a matter of course, and sometimes to the Friday evening prayer-meeting; but she was not “a Christian.” Once there had been a revival, when she tried to be converted, but she had failed. Then in Boston she had been taken to hear preachers who were not “orthodox” at all; she had almost feared them at first, because of strange names she had heard applied to them—they had German tendencies, rationalistic tendencies, were free-thinkers. But when she came under the spell of their presence and their eloquence she was fascinated. They appealed to what she thought the highest faculties of her nature—her intellect, her love for the beautiful, her reason. She missed it when she came home and she did more than miss it: she began to doubt. Was old Mr. Gray wiser than the cultured men she had been hearing? He claimed that they were wrong; how did he know that? How could she tell that he was not mistaken? In this one small town, originally occupied by orthodox Congregationalists only, there were now Orthodox Unitarians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Universalists. A Roman Catholic priest was serving there too, in a dingy hall in a back street, but “society” rarely noticed him or his work; he and his alike were out of its pale, anomalies, hardly worth mentioning except with pitying wonder or idle jest and scorn. What made Mr. Gray superior to any or all of these in his power of discerning truth?
And while Rose queried thus on Sunday mornings, sitting wearily in her accustomed place at the right of the pulpit, sometimes trying to find out how to be good, but oftener losing herself in memories of the
feasts of reason she had known for so brief and bright a while, some one came to town who was to influence her life greatly. Looking up suddenly from one of these reveries, she found herself still in the meeting-house, but opposite her was a new face, a lady’s, thin and pale, with searching eyes fixed upon hers, and after service the lady came straight to her pew and held out her hand.
“I am sure you are Miss Howson,” she said. “Your friend Grace Roland has told me much of you. I am Ellen Lawton.”
Rose’s heart leaped up. In those happy Boston days she had often heard Ellen Lawton spoken of as one of the most elegant and cultured women of her time, and she had read her writings with delight, but she had hardly hoped to meet her. It took her breath away with joy when she learned that Miss Lawton had come to live for a while in this quiet country place.
It was a season of keen delight. Rose had thought she knew what it was to revel in intellectual pleasure, but it was something new to meet one so superior to herself, yet so loving; always ready to listen to her ideas, to help her unfold them, and yet so calm and tranquil. Miss Lawton was an invalid, and, after that first Sunday, Rose never saw her at church again. Once, when Rose stopped on her way thither to leave her some flowers, Miss Lawton said that she was going to sit in the sunshine; would not Rose stay with her? And when Rose demurred, Miss Lawton said gently, “Shall we not please God as well in the beauty of his sunshine as in that bare and cheerless house where you know you do not like to go?”
This was the beginning of Rose’s first knowledge of Ellen Lawton’s
so-called religious life; they sat and talked all that morning about it. With a sweet smile upon her calm face, the invalid said quietly that she believed there might be a God; she was not sure, of course; but if there was one, he was kind and good, and loved to see her happy. She made life as bright and beautiful as she possibly could always; it was given her to enjoy. Books and music and art and flowers were parts of her religion; beyond this world she did not look; what came after death she knew not and cared not; if there was a God, he was good and would be good to her; if there was not, the thought of annihilation did not distress her. Rose watched her closely after this; she never heard an impatient word or saw a hasty movement; the life was an exposition of what a great many people would call “the beautiful,” and Rose found in it more and more satisfaction for her extreme intellectual cravings.
One morning a servant ran in with blanched face to tell her that Miss Lawton was dead. Rose had known that heart-disease was the fatal malady which was surely sapping at her friend’s life, yet this blow fell upon her with an awful suddenness. She went to the house, where they left her to do as she would, for she was the nearest friend Miss Lawton had there; she went up to the silent room, and shut herself in alone with the silent dead. Ellen Lawton lay as they had found her; she must have risen in the morning and dressed with her usual dainty care; then, perhaps feeling some acute pang of the pain to which she was subject, she had sunk upon the couch by the window. Her face was, as in life, calm and noble; about her lay her books that she had loved, her rare pictures looked
down upon her, her flowers scented the room; outside the sun shone brightly on the grand hills she had been used to watch, finding in them food for heart and soul both, she said. None of these moved her now at all.
Rose went close to her and looked at her, and looked, and looked, as if she would waken her by the very fixedness of her gaze. What was this thing lying there, this beautiful clay, this voiceless, motionless, tenantless body? Yesterday it spoke to her, kissed her, loved her; what had changed it, gone out of it? The spirit? The soul? Where was that soul then?
She knelt down trembling, and put her hand where the heart had beat not five short hours ago. There was no movement now; and the silence in the room grew terrible. Where was that which yesterday she spoke with? Nowhere? Then to-morrow she herself might be nowhere and nothing.
Suddenly there came to her a memory which she had striven for years to banish. A stranger had preached at the time of that unforgotten revival; he had painted vividly and unsparingly the torments of the lost. Often in the night Rose had wakened from a dream of it, and found herself cold with horror, and cried out, “I never will believe it.” Now like a painting she seemed to see it all again, and through her mind rang the words with which the sermon had ended, “Doubt on as you will, O unbeliever, O careless soul, O faithless Christian! Laugh on as you will, forget as you will. But suppose that you wake up after death and find this true! What then?”
John Howson, hearing the news at school, hurried home at noon to comfort Rose, but she was gone.
He found her in that room of death, rocking to and fro upon her knees, her hands held out over the dead, while she was whispering in hoarse tones: “Ellen, is it true? Tell me it is not true.” And no one answered.
John lifted her tenderly, and she clung to him like a little child. “Take me home!” she cried, quivering all over. She could not walk; he had to carry her, and all the way she clung to him as if the very touch of something that lived and loved was comfort. “O John! I am so glad you are alive,” she sobbed. “Dear John, do not die, do not die!”
He could hardly bear to leave her for afternoon school, and when he came home she was crouching by his arm-chair, while Abby, their old servant, sat looking at her with pitying horror. “You’d best do what you can for her, Master John,” she said, “or she’ll kill herself going on in this way.”
“No, no! not kill myself,” Rose answered hysterically. “It is awful to live, but it is worse to die.”
John sat down near her, and she took his hand and held it tightly. “I want to feel that you are here, and warm and well,” she said. “O John! tell me what is true.”
“What is true?” he repeated. “Why, I am, I hope; and you, dear child.”
“Oh! no,” she exclaimed, as if his tender lightness were unbearable. “Is God true? Is there a God? What comes after death?”
He answered her honestly; he had even less faith than she, but his doubts did not trouble him. He lived a life as upright and fair as his neighbors; whether there was a God or not, what difference did it make, so long as he behaved himself? This was John Howson’s
creed, if such a title could be applied to it.
How strong and kind he looked, how honorable he always was! Why should Rose worry, if he did not? Either there was no God, and what they did made no difference—they could live as they liked and get all the pleasure possible—or, if there was a God, he was too good to be ever angry with them. It was a consoling belief; she would take the comfort of it. But alone at night the horror returned. Suppose there was a God who demanded something—she knew not what—from his creatures; she could only express it by the vague term, “to be Christians.” She held her head between her hands and tried to think what that meant. Yes, she must be converted, and be sorry for all her sins, and join the church. How were people converted, and what church should she join? Perhaps she had better say a prayer. “O God!” she began, then paused. Her brain was reeling with the doubt whether there was any God at all; and even if there were, what was the use of prayer?
The next morning she went to Mr. Gray. With nerves unstrung by intense feeling, she had little thought left for ordinary greetings or for ceremony. The old man was jarred and hurt by what he thought her rudeness, never dreaming that he was dealing with a soul which was fast losing all care for earthly joys or pains, or for any earthly thing at all, in the one absorbing fear of eternal things. For forty years he had labored in this place in a calm routine, hearing something but comprehending little of the doubts through which the world without was passing. It filled him with horror to hear Rose talk; he had never imagined what thoughts
had been working in the mind of his old friend’s child.
“What must one do to be a Christian?” she had asked abruptly.
He had not expected such a question, and looked surprised, but he answered simply enough: “You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, my child, and come to him in repentance.”
“And where is he?” Rose cried, “and who is he, and what does he want of me?”
Mr. Gray stared at her in amazement and sorrow. “My dear,” he said, “who is he? He is God, and he is everywhere, and he wants your heart.”
“How do you know that?” Rose exclaimed. “Tell me how you know it.
The old man laid his hand upon his Bible. “Where should I know it but here?” he asked.
“But other people think differently,” Rose said. “I have read it myself, and I don’t find what you preach. The Baptists read the Bible, and so do the Methodists, and so do the Episcopalians, and you cannot agree to be one. How do you know the Bible is true?”
It was of no avail to tell her of internal evidence, or of spiritual conviction, or of visible effects. Quickly enough it became clear that Rose Howson had no faith left in the Lord Jesus Christ as God. She did believe as an historical fact that he had lived once upon earth, and was man, and possibly something more than man; that was all. To everything Mr. Gray said she returned the answer, “How do you know it? Is not the Baptist minister a Christian?—and yet you differ. Is not the Unitarian minister a scholar, and does not he pray to God?—and yet you say he is mistaken.” And
when Mr. Gray reminded her of her father, and asked how he would have felt to hear her speak thus, she cried out that she was a woman grown, and it was her own soul she was talking of, and her father could not save that; fathers made very little difference when it was heaven and hell you were thinking about.
“All Christians agree on the vital points,” Mr. Gray said; “at least, all evangelical Protestants.”
“And what about the unevangelical Protestants and the poor Catholics? and who decides what are the vital points? and why cannot you and the Baptists commune together, then?” The eager questions were poured forth, overwhelming the listener.
Mr. Gray shook his head sadly. “I do not think you are in a fit state to speak of such matters, Rose,” he said. “The Lord Jesus Christ died for you. Pray to him that he will himself teach you.”
Rose stood up. “Good-by, Mr. Gray,” she said gently. “I am afraid I have troubled you. Perhaps you will say a prayer for me sometimes.”
“I will indeed, my child,” he answered her, with a very troubled look upon his face; “but you must pray too.”
“Pray?” she repeated to herself mechanically as she went out of the room. “I wonder how they do it, and what they mean by it, and what good it ever does? Pray? Oh! if I only could.”
After this Rose was never seen inside the old meeting-house again. Everybody learned that she was in some religious difficulty; most persons never mentioned the subject to her; some told her not to worry, but to trust; others that it made no manner of difference what
she believed, so long as she was sincere. To the one she answered that the only belief she was sincere in was that she did not know what to believe; to the other she made no reply. But to John once she answered wearily: “If you sat here studying, and I told you the house was on fire, and you could smell it burning, would you keep still at your books, and trust and not worry, because other people said it was not your house?”
On one occasion she took up a Protestant Episcopal Book of Common Prayer which she found in her father’s library, and, turning its pages, came to the Apostles’ Creed. It comforted her to read it; she thought it must be a blessed thing to be brought up always with that impressed upon one, and never to know anything else. She had some Protestant Episcopal friends; they seemed very content. But, still idly turning the leaves, she came to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and her eye lighted on the words, “As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.” So then even they could not be sure and settled in their belief, she said to herself; for if Rome and Jerusalem and Antioch had erred, why not the Protestant Episcopal Church of America? It was the closing drop of bitterness. John found her that noon in as terrible a state as on the day of Ellen Lawton’s death.
“Rose,” he said gravely, “for some time, as you know, I have doubted the existence of a God; but I will tell you now that my doubts on that point are settled. Wherever and whatever he may be, there surely is one; for I am convinced
that no one could suffer as you do without some reality to cause it.”
The unexpected words brought a ray of comfort; she lifted her poor pale face to his with a look of pitiful longing. “Then, John,” she said, “don’t you think he must know how dreadful the suffering is, and that he will tell me some day where to find him?”
The tears—a man’s rare tears—sprang to John Howson’s eyes. “I surely think he will, Rose,” he answered; and he stooped and kissed her with great compassion. His love was the only comfort Rose had now, and at times she found no comfort even in that.
Fanny Mason came to see her in the afternoon. People did not come to the house as freely as they used to come; Rose showed too plainly that she did not care to see them. But Fanny had been an intimate family friend always; the affection between the two girls was more like that of relatives than of friends. Fanny was not at all intellectual, had never known a shadow of doubt; she ran in to chat and gossip, not waiting for replies, and brought a sense of refreshment, or at least of change, to Rose’s burdened mind.
“To-morrow is Ascension Day,” she said. “The Episcopalians are going to have service and trim their church beautifully—white lilacs and wistaria and lilies of the valley and bunches of forget-me-not. It will be lovely; wouldn’t you like to see it?”
“I am tired and sick of prettiness and pettiness,” Rose said.
“Rose Howson! What next? You used to say that the beautiful satisfied you entirely.”
“I thought it did,” Rose answered sadly. “But where is it? All
at once it failed me. Now I see a death’s-head behind all.”
“Rose! Not really?”
Rose almost smiled at Fanny’s scared face. “No, Fanny; not literally, at least. Once, though, I did really see it in the very centre of loveliness, and I cannot forget.”
“I wish you could forget,” Fanny said pityingly. “I wish we could be little girls once more, Rose.”
“No, no!” Rose answered, shuddering. “Not to live all these years over again. But, O Fanny! if I only could forget for ever so short a while!”
The strained, wild passion of her look and manner frightened Fanny; she tried to return to her former chatty lightness. “I’ll tell you what you had better do,” she said, “since you are tired of the beautiful. The Catholics are going to keep Ascension Day too. What a queer set they are! Do you know that they call this the month of Mary, and in their hall her image is dressed in lace and flowers, with candles burning around it all day long? It is not so pretty there, I assure you. Suppose you try that.” Then laughing as if she had suggested the most absurd of absurdities, Fanny went away.
The dark cloud of depression which had come upon Rose that morning, and had lifted slightly at John’s words, shadowed her now more densely than ever. She looked about the room which John’s taste and hers had made so fair. How everything palled upon her! What good was it to try to make life as beautiful as possible, if even in life she ceased to care for the beautiful? The strong, the true, the lasting, was what she needed now.
It seemed to her that there was no hope anywhere. She fled out
into the open air, and walked fast to escape her haunting thoughts; but there was no escape from self. Passing the hall where the Catholics had services, she saw an old woman climbing the steps, remembered Fanny’s words, and followed her. “Since the beautiful fails me,” she thought with a bitter smile, “I will look at what is not beautiful.”
It was a very dingy hall, and uninviting. On the side walls were poor wood-cuts representing the scenes of the Passion. On a plain white wood altar a lamp was burning. Near by hung a colored print of the Saviour, but as Rose had never seen him portrayed before—with his Heart exposed upon his breast, and great blood-drops falling from it. Rose shrank from the sight; it displeased her. Close by the altar-rail was a highly-colored and gaudily-decorated statue of the Blessed Virgin, with flowers distastefully arranged about it. The old woman had fallen on her knees before it, and was praying. Rose wondered at her.
But she was strangely conscious of a peculiar quiet in the place; it soothed her. She sat down on one of the benches, and took up a book lying there. The Key of Heaven it was called; a very soiled and worn book it was; she hardly liked to touch it. It opened at the Apostles’ Creed. “He ascended into heaven,” she read.
Who was “he”? Jesus Christ—God! So Catholics believed as well as Mr. Gray; in this they were agreed. But, oh! what difference did it make? God and heaven were so very far away—if indeed there were a heaven anywhere—that who on earth could tell anything about them? She looked up wearily from the book; again her eyes met the poor print of the Sacred
Heart, the poor statue of the holy Mother. Like a flash the thought came into her mind, “Jesus Christ—God—ascended into heaven, and he had a heart like ours, and he had a mother.”
It was not as if she were uttering a belief—whether Jesus Christ was God she did not know; she was not even thinking about it then. But it was as if she had grasped a link in a mighty chain, which, if one other link could be supplied, would solve and settle all doubt for ever. Over and over she said the words, fearing to lose or forget them: “Jesus Christ—God—ascended into heaven, and he had a heart like ours, and he had a mother.” If this was true, how God in heaven must pity her, how he must love her!
And suddenly the tears were falling on Rose’s cheeks. When she had wept last she could not tell; certainly not since Ellen Lawton’s death, though she had often craved the relief of tears. Now they fell softly and plenteously, while she kept repeating the strange formula with a keen sense that it soothed her and she was resting; and oh! she had been so tired. A mother, a mother—how very sweet it must be to have a mother! And a God with a heart like ours, a heart that could be wounded and bleed and suffer sorely; oh! how one must love a God like that.
“John,” she said abruptly, when they were sitting by the study-lamp after tea, “what are Catholics? I mean, what do you know about them?”
“Not much of anything,” he answered in some surprise, “except as one is always coming upon them in history and the papers. Why?”
“What makes them different from Protestants? Aren’t you always coming upon them too?”
“Not in the same way, child. You know that Protestants are not so—so obtrusive.”
“But why, John? I want to know about them.”
There was an animation in her manner which reminded him of old times; he saw that she was really in earnest, and set himself to answer her in his straightforward, kindly way, glad to notice any change for the better in her tone of mind.
“I have never thought very much about them, Rose,” he said; “but every general reader must come in contact with them somehow, even if, like me, he has not had personal acquaintance with them in society. Of course you know the distinguishing features of confession and transubstantiation, the papacy, the worship of saints and relics, prayer for the dead.”
“Are you sure they are all wrong?”
“Not at all. We were brought up to think them wrong, but I have never looked so deeply into the matter as to make such an assertion on my own judgment; it never has seemed worth while. However, if you care for my opinion, I will tell you what, from all I have read and heard, presents itself to my mind as the peculiar and fatal mark of Catholicism. It is its claim of absolute authority over the bodies and minds and souls of men—a claim which reached its height of tyranny in the declaration of the infallibility of the pope.”
“What does that mean, John?”
“Why, that whatever the pope may say—no matter who he is, remember, if he is only a pope—that thing you and I and every one must believe to be right. However, I mean to be just to all sects. If I have the idea rightly, their exact claim is this: that the pope, as pope,
speaking to the whole church as the Head of the Church, cannot be mistaken, simply because God will not permit him to be. Do you understand?”
She was sitting in the full light of the lamp. He noticed the quiet, thoughtful look upon her face; it made him very happy to see it there.
“John,” she said after a minute’s pause, “why should it not be?”
“What, Rose?”
“I mean, if there is a God Almighty, why could he not keep a man from error in teaching, just as easily as he could make a man in the first place?”
“Really,” said John with an amused smile at what he thought her brightness, “I don’t see but that he could; that is, if you give up the idea that we are free agents.”
“But do they say he is not generally a free agent?” Rose asked, like one thinking out a problem. “Only, when God wants to use him to teach the church, he will not let him teach a lie. Why should not an Almighty God do that? O John! look here.”
She hurried to the bookcase, brought back and opened the Book of Common Prayer. “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church,” she read. “Then there are those who do really believe it; who really think that now—to-day—there is a church where God speaks plainly and unmistakably, and always will speak so, and there can be no error?”
“Yes, Rose.”
Was it only the glow of the lamplight shining upon her face? Did his eyes deceive him, or was that creature, radiant with happiness and a bloom of beauty never witnessed there before—was this his poor and fading Rose of that very noon? Once in his life he had heard a
child laugh who had been suddenly and entirely released from excruciating pain—a low, sweet laugh most exquisite to hear in the sense it gave of indescribable relief. Such a laugh he heard now from Rose’s lips, which he had almost feared would never so much as smile again.
“John,” she said exultingly, “I have it! There is a Heavenly Father—God—and he made us all. And there is Jesus Christ—God—who ascended into heaven, and he had a heart like ours, and he had a mother. And there is a Holy Ghost—God—who is with the church, and so she cannot lie. And how those three are one, and how the blood of Christ saves us, we may never be able to explain; but, if there is a God, he will never let his church tell lies or err or make mistakes, and whatever his church says that we ought to believe, whether we understand it or not. And only Catholics claim an infallible voice. John, I am going to try it. I shall speak to the priest to-morrow.”
“You are your own mistress, Rose,” he said gravely. “You can do as you please. I only warn you that after that one act of your own choice, you must give up your reason and will to another.”
The color flashed more brightly in her cheeks. He was amazed as he looked at her; once again the fire was in her eyes, and the brilliant intellect shone in the face that had been dulled so long.
“I shall give up my reason and my will to God,” she said. “It is he who will speak to me, without erring and without lying. I do not expect to be as wise as my Creator, and I am sure I shall be none the worse for it when he who is wisdom itself teaches me. It is God that I am talking about, John, and
not a mere man that can make mistakes. I am quite content to yield my intellect and my will to him.”
And then, as suddenly as it had come, the glow faded from her face; she was kneeling down beside him with that look of anguish in her eyes which for so many long weeks had wrung his heart with pity. “You know I have suffered,” she said, “but, John, it is only the outside you have seen; you can’t tell what it has been within. And now a great light is coming—I am sure of it. It is not the love of beauty or anything I used to crave. It is the thing I need and we all need; something stronger than we are: something that cannot by any possibility teach us a lie; something that cannot by any possibility err; something plain to hear and plain to see—infallible! I have not got it yet; I am only on my way to it. If it was in your power to stop me, would you do it?”
“I do not understand you, Rose,” he answered thoughtfully, “nor do I entirely follow your train of reasoning. Still, I grant that for a temperament such as yours has of late disclosed itself to be there is comfort in what you think you see. No, I would not say a word to stop you, my poor child! It goes against the grain to think of one of us becoming a Catholic; but if anything will help you, I shall bless the hand that brings relief.”
She looked full in his face with a look of grave surprise. “I did not think that of you,” she said; “you always have seemed so honest. Don’t you know that nothing in heaven or earth can satisfy me, unless it is the truth? No shams, no half-way things, but something like rock that will never fail. I did not think that of you, John!”
John sat alone and puzzled over
her words that night. “I always have to puzzle things out,” he said. “They never come to me like a flash, as they do to Rose. Stop, though! I am wrong there. She has been months in getting at it, and they were months that almost killed her. Why was it?”
Plainly enough he saw at last why it was. God, the soul, eternity—those things which are invisible—were more real to Rose than the visible things. And should they not be? He knew very well that he would be stung to the quick to be told that his body—his material, tangible, lower nature—had the upper hand in his life. No, his reason, his intellect—something intangible and invisible anyhow, by whatever name you named it—was the governing power. And if so, then why should not One invisible and intangible be the ruler of that, and claim from him more than a merely blameless life and an honest fame; demand submission of his will and reason and thought? John shook his head ruefully; the idea struck home; he did not like it, but there it was.
The next day Rose quietly laid before him her little Catechism, open at the very first section, and John read this:
“Question. Who made you?
“Answer. GOD.
“Q. Why did he make you?
“A. That I might know him, love him, and serve him in this world, and be happy with him for ever in the next.
“Q. To whose likeness did he make you?
“A. To his own image and likeness.
“Q. Is this likeness in your body or in your soul?
“A. In my soul.
“Q. In what is your soul like to God?
“A. Because my soul is a spirit endowed with understanding and free will, and is immortal—that is to say, can never die.
“Q. In what else is your soul like to God?
“A. Because as in God there are three persons and one God, so in man there is one soul and three powers.
“Q. Which are the three powers?
“A. Will, memory, and understanding.
“Q. Which must we take most care of, our body or our soul?
“A. Of our soul.
“Q. Why so?
“A. Because, ‘What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’
“Q. What must we do to save our soul?
“A. We must worship God by faith, hope, and charity; that is, we must believe in him, hope in him, and love him with all our heart.
“Q. How shall we know the things which we are to believe?
“A. From the Catholic Church of God, which he has established by innumerable miracles, and illustrated by the lives and deaths of innumerable saints.”
“John,” said Rose steadily, “be honest with God.”
* * * * *
Professor Howson is a name which no one hears now, though it was once supposed that it would rank among those of New England’s noblest scholars. But John Howson teaches still. People had often said of him that he would never marry; that his books and his sister were enough for him. He never did marry; but it was God and the church of God that satisfied him. Once, in a great city, an old friend of his collegiate days, who had not heard of him for years, met him face to face in his dress of a religious, and stopped him in utter amazement.
“John Howson! You are unmistakable, but how is this? I was told of your change, but did not know it had gone so far. Are not your Puritan ancestors groaning in their shrouds, man, because of such doings?”
The priest returned a courteous answer, and would have turned to other themes, but his friend persisted. Then, not with the old outspoken frankness as of one who feared none, but instead, thoughtfully and humbly as in the very fear of God, there came this reply:
“Once I matched my mind with the mind of God, and judged him, and thought his will to be of no account. It was a great sin, and he saved me from it. After that I could only say, as another in like case once said, ‘I cannot give God less than all.’”
“A great sin?” his friend repeated. “I do not understand that.”
He saw a shade of peculiar awe creep over the countenance before him. “And is it no sin,” John Howson asked in a deep voice, “to hear said in the face of God that there is no God? to have counted your own judgment superior to his? to have given God the lie? One who is now of the mightiest saints thought that he did God service while he fought against him, and afterward he named himself the chief of sinners. But I did not so much as think of the service of God at all in matters of belief.”
“I can’t see the fault in that,” his friend said wonderingly. “If it was murder you had on your conscience, I might sympathize with you; but this!”
“You are fresh from Massachusetts,” said Father Howson, “and it is years since I was there. Do they still count the mind as nobler than the body, and the intellect as among their highest gifts?”
“Yes,” was the proud reply.
“Some time,” returned Father Howson with deep meaning in his tone, “we all shall have to learn that God judges sin of the mind by as terrible a judgment as sin of the body, and that he demands his gifts with usury. Believe me, it is better to forestall that judgment, and to meet that demand here than hereafter.”
And Rose? Long since she learned to say, “I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth.” Long since she learned that there is One invisible who is fairer than any child of man, and to him she gave the heart which a wealth of intellectual and earthly loveliness had failed to satisfy. She has learned that there is a nobler Blood than any that the world can boast; His place is with the nobility of an eternal kingdom, whose peculiar marks of honor are poverty, and self-renunciation, and an utter lowliness of obedience, whereby every faculty of one’s nature is brought with a glad free-will into the obedience of Christ. One day the daughter of the Puritans heard another voice than theirs call her by that tender name: “Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear: and forget thy people and thy father’s house. And the King shall greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord God.” Once before, but after sore struggle and heartrending suffering, she had heard that voice. Hearing it again, she rose up joyfully and followed it, as then, without delay.