That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

I was thinking to myself and did not realize the silence of Mr. Jasper. He then continued: “Such was my home and early training. I was kept from bad company, ‘tied to my mother’s apron string,’ as the boys said, but it was a good string, one of the best that God ever made. One incident occurred when I was in my sixteenth year that left a profound impression on my mind and on my life. A neighbor’s wife and her son—he was just my age to a day—had lately returned from a visit to a distant place where he had met some young people with whom I was slightly acquainted.

“We were in their drawing room and the mother was sewing or reading. Mention was made of a young man several years older than we were. At his name the mother remarked, ‘How sad it was! He was a young man of good family, fine ability and excellent prospects, but he had gone with bad women, became diseased and so offensive that his family could not endure his presence but had to provide him rooms outside the house.’ I do not remember her exact words. She was a refined, educated, Christian lady, and I know must have spoken on such a subject with as much delicacy as possible. I was absolutely ignorant of such things. Some might say I was a very innocent youth. I proudly bear the taunt. Such was the effect of her remarks upon me, that I went home sick with disgust and could eat no dinner.

“That feeling has never left me. Whenever in my travels I have seen a prostitute, I have had the same feelings of disgust, and when meeting men whom I knew to be licentious I would have as quickly taken a slimy toad in my hand as to have shaken hands with them. Laying aside all the morality of the subject, I never could appreciate the exquisite, refined taste of a gentleman or any man who had any self respect, who could associate with women common to everybody. And what puzzles me now is how any man belonging to a Christian church and professing to be a follower of Jesus, who was purity itself, can be guilty of sexual immorality. They are foul hypocrites, and besides, traitors to Jesus as much as Judas was.

“That lady’s talk gave me a shock that has lasted as a blessing all my life. I have often wondered why parents, ministers and teachers, should have such false modesty about these most important things to the young. They say nothing until the youth falls into the mire and slime of the ditches of sin, and then hold up their hands in holy horror and wonder how it could have happened.”

These remarks recalled Mr. Percy’s earnest talk to me when he, with both of my hands clasped in his, and tears in his eyes, gazing into mine, begged me, for the love of God and for the sake of my own soul, to keep myself pure and clean. And I remember, too, that never, in all the years of my school days, did our burly principal or the teachers utter a word on a subject that was of infinitely more importance, than all our mathematics or history or our whole school course of study. When I have thought of the ruin of some of my schoolmates, through their ignorance of danger, I have bitterly blamed the whole false or deficient system of education. Only the pure in heart shall see God, but purity is entirely left out of our school education and mostly from the services in the churches.

Mr. Jasper continued, “I joined the church of my parents during my college life, and for years afterwards, I accepted the Bible as the inspired word of God, and all that the church taught as direct from Him. I never had a doubt about these things. I often wondered when others spoke of their doubts. The fact was, that I never read or thought of anything contrary to what I had blindly accepted as the truth. I was happy in this state of mind or ignorance. This continued for years. To be as brief as possible: I engaged in business and met with reverses through the betrayal of some men professing to be Christians. What to do I did not know. I was like a man shipwrecked on a desert island, or rather cast away among savages, for those whom I supposed my friends turned against me. Men whom I had assisted begged to be excused, ‘it was not convenient,’ or ‘some other time,’ when I asked for a little assistance. Men whom I had put upon their feet at a sacrifice to myself hardly knew me when we met. Once it was ‘Harry,’ but then, ‘Mister’ of the coolest kind. I was criticised and censured for becoming poor. When a man is down everybody, even his former friends, are ready to give him a kick. Mankind is very much like the vultures we see in India. Not one of them in sight anywhere until a poor brute is wounded, when they are seen coming in every direction to pull their victim to pieces and devour him. The world can forgive anything but poverty.

“I expected to find some sympathy and kindness in the church where I had taken a prominent part, but instead, I was told in effect that I had better take a back seat. This seemed to me intensely cruel and unjust.

“To be excluded from the church of my parents, to be slighted by those professing to be Christians, and by whom I was once respected and treated as a brother, without any reason given, was unendurable. I was grieved beyond measure, astonished and broken-hearted. My poor wife nearly died from grief, and my children, though I tried to conceal it from them, saw my agony. I tried to think what might be the reason of such harsh treatment, until my head seemed ready to burst, and such was the intense agony of my feelings that I was in fear that my heart might fail me, for it sadly ached. At last the question came. How is it possible for Christian men to act in this way? Are they followers of Jesus, who can hurt me so much without giving any reason whatever? As I have said, I never had a doubt about religion before, not one, but now the question came, Can a religion be true, and of God, that can allow men to treat me so unjustly and without mercy? I walked in my garden for hours, many a time till late at night, to retire to a weary, restless sleep.

“Then one night the crisis came. I had a fearful dream. I do not believe in dreams, but this one, whether the fancy of a disordered brain or whatever it was, had a terrible result. I thought I saw a great treeless plain, in the center a low spot of ground from which arose a dense white mist and I heard a voice saying of the mist: ‘This is your God and beside it there is nothing else.’ I awoke in horror, bathed in a cold perspiration. I tried to recover my senses, but for all I could do, I felt myself a changed man. Completely worn out I fell asleep again. In the morning I began to tell my wife my dream but she checked me saying, ‘It is too awful, don’t speak of it!’ But I could not get rid of it. The mist was as real to me as myself. It overpowered me. I was a changed man as much so as if I had been metamorphosed into another being. A thousand times I have tried to analyze that dream and to account for it. I never had a doubt in my life about the existence of God, for I had always believed and trusted in Him implicitly, to my great comfort and peace. The only doubting question I ever had was whether a religion could be from God that could allow its believers to treat me as I had been treated. Whatever caused the dream I was another being from what I was the day before; I had no belief in a God whatever. My faith in the divinity of Jesus and in the divine inspiration of the Bible had ceased entirely. I had no feeling about the matter. I could not pray, for I had nothing to pray to. I had no fear, none in the least. I had done nothing to bring me into this condition and felt no responsibility for it. I had not the least desire to go back into the church and would not have accepted the highest place in it, if they had come on their knees begging me to take it. Strangely enough, though the day previous and for weeks and months I had been in an agony of distress, I was now serenely quiet and at peace; all the old conflict had gone.

“I lost breath in my soul sometimes