"It is the same way with a man mentally. If he stays in the spot where his forefathers lived, in the same social conditions, he is apt to let his upper story accumulate a lot of worn-out theories that he has no earthly use for; all their old dusty dogmas and cob-webbed beliefs. He will hang on to them as on to the old furniture, because he happened to inherit them. If he would move once in awhile, keep up with the times, you know, he'd get rid of a lot of rubbish. It is especially true in regard to his religion. All those old superstitions, for instance, about Jonah and the whale, and Noah's ark and the like.
"He hangs on to them, not because he cares for them himself, but because they were his father's beliefs, and he doesn't like to throw out anything the old man had a sentiment for. Now, as I say, if he'd move once in awhile—do some scientific thinking and investigating on his own account—he'd throw out over half of what he holds on to now. He'd cut the most of Genesis out of his Bible, and let Job slide as a myth. One of the finest bits of literature, to be sure, that can be found anywhere, but undoubtedly fiction. The sooner a man moves on untrammelled, I say, by those old heirlooms of opinion, the better progress he will make."
"Toward what?" asked the old miller, laconically. "Dunk's moving next door to the graveyard." There was a twinkle in his eye, and the young collegian, who flattered himself that his speech was making a profound impression, paused with the embarrassing consciousness that he was affording amusement instead.
"The last time I went East to visit my grandson," said the old man, meditatively, "his wife showed me a mahogany table in her dining-room which she said was making all her friends break the tenth commandment. It was a handsome piece of furniture, worth a small fortune. It was polished till you could see your face in it, and I thought it was the newest thing out in tables till she told me she'd rummaged it out of her great-grandmother's attic, and had it 'done over' as she called it. It had been hidden away in the dust and cobwebs for a lifetime because it had been pronounced too time-worn and battered and scratched for longer use; yet there it stood, just as beautiful and useful for this generation to spread its feasts on as it was the day it was made. Every whit as substantial, and aside from any question of sentiment, a thousand times more valuable than the one that Dunk Smith drove past with just now. His table is modern, to be sure, but it's of cheap pine, too rickety to serve even Dunk through his one short lifetime of movings.
"I heard several lectures while I was there, too. One was by a man who has made a name for himself on both sides of the water as a scientist and a liberal thinker. He took up Genesis, all scratched and battered as it is by critics, and showed us how it had been misunderstood and misconstrued. And by the time he'd polished up the meaning here and there, so that we could see the original grain of the wood, what it was first intended to be, it seemed like a new book, and fitted in with all the modern scientific ideas as if it had been made only yesterday.
"There it stood, like the mahogany table that had been restored after people thought they had stowed it away in the attic to stay. Just as firm on its legs, and as substantial for this generation to put its faith on, as it was in the days of the Judges.
"Take an old man's word for it, Robert, who has lived a long time and seen many a restless Dunk Smith fling out his father's old heirlooms, in his fever to move on to something new. Solid mahogany, with all its dust and scratches, is better than the modern flimsy stuff, either in faith or furniture, that he is apt to pick up in its stead."