Two clergymen of the city, who had been attentive listeners during the whole evening, not being moved to pour out their admiration upon either speaker, quietly strayed across the hall into Mr. Ingraham’s library. The senator himself was absent.
“Well, Nichols,” said Dr. Harvey, the older man, who had a shrewd, kindly, smooth-shaven face, “what do you think of that for Old Testament exegesis?”
“It was pretty stiff to have the responsibility for it given to the Lord,” returned his friend. “I almost felt like interrupting her to say that, with all due respect, the Lord never told her any such thing, her interpretation being monstrously untrue.”
“It was awful, simply awful,” said the other, with slow emphasis. “Such fantastic tricks before high heaven might make men, as well as angels, weep. And then her familiarity with the Lord, Nichols,—why, man, she positively patronized the Almighty!”
“It is true, and yet, do you know, Doctor, that woman has some extraordinary elements for success in such work?”
“If she hadn’t, she would be of no importance, my dear fellow. She has a fine homiletic instinct. That is just where the danger lies. But, after all, she represents only one danger—there are others. She is simply the modern mystic—a kind of latter-day, diluted Madame Guyon. Too much of the thing is a trifle nauseous, perhaps, but it represents the revolt of devout souls, in every age, from formalism, and is inevitably an excess, like all revolt. Doubtless there will be such revolt, world without end, and it will have its uses.”
“It was fairly pathetic to see how eagerly those women rushed forward to receive her; evidently that’s the message they are pining for. They don’t go for us that way, Doctor.”
“No; and they didn’t for that first speaker, Mallison’s daughter. I knew him. Poor man, what a mystic he might have made, if he had let himself go! This girl is much like him—the old New England type; religion with all colour and sentiment clean purged out of it. Cold as ice, chaste as snow, the antipodes of the Guyon-Westervelt danger. Talk of holiness,—poor Mallison,—he was the holiest man I ever knew, and in this life the least rewarded,” and the old clergyman shook his head with a mournful smile.
“I fancied, when I heard her speak, although I had no idea who she was, that this daughter of his had not exactly revelled in the luxury of religion.”
“No; but I tell you, Nichols, she is none the worse for that, at her age. There is a hardihood, an unconscious, sturdy fortitude in that earlier type, which we mightily need in the world to-day. To me, that girl was positively beautiful, because—notice what I say, Nichols—she is absolutely true.”