And as he reflected he replied, tartly, to the monitor within, 'Be angry, and sin not.'
And the monitor had no text.
Because of the night drifting down, perhaps—drifting down with a chilling change; because of the darkened solemnity of the dreary woods; because of the stars shining with a splendid aloofness from all that is human; because of the melancholy suggestions of a will-o'-the-wisp glowing in a marshy tangle, his exultant mood began to wane.
'Thar it is!' he cried suddenly, pointing at the mocking illusion—'that's my religion: looks like fire, an' it's fog!'
His mind had reverted to his wild supplications in the solitudes of the 'bald'—his unanswered prayers. The oxen had paused of their own accord to rest, and he stood looking at the spectral gleam.
'I'd never hev thunk o' takin' up with religion,' he said, in a shrill, upbraiding tone, 'ef I hed been let ter live along like other men be, or ef me an mine could die like other folks be let ter die! But it 'peared ter me ez religion war 'bout all ez war lef', arter I hed gin the baby the stuff the valley doctor hed lef' fur Em'ly—bein' ez I couldn't read right the old critter's cur'ous scrapin's with his pencil—an' gin Em'ly the stuff fur the baby. An' it died. An' then Em'ly got onsettled an' crazy, an' tuk ter vagrantin' 'roun', an' fell off'n the bluff. An' some say she flunged herself off'n it. And I knows she flunged herself off'n it through bein' out'n her mind with grief.'
He paused, leaning on the yoke, his dreary eyes still on the ignis fatuus of the woods. 'An' then Brother Jake Tobin 'lowed ez religion war fur sech ez me. I hed no mind ter religion. But the worl' hed in an' about petered out for me. An' I tuk up with religion. I hev sarved it five year faithful. An' now'—he cast his angry eyes upward—'ye let me believe that thar is no God!'
So it was that Satan hunted him like a partridge on the mountains. So it was that he went out into the desert places to upbraid the God in whom he I believed because he believed that there was no God. There was a tragedy in his faith and his unfaith. That this untrained, untutored mind should grope among the irreconcilable things—the problems of a merciful God and His afflicted people, foreordained from the beginning of the world and free agents! That to the ignorant mountaineer should come those distraught questions that vex polemics, and try the strength of theologies, and give the wise men an illimitable field for the display of their agile and ingenious solutions and substitutions! He knew naught of this: the wild Alleghanies intervened between his yearning, empty despair and their plenished fame, the splendid superstructure on the ruins of their faith. He thought himself the only unbeliever in a Christian world, the only inherent infidel: a mysteriously accursed creature charged with the discovery of the monstrous fallacy of that beneficent comfort, assuaging the grief of a stricken world, and called an overruling Providence. Again his flickering faith would flare up, and he would reproach God who had suffered its lapse. This was his secret and his shame, and he guarded it. And so when he preached his wild sermons with a certain natural eloquence; and prayed his frantic prayers, instinct with all the sincerities of despair; and sang with the people the mournful old hymns, in the little meeting-house on the notch, or on the banks of the Scolacutta River, where they went down to be baptized, his keen introspection, his moral dissent, which he might not forbear, yet would not avow, were an intolerable burden, and his spiritual life was the throe of a spiritual anguish.
Often there was no intimation in those sermons of his of the quaint doctrines which delight the simple men of his calling in that region, who are fain to feel learned. His Christ, to judge from this mood, was a Paramount Emotion; not the Christ who confuted the wise men in the temple, and read in the synagogues, and said dark allegories; but He who stilled the storm, and healed the sick, and raised the dead, and wept, most humanly, for the friend whom he loved. Kelsey's trusting heart contended with his doubting mind, and the simple humanities of these sermons comforted him. Sometimes he sought consolation otherwise; he would remember that he had never been like his fellows. This was only another manifestation of the dissimilarity that dated from his earliest recollections. He had from his infancy peculiar gifts. He was learned in the signs of the weather, and predicted the mountain storms; he knew the haunts and habits of every beast and bird in the Great Smoky, every leaf that burgeons, every flower that blows. So deep and incisive a knowledge of human nature had he, that this faculty was deemed supernatural, and akin to the gift of prophecy. He himself understood, although perhaps he could not have accurately limited and defined it, that he exercised unconsciously a vigilant attention and an acute discrimination; his forecast was based upon observation so close and unsparing, and a power of deduction so just, that in a wider sphere it might have been called judgment, and, reinforced by education, have attained all the functions of a ripened sagacity.
Crude as it was, it did not fail of recognition. In many ways his 'word' was sought and heeded. His influence yielded its richest effect when his confrère of the pulpit would call on him to foretell the fate of the sinner and the wrath of God to the Big Smoky. And then Brother Jake Tobin would accompany the glowing picture by a slow rhythmic clapping of hands and a fragmentary chant, 'That dreadful Day air a-comin' along!'—bearing all the time a smiling and beatific countenance, as if he were fireproof himself, and brimstone and flame were only for his friends.