The small clergyman objected that this was the candidate’s business.
“It is one of the maxims of civil law that definitions are dangerous,” replied Bayard with a smile. But it was no time for smiling, and he knew it. He parried for a little in the usual technicalities of the schools; but it was without hope or interest. He knew now how it would all end. But he was not conscious of a moment’s hesitation. His soul seemed elate, remote from his fate. He looked out across the lake of faces upturned to his. He had now grown quite pale, and the natural fairness of his skin and delicacy of his features added to the effect of transparence which his high face gave. The dullest eye in the audience observed, and the coldest lip long afterwards acknowledged, the remarkable beauty of the man. With a sudden and impressive gesture of the hand, as if he cast the whole merciless scene away from him, he stepped unexpectedly forward, and in a ringing voice he said:—
“Fathers and brothers of the church! I believe in God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ his Son, our Lord and Saviour. I believe in the sacredness and authority of the Bible, which contains the lesson and the history of His life. I believe in the guilt and the misery of sin, and I have spent the best years of my youth in your institutions of sacred learning, seeking to be taught how to teach my fellow-men to be better. I solemnly believe in the Life Eternal, and that its happiness and holiness are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the race; or to such of us as prove fit survivors, capable of immortality. I do not presume to explain how or why this is or may be so; for behold we are shown mysteries, of which this is one. If I am permitted to guide the people who have loved and chosen me, I expect to teach them many truths which I do not understand. I shall teach them none which I do not believe. Fathers and brothers, I show you my soul! Deal with me as you will!”
He stood for a space, tall, white, still, with that look—half angel, half human—which was peculiar to his face in moments of exaltation. His dazzling eyes blazed for an instant upon his tormentors, then fell upon his people and grew dim. He saw their uplifted faces pleadingly turned to him: troubled men whom he had been able to guide; bereaved women whom he had known how to comfort. Oh, his people! Tears were on their cheeks. Their faces swam before him. How dear, in those few months that he had served them, they had grown! To stand disgraced before them, a stigma on his Christian name forever, their faith deceived, their trust disappointed,—his people, to be his no more!
“God!” he said in his heart. “Was there any other way?”
An instant’s darkness swept over him, and his soul staggered in it. Then, to the fine, inner ear of the spirit the answer came:—
“In honor, between Me and thee, thou hast no other way.”
The troubled voice of the moderator now recalled him, using the quaint phrase of elder times for such occasion made and provided: “The Council will now be by themselves.”
In three quarters of an hour the Council returned and reported upon the examination. Emanuel Bayard was refused ordination to the Christian ministry by a majority of five.
Now, the savage that lurks in the gentlest assemblage of men sprang with a war-cry upon the decorum of the crowded church. Agitated beyond self-control, the people split into factions, and resolved themselves into committees; they wept, they quarreled, they prayed, and they condemned by turns. The gray-haired moderator and the dejected Professor, themselves paler than the rejected candidate, sought to convert the confusion into something like order wherewith to close the exercises of that miserable day. Daring the momentary silence which their united efforts had enforced, a thick voice from the swaying crowd was distinctly heard.