John Rawn might, in the caretaking plans of the immortal gods, have been born at any time in the world's history, at any place upon the world's surface. He himself, had he been consulted, might have suggested Rome, Greece, or mediæval England, as offering better field for one of his kidney. He might have indicated certain resemblances between himself and persons who, through virtue given of the immortal gods, have attained the purple, who have held permanent and admitted ascendancy over their fellow-men. As a matter of fact, however, John Rawn was born in Texas—and of Texas at the very spot where, had it been left to his own candid opinion, no John Rawn, no especial hero, ought ever to have been born. The village he honored by his birth—one of seven which now contend over that claim to fame—was the very home of democratic equality; and how could the home of democratic equality be called typical environment for the production of a man believing in the divine right of a very few?
Neither, had John Rawn been consulted in the matter, would he have indorsed the plans of fate in respect to his ancestry any more than he did the workings of the misguided stars in regard to his environment. By right he should have been the offspring of parents for long generations accustomed to rule, to command, to sway the destinies of others. Yet far from this was the truth in our hero's case.
Which of us can tell what is in an infant's mind? At what day or hour of a child's life does the consciousness of human values in affairs first impinge upon the embryonic mentality? At what date, first feeling itself human and not plant, not oyster nor amoeba, can it logically begin that reproach of its own parentage which to so many of us is held as a personal right, convenient and pleasant because it explains away so many things by way of human failures? At what time, at what moment of John Rawn's life did he, lying in his cradle, and looking up for the first conscious time into the faces solicitously bending above him, realize that after all, in spite of all the plans of the watchful fates, here were no king and queen, no emperor and empress assigned to him as parents, but only an humble Methodist preacher and his still more humble wife?
Truly here was hard handicap even at the start, that of both birth and environment, as he himself would have been first to admit. Not that it could daunt him, not that it could cause a soul like his to feel the pangs of despair. No; it meant only that much further to travel, that much higher to climb. This American republic was expressly framed for such as Mr. Rawn. The issue never was to be called in doubt. From that first hour of consciousness of his ego which marks the real birth of a human soul, John Rawn must have said to himself that success was meant for him; that not all the hostile array of circumstances, birth, heredity and environment, could do more than temporarily balk his aim. From the cradle, indeed for generations uncounted—as many as he likes—before the cradle, John Rawn believed in himself. How can we fail to join him in that belief?
III
It was rarely that ever a smile enlivened the somewhat heavy features of young John Rawn, even in the earliest stages of his babyhood. Rarely did the mirth of any situation bring up in his face an answering dawn of appreciation. He was a serious child, as all admitted even from the first. He grew to be a grave boy, a solemn youth. He made no jests, nor smiled at those of others. There was a corrugation between his brows before he was twenty years of age. In his declamations at the exercises of the village school, his hand went instinctively into a bosom not yet ten years of age; his forelock fell across his brow before he was twelve; already his gestures were large and wide, his voice prematurely deep before he had reached fourteen. He was of that temperament which, in accordance with the term, takes itself seriously. It is astonishing what virtue lies in that habit. The world, sometimes for many years, indeed sometimes permanently, accepts seriously those who seriously accept themselves. Many of the most colossal asses ever born have not "Ass" written on their tombstones, where righteously it so very frequently belongs in the history of the great.
IV
Curious persons might have found certain explanations for these traits in the calling, the temper and training of the father of John Rawn. In that time and place, a minister of the gospel was a man of whom all stood in awe. He was not much gainsaid, not much withstood, not much disapproved. His conclusions were announced for acceptance, not for argument. At best he was only to be avoided, if one dreaded the look of the clerical eye, the denunciation of the clerical tongue. Other men might be met, might be antagonized, might be overcome by fist or thumb or firearms, per example; not so the parson of the village church.
It is an excellent profession; that of minister of the gospel. The ranks of none offer better men than the best types of that profession, large men, strong men, just men, not doing preaching for a business, but really wishing to counsel and aid frail humanity as it marches among the perpetual pitfalls, the perpetual hardships of human life. It is an exceedingly good religion of itself, that merely of helping your fellow-man, of saying something to soften and better him, of giving to him something of hope and courage when he is in need of them. Let us not argue whether or not a divine spirit can become mortal, whether or not Christ was divine. We know by virtue of abundant human testimony that He was a great and kindly Man, a great and adorable Human Being, the greatest of whom we know in all our human history. And that man who makes the creed of the greatest of us all his own, who lives kindly and helpfully and modestly, with no blare of trumpet, doing simply and silently that which his human hands find to do; that man nearest to the greatest Man of whom we know, the one who went closest to making human life endurable, who took humanity farthest away from the cruel creed of the jungle—that minister of the gospel, let us say then, who lives as is possible for one of his calling to live, and attains in that calling what may be attained, may be, and not infrequently is, a splendid human being.
But he is worth our admiration when he is worth it; not necessarily otherwise. A minister of the gospel may not always be the central figure of that religious fervor which has come sporadically and spasmodically to men under many creeds, since man began to think aloud, to doubt and despair in public, and to pray in company. Besides, there are ministers and ministers. Some are men naturally large and are so accepted. Others, alas! bulk larger than really they are, by virtue of the fact that always they apparently have prevailed; whereas, in truth, they only have met small opposition.