“Mr. Everett was silent for a moment, as if to collect his thought; then, not looking at me, but afar off at the glimpses of blue between the swaying boughs, he began to speak, while I listened intently, every word fairly burning itself upon my memory. I did not rest that night until I had transmitted it all to my diary, to be read and reread over and over again.
“‘You say that your mother’s religion is good enough for you,’ he began. ‘Well, Miss Brewster, when I think of the love and devotion, of the tender prayers and wise counsels that guided my boyish waywardness, when I think of the saintliness and unselfishness of my own sainted mother, I feel like saying that, too. If I could ever have one half her spirituality and Christlikeness, I should count my life a grand success. But I cannot say, and I know that truth and justice cannot compel me to say, that my mother’s theology would be enough for me, for her life was not the outcome of much in her theology. Her unquestioning faith in a literal Adam and Eve had nothing to do with her sweetness and devotion to duty. Nor was her unwavering belief in the sacredness of everything in the sixty-six Hebrew and Christian books the cause of her infinite patience and self-sacrifice. No; I want my mother’s religion, but I cannot accept all of her theology. I should count it a sin against God if I were to so stultify my intelligence as to do it.
“‘You say, “Don’t you think all these people here had better be doing something practical?” What is more practical, I ask you, than for a human soul, to whom life is something more than meat and drink, to learn of that which more than all else concerns that soul’s welfare? And what can more help to this than the study of the wisest thought of all the ages on just these very problems of life and death, things present and things to come? As Novalis says, “Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, and Immortality.” I count that the most practical as well as the most precious help that can be offered to any questioning human soul who has come to see that man cannot live by bread alone, and whose sorest need is to know the meaning and the end of this life of ours.’
“‘But the Bible tells us that,’ I cried impatiently; ‘what more do we need?’
“‘Perhaps you need nothing more,’ he answered quietly. ‘If so, well and good. Clear insight is not essential to living a noble life. If you have really grasped the spiritual meaning of Christianity it matters little that you should hold it in a more naive and literal way than I am able to. If in this age you can accept unquestioningly everything that has been taught you, if you never have a doubt, I would be the last person to raise one, for I know what mental misery would ensue in one educated as you have been. But so long as your religious faiths have been inherited, like your hair and eyes, and you have not examined them so as to make them your own, pardon my saying that there is small virtue in your holding them, and so far as your own thought goes you might as well have been a Papist or a Mohammedan.’
“‘But what is the use of mental misery? Why should I encourage doubts and unrest? Is it not far better to trust in God and not venture to question all the strange things that he allows?’
“‘You ask two or three questions at once; let me take them one at a time. Five years ago I asked just those same questions, and I know how you feel.’ He spoke tenderly, and his voice comforted me. I was beginning to get nervous and troubled and felt myself in deep waters.
“‘No great thing is ever born into this world except by suffering. If we are put here simply for pleasure, for calm content, for peace of mind, let us banish all questioning and dread it as a precursor of the nightmare. Yes, if immediate peace of mind is the primary consideration, let us, like the ostrich, bury our heads in the sand, like the chicken refuse to pick our way through the shell, and be turned out of our warm corner into the bare, cold world outside. If peace of mind is our chief aim, let us stop thinking once for all. It is dangerous. Yes, thinking is always dangerous; dangerous to one’s love of ease and content with existing ideas. The little shoot content with its environment in the dark mould will never reach the sunlight until first it struggles upward from the conditions that surround it.
“‘Many a time in the last four years I have said to myself, in the night of horror that swept over me, when I felt as if the foundations beneath me had broken away, “whether the Bible be true, or life eternal, or God a father, I do not know; but this one thing I do know: I must be true; I must be unselfish; I must go on and seek the light;” and, thank God, I have begun to find it at last.’
“Mr. Everett spoke with a quiet intensity of feeling that awed me. However, I ventured to ask, rather timidly, ‘But you did find—you do believe in the Bible now, don’t you?’