Then the rising tide of reform beat heavily upon the church-doors. By stiff, inexorable logic, those clergymen who refused to join the popular charge against the outworks of Evil were declared to be in intimate alliance with its very Essence. Although the Bible, as a whole, was held in little regard by the leading reformers, they were wonderfully expert in plucking out texts here and there, and dove-tailing them into scaffolding to sustain their platform. The grand denunciations of Jeremiah were shown to have been shot point-blank at our poor little New-England meeting-houses. It was their fasts and their new moons which the prophet (his prophetic claims were here generously admitted) aimed at. Some churches stood the shock of the angry elements. But many young ministers were borne away before the storm, and carried their side-aisles and galleries along with them. What! had a theological simulacrum of Satan excited their fathers to doughty deeds,—and should they hold back, when challenged to meet him in proper person, hand to hand? Thus persuading themselves, these ardent divines caught up bitter words which had drifted out of the dictionary, and laid about them with a spirit not wholly removed from the old ecclesiastical rancor which would kill where it could not convince. And taking it for granted that it is the mission of the intellect to rectify what is wrong in the world, fruition seemed to answer their efforts. Society was put to its purgation in very plausible fashion. Songs about Temperance and various desirable perfections of the outward man were shouted in bar-rooms hired for the purpose at considerable expense. Then there was dimly seen a further "progress," of which certain movers of the people were the warm advocates. Having got the machinery well to work, might it not be twitched and pulled to effect a wider purification? It began to be hinted that the use of wine in the sacred offices of religion could not be countenanced, if its employment elsewhere were the monster iniquity it was shown to be. That philosophical friend of humanity, Mr. Stellato, began to denounce the consumers of animal food with every unpleasant illustration the shambles could be made to supply. In very select companies of sympathizers, as well as in the Graduating Circle of Progressive Gladiators, it was known that Mrs. Romulus maintained a hideous doctrine subversive of that sacrament of the family which raises the life of man above the life of the wolf and ape.
Yet of the views and endeavors of the great mass of these earnest people we may speak only with honor and gratitude. Much good work done in that distant year of grace remains with us to-day. Who is more practical than the idealist? If I read history aright, it is only the white-heat of fanaticism which brands a true word into the tough hide of society. A supreme pursuit of one virtue by the few can alone neutralize a supreme devotion by the many to the opposite vice. Let us rejoice that some men and women are under the necessity of thinking no good thought which they do not attempt to utilize at all hazards. Also, it is well not to repine overmuch because many conscientious citizens cannot induce a concentration of vision which directs all feeling, hissing-hot, into one channel. They save us from the intolerable monotony of a whole world of heroes, and leave you and me, good reader, in blessed freedom to demand the theoretically right and ignore the practically expedient.
To the beginnings of this angry perturbation the Reverend Charles Clifton had returned, after abandoning the Vannelle manuscript under circumstances detailed in the last number of this magazine. To one in his position of mind it was of the highest importance to come upon some work that he was fitted to do. It was his unhappy destiny to be placed just where such power as he had could accomplish nothing. Timid by nature, a cautious lover of compromise, self-baffled in a brilliant flutter for truth, what had he to do in a vulgar conflict of opinion, in a common, healthy play of free thought and speech? Peering off into immensity until he had become utterly adrift in theology, the minister found himself too feeble to stand upon the moral basis of some practical creed. His regular parish duties afforded but slender occupation; he had the gift of speaking extemporaneously, or from such notes as might be made upon the back of a letter half an hour before church; he was not called upon to do more catechizing or visiting than was agreeable to his mood. He accordingly yielded to an indolence of disposition which detained his vanishing illusions, and indulged in such studies as served to prolong the barren contemplation which had wasted his youth. My knowledge of the secret committed for eighty years to the Mather Safe made me the only person to whom Clifton could freely write. At some private inconvenience, I admitted a tolerably full intercourse with my new correspondent. He declared that the sympathy of a man in active affairs was invaluable to a solitary student like himself: he hoped, so he said, to see through my eyes the facts of life. It was not difficult to discern the cause of the sad indecision which afflicted him. To state the case roughly, he had too much knowledge for his will. Busy people reason by instinct with sufficient accuracy, but with this man no conviction was for five minutes free from the probe of a metaphysical argument. Yet from glimpses I had obtained of that overwhelming System of Things elaborated by the two Vannelles, I could understand the condition in which its partial apprehension had left Clifton. The more I considered certain statements, authoritatively made in the portion of the manuscript I had dared to read, the firmer grew my belief that years of concentrated thought and fervent speculation had indeed illuminated, to these men, dim outlines of most august truths,—truths which some possible, although very distant, advancement of physical science might inductively realize. But I had made out to dismiss the matter, with the consideration that whatever it concerned me to know could be tied to no one method of pursuit,—and, so reflecting, returned contentedly to the multiplex concerns with which I was then occupied. Clifton, on the contrary, having always struggled loftily along the same narrow sunbeam, was utterly unable to accept such available knowledge of a principle as is sufficient to direct our activity,—he must ever soar skyward to gaze upon the origin of its authority, until, entangled in a web of contradictions, he fell impotent to earth.
Week by week, in my city-home, through letters from the minister and Colonel Prowley, I had been kept informed of the progress of that wild ferment going on in Foxden. At length the contentious spirit there evoked seemed ready to summon to trial all ancient and reputable things. My friends of the protesting minority were surely to be credited with good Puritan pluck; though there was also something admirable in the vigor which had marshalled a party for their discomfiture. I began to think it my duty to visit Clifton; moreover, I was curious to see the town at the height of its effervescence. A note from Mrs. Widesworth supplied me with the needed excuse. The singing-school was to hold its semiannual meeting at her house on Thursday next; would I not come down for a day and meet many old friends?
II.
The fragrance of perfected harvests pervaded Foxden. The air was full of those sweet remembrances of summer which are better than her radiant presence. The sky overhead was flooded with rich autumnal sunshine. Far to the north lay glimmering a heavy bank of clouds. There might be rain before night.
I entered the familiar parsonage and inquired for its occupant. He had walked to the end of the garden with Miss Hurribattle, who had been with him for some hours. I was at liberty to await his return in a depressing theological lumber-room, called the study. The First Church had liberally supplied its former ministers with the current literature of their craft. Current literature! are not the words a mockery? could they ever have applied to those printed petrifactions? One would sooner look for vitality among the frozen denizens of the Morgue on St. Bernard! Yet I doubt if these stately authors, wrapped in the cerements of their prosiness, may reasonably reproach a forgetful world. They ministered to the wants of their present, and by so doing were privileged to fashion a future which they might not enter and possess. Complain indeed! Why, their progeny had a good ten, twenty, or fifty years' life of it, as the case might be,—and here about us are men of greater enterprise and grasp doomed to work off paragraphs that perish on the day of printing. Well, no earnest soul can fail to modify the character of his age, and thus of all ages. So, if our generation demands ministry in newspapers instead of folios, a man may still win an honest immortality without the biography and the bother of it.
I looked up from the books to see the clergyman part with Miss Hurribattle at the gate, and then turn his steps towards the house.
There was something like embarrassment as we exchanged greetings, yet there was hardly time to mark this before it had passed.
"Ah, Heaven!" exclaimed Clifton, passionately, "how I envy that woman's faith in the omnipotence of a trifle! Suppose you or I can attain a judicial largeness of view, is it any compensation for that intense glow of the sympathies as they crowd into one specious channel? Why this man's yearning after intellectual satisfaction, when we only want a little fragment of truth to hang our sentiments upon?"