There was bitterness in the tone in which Clifton spoke. It hinted of the living death of a proud, disappointed man, who has renounced his youth of high motives and warm ideas, who has learned to contemn his boyish ambition to do some great thing for the world. Truly it is better to consume in the flame of a fierce sectarianism than to permit the spirit of youth to die when the gray hairs come.
"Nay, Sir," said I, "it is for you to be heartily thankful for this exuberant enthusiasm which has come to town. The complaint of the day is, that the doctrines of Christianity have either dissolved into abstractions or hardened into formalisms; and here you have a crop of fresh insights to direct aright, and to keep from degenerating into fanatical clamor."
"But how satisfy or control these crazy people who begin by ignoring the creeping pace of Time? Why, here is Miss Hurribattle, who has been these two hours beating into me, as with logical sledge-hammers, that it is my duty to denounce Deacon Greenlaw from the pulpit. The argument, to her mind, is overwhelming, as thus: Intoxicating fluids cause the breaking of all the commandments; cider, if one drinks enough of it, is intoxicating; Deacon Greenlaw presses apples, and sells the juice; he therefore upholds and encourages the aforesaid commandment-breaking;—it is the business of the pulpit to denounce sinners persisting in their sin, therefore, etc., etc.,—you perceive the conclusion. In short, if I do not instantly take the ruts of their narrow logic, and go about pounding into some and propounding unto others their pet scheme of regeneration,—why, I am a wolf in the sheep-fold, the Antichrist of prophecy, and I know not what other accursed thing. And here is truly the alternative,—to stagnate in a lifeless church, or to join these ravers in their breakneck leap at the Millennium."
"There is a noble element in this one-sided pertinacity," I suggested, "and a wise man might humor and use it for the best ends. Instead of attempting to pull these hopeful people back into the church, cannot you urge the church forward to comprehend their position? This impulse,—fanatical as some of its manifestations doubtless are,—might it not be constrained, or at least directed?"
"Never by me!" exclaimed Clifton, haughtily. "I should have to commit myself to all the wild Saturnalia of their moralities before it would be possible to acquire any power over them."
"But surely you might go as far as any one in the advocacy of Temperance."
"Temperance! Why, you forget that I must denounce Temperance as the deadliest of sins, and proclaim Abstinence to be the only virtue. There is a grand State Convention of Progressive Gladiators at present in session in Foxden; all the neighboring towns have sent delegates. Well, it was only yesterday afternoon that Stellato, in behalf of one of the committees, denounced the clergy of New England as gross flesh-eaters who had made themselves incapable of perceiving any spiritual truth. And I happen to know that Mrs. Romulus so successfully manipulated Chepunic, not a hundred miles up the river, that before leaving that town she publicly delivered her lecture entitled, 'Marriage a Barbarism,' and professed to have discovered something far higher and holier than the chain of wedlock."
"I am sure that Miss Patience Hurribattle is ignorant of any such tendency in these new doctrines," I exclaimed, indignantly.
"Doubtless she is," assented Clifton. "There is a hopeful, simple-hearted gleam in her eye, a fine simplicity in her speech, which betokens enthusiasm of a purely religious type. But she is banded with those who would use religion only as a fiery stimulant to the intellect, never as a balm to the heart."
A crunching upon the gravel-walk. A man and a woman were hurrying up to the parsonage. The woman short, sharp, lean; the man unctious and foxy,—yet also representing a chronic state of gelatinous bewilderment. The Great Socialists,—I knew them at once.