Professor Howson is a name which no one hears now, though it was once supposed that it would rank among those of New England’s noblest scholars. But John Howson teaches still. People had often said of him that he would never marry; that his books and his sister were enough for him. He never did marry; but it was God and the church of God that satisfied him. Once, in a great city, an old friend of his collegiate days, who had not heard of him for years, met him face to face in his dress of a religious, and stopped him in utter amazement.
“John Howson! You are unmistakable, but how is this? I was told of your change, but did not know it had gone so far. Are not your Puritan ancestors groaning in their shrouds, man, because of such doings?”
The priest returned a courteous answer, and would have turned to other themes, but his friend persisted. Then, not with the old outspoken frankness as of one who feared none, but instead, thoughtfully and humbly as in the very fear of God, there came this reply:
“Once I matched my mind with the mind of God, and judged him, and thought his will to be of no account. It was a great sin, and he saved me from it. After that I could only say, as another in like case once said, ‘I cannot give God less than all.’”
“A great sin?” his friend repeated. “I do not understand that.”
He saw a shade of peculiar awe creep over the countenance before him. “And is it no sin,” John Howson asked in a deep voice, “to hear said in the face of God that there is no God? to have counted your own judgment superior to his? to have given God the lie? One who is now of the mightiest saints thought that he did God service while he fought against him, and afterward he named himself the chief of sinners. But I did not so much as think of the service of God at all in matters of belief.”
“I can’t see the fault in that,” his friend said wonderingly. “If it was murder you had on your conscience, I might sympathize with you; but this!”
“You are fresh from Massachusetts,” said Father Howson, “and it is years since I was there. Do they still count the mind as nobler than the body, and the intellect as among their highest gifts?”
“Yes,” was the proud reply.
“Some time,” returned Father Howson with deep meaning in his tone, “we all shall have to learn that God judges sin of the mind by as terrible a judgment as sin of the body, and that he demands his gifts with usury. Believe me, it is better to forestall that judgment, and to meet that demand here than hereafter.”