Part 4 (1/2)
Result; they are not what their great Master commanded theood h colorless life; but his ”hard shell” theology, his long years of loos, his poverty and lack of adaptation, banished all cheerfulness from his deely by his views in regard to the horrors awaiting thethe words of Harriet Beecher Stowe in the ”Minister's Wooing,” when she was thinking of that hell depicted by the old theology; ”Ohday, why did they rejoice? Brides should wear , every family is built over this awful pit of despair, and only one in a thousand escapes”
When I semi-occasionally peruse one of the serly inclined to crawl into a den and pull the hole in after me I can fully believe the orator who said that a stupid speech once saved his life
”I went back ho with the old folks While waiting for the turkey to cook, I went into the woods gunning--it would aame, for I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn at ten paces While pro to wetfor shelter; at last the clouds rolled by and I atte had contracted so that I was stuck fast in the hole, and I gave myself up for lost I remembered all the sins of my youth, and conscience assured ht of a certain unspeakably asinine speech which I once inflicted upon a suffering audience, and I felt so s like a white bean in a washtub, and slipped like an eel out of the little pipe-stem end of that old tree I was saved; but the audience had been ruined for life”
Thus often in this cruel world do the innocent suffer, while the guilty go unscathed to torture a confiding public hat the great apostle calls the ”foolishness of preaching”
This suht our fael passed close to our doors My eldest brother, while at work in the hayfield, was s a mental aberration which made him a wanderer upon the face of the earth, and finally led him to cut the thread of life with his own hand; led in a wheel, beneath a heavy load which crushed his thigh This left the rest of us to struggle as best we could withto choke the crops, and thesustenance from the reluctant bosom of mother earth
My brother Mark, about this time took upon himself the joys and sorrows of a family and home of his ohile I assuhboring town of I----
I was but ”unsweetened sixteen,” and lack of tact and strength broughtideas how to shoot correctly” The usual tacks were placed inthe war-dances incidental to such occasions; the custo America to settle the oft mooted question as to who is master; the inevitable interference of parents folloho as usual, regarded their children as cherubs whose wings they seemed to think would soon appear were it not for the tyrannical spanks of the unworthy teacher
I survived the fiery ordeal after a fashi+on, and that winter entered a college in the state of Maine The same old unrest came to me there, wearied with the dry-as-dust lectures by the faculty of superannuated raduated after a teeks' course, and vainly endeavored for three weeks to catch the divine afflatus at the Theological Institution, which was supposed to be necessary to enable ospel Then at the suggestion of the president, who quickly discovered my mental deficiencies, I was matriculated as a student at another university founded by the brethren of the same ”Hard-shell Persuasion” I was but a drea opinions, but anxious to walk ”_quo dews vocat_”
”Here I stood with reluctant feet, Where the brook and the river meet, Manhood and childhood sweet
”I saw shadows sailing by, As the dove, with startled eye, Sees the falcon doard fly
”To me, a child of many prayers, Life had quicksands, and many snares, Foes, and te and ruth, In my heart the dew of youth, On my lips the smile of truth”
With this prayer of the poet upon our lips,to find there in coreat of the past and the present, that mental and spiritual ”manna”
from heaven which would inspire us to lead ourselves and others to the sublihts of heroic endeavor
CHAPTER VII
A DISENCHANTED COLLEGIAN-PREACHER
Previous to , founded and endowed for the perpetuation and propagation of the doctrines of our denomination, I had never entertained the faintest shadow of doubt as to the infallibility of our creed; but now all faith in it vanished like the baseless fabric of a dream Here at the fountain head of wisdo of the nations, my faith in the beliefs of my ancestors fled, neverh priests of the sect, I had expected to find the whole air roseate with divine love and grace, all souls lifted to subli prayer and praise
The disenchantrave and reverend professors, were cold as icebergs, evidently caring nothing for the souls or bodies of their Christian or pagan students; the preacher at the college church was an ecclesiastical icicle, who, in his manner at least, continually cried: ”_Procul, procul_, oh, _Profani_!”
The prayer s were dead and forerator--with perhaps one exception, when, through the cracks in the floor froal fresh stench of cooking onions, and a wag brother as quoting scripture to the Lord in prayer, suddenly opened his eyes, and sniffing the unctuous odors, shouted: ”Brethren, let us now sing 'Frohter would put an end to the solee dormitories were herded a few hundred youths, entirely free froies into which many characters in the formative state areChristian teacher torture with biting sarcash he failed to grasp some intricate mathee in despair
Is it strange that I and ht forth such bitter fruit? When I strayed froht and warmth of the ”liberal sanctuary,” where the old man eloquently discoursed of the ascent instead of the descent of man, and pictured the sublime development of the race by heroic endeavor froood man welcomed us warmly as brothers to his hearth and home and loaned me his silken surplice to cover my seedy clothes when I delivered e that I eical story of the fall of arden of Eden?
I usually preached on Sundays, duringtowns, but it was not of the total depravity nor flahts and speech; the true herois ourselves unspotted from the world, the sublime possibilities of our natures if ould walk in the footsteps of the only perfect One ever seen on earth
By tri my eyes, I won a scholarshi+p which paid my tuition fees and roo on the hard-earned savings of e pranks were played, tubs of water were poured from upper s upon the heads of fresh stove-pipe hats and the forbidden canes; we tore each others' clothes to the verge of nakedness, and broke each others' heads in frantic football rushes; we indulged in ghost-like sheet and pillow-case parades, during which we fought the police and es with the ”townies”; we burned unsightly shanties, and thus improved the appearance of the city