“IS THE HAND OF THE LORD WAXED SHORT?”

A dismayed old man, eagerly trying to feel incredulous, awaited the home-coming of his grandsons at the beginning of that vacation.

Was the hand of the Lord waxed short, that so utter a blasphemer ­unless, indeed, he were possessed of a devil ­could walk in the eye of Jéhovah, and no breach be made upon him?  Even was the world itself so lax in these days that one speaking thus could go free?  If so, then how could God longer refrain from drowning the world again?  The human baseness of the blaspheming one and the divine toleration that permitted it were alike incredible.

A score of times the old man nerved himself to laugh away his fears.  It could not be.  The young mind was still disordered.

On the night of the home-coming he greeted the youth quite as if all were serene within him, determined to be in no haste and to approach the thing lightly on the morrow ­in the fond hope that a mere breath of authority might blow it away.

And when, the next morning, they both drifted to the study, the old man called up the smile that made his wrinkles sunny, and said in light tones, above the beating of an anxious heart: 

“So it’s your theory, boy, that we must all be taken down with typhoid before we can be really wise in matters of faith?”

But the youth answered, quite earnestly: 

“Yes, sir; I really believe nothing less than that would clear most minds ­especially old ones.  You see, the brain is a muscle and thought is its physical exercise.  It learns certain thoughts ­to go through certain exercises.  These become a habit, and in time the muscle becomes stiff and incapable of learning any new movements ­also incapable of leaving off the old.  The religion of an old person is merely so much reflex nervous action.  It is beyond the reach of reason.  The individual’s mind can affect it as little as it can teach the other muscles of his body new suppleness.”

He spoke with a certain restrained nervousness that was not reassuring.  But the old man would not yet be rebuffed from his manner of lightness.

“Then, wanting an epidemic of typhoid, we of the older generation must die in error.”

“Yes, sir ­I doubt even the efficacy of typhoid in most cases; it’s as difficult for an old person to change a habit of thought as to take the wrinkles from his face.  That is why what we very grandly call ’fighting for the truth’ or ‘fighting for the Lord’ is merely fighting for our own little notions; they have become so vital to us and we call them ‘truth.’”

The youth stopped, with a palpable air of defiance, before which the old man’s assumption of ease and lightness was at last beaten down.  He had been standing erect by the table, still with the smile toning his haggardness.  Now the smile died; the whole man sickened, lost life visibly, as if a dozen years of normal aging were condensed into the dozen seconds.

He let himself go into the big chair, almost as if falling, his head bowed, his eyes dulled to a look of absence, his arms falling weakly over the chair’s sides.  A sigh that was almost a groan seemed to tell of pain both in body and mind.

Bernal stood awkwardly regarding him, then his face lighted with a sudden pity.

“But I thought you could understand, sir; I thought you were different; you have been like a chum to me.  When I spoke of old persons it never occurred to me that you could fall into that class!  I never knew you to be unjust, or unkind, or ­narrow ­perhaps I should say, unsympathetic.”

The other gave no sign of hearing.

“My body was breaking so fast ­and you break my heart!”

“There you are, sir,” began the youth, a little excitedly.  “Your heart is breaking not because I’m not good, but because I form a different opinion from yours of a man rising from the dead, after he has been crucified to appease the anger of his father.”

“God help me!  I’m so human.  I can’t feel toward you as I should.  Boy, I won’t believe you are sane.”  He looked up in a sudden passion of hope.  “I won’t believe Christ died in vain for my girl’s little boy.  Bernal, boy, you are still sick of that fever!”

The other smiled, his youthful scorn for the moment overcoming his deeper feeling for his listener.

“Then I must talk more.  Now, sir, for God’s sake let us have the plain truth of the crucifixion.  Where was the sacrifice?  Can you not picture the mob that would fight for the honour of crucifixion to-morrow, if it were known that the one chosen would sit at the right hand of God and judge all the world?  I say there was no sacrifice, even if Christian dogma be literal truth.  Why, sir, I could go into the street and find ten men in ten minutes who would be crucified a hundred times to save the souls of us from hell ­not if they were to be rewarded with a seat on the throne of God where they could send into hell those who did not believe in them ­but for no reward whatever ­out of a sheer love for humanity.  Don’t you see, sir, that we have magnified that crucifixion out of all proportion to the plainest truth of our lives?  You know I would die on a cross to-day, not to redeem the world, but to redeem one poor soul ­your own.  If you deny that, at least you won’t dare deny that you would go on the cross to redeem my soul from hell ­the soul of one man ­and do you think you would demand a reward for doing it, beyond knowing that you had ransomed me from torment?  Would it be necessary to your happiness that you also have the power to send into hell all those who were not able to believe you had actually died for me?

“One moment more, sir ­” The thin, brown, old hand had been raised in trembling appeal, while the lips moved without sound.

“You see every day in the papers how men die for other men, for one man, for two, a dozen!  Why, sir, you know you would die to save the lives of five little children ­their bare carnal lives, mind you, to say nothing of their immortal souls.  I believe I’d die myself to save two thousand ­I know I would to save three ­if their faces were clean and they looked funny enough and helpless.  Here, in this morning’s paper, a negro labourer, going home from his work in New York yesterday, pushed into safety one of those babies that are always crawling around on railroad tracks.  He had time to see that he could get the baby off but not himself, and then he went ahead.  Doubtless it was a very common baby, and certainly he was a very common man.  Why, I could go down to Sing Sing tomorrow, and I’ll stake my own soul that in the whole cageful of criminals there isn’t one who would not eagerly submit to crucifixion if he believed that he would thereby ransom the race from hell.  And he wouldn’t want the power to damn the unbelievers, either.  He would insist upon saving them with the others.”

“Oh, God, forgive this insane passion in my boy!”

“It was passion, sir ­” he spoke with a sudden relenting ­“but try to remember that I’ve sought the truth honestly.”

“You degrade the Saviour.”

“No; I only raise man out of the muck of Christian belief about him.  If common men all might live lives of greater sacrifice than Jesus did, without any pretensions to the supernatural, it only means that we need a new embodiment for our ideals.  If we find it in man ­in God’s creature ­so much the better for man and so much the more glory to God, who has not then bungled so wretchedly as Christianity teaches.”

“God forgive you this tirade ­I know it is the sickness.”

“I shall try to speak calmly, sir ­but how much longer can an educated clergy keep a straight face to speak of this wretchedly impotent God?  Christians of a truth have had to bind their sense of humour as the Chinese bound their women’s feet.  But the laugh is gathering even now.  Your religion is like a tree that has lain long dead in the forest ­firm wood to the eye but dust to the first blow.  And this is how it will go ­from a laugh ­not through the solemn absurdities of the so-called higher criticism, the discussing of this or that miracle, the tracing of this or that myth of fall or deluge or immaculate conception or trinity to its pagan sources; not that way, when before the inquiring mind rises the sheer materialism of the Christian dogma, bristling with absurdities ­its vain bungling God of one tribe who crowns his career of impotencies ­in all but the art of slaughter ­by instituting the sacrifice of a Son begotten of a human mother, to appease his wrath toward his own creatures; a God who even by this pitiful device can save but a few of us.  Was ever god so powerless?  Do you think we who grow up now do not detect it?  Is it not time to demand a God of virtue, of integrity, of ethical dignity ­a religion whose test shall be moral, and not the opinion one forms of certain alleged material phenomena?”

When he had first spoken the old man cowered low and lower in his chair, with little moans of protest at intervals, perhaps a quick, almost gasping, “God forgive him!” or a “Lord have mercy!” But as the talk went on he became slowly quieter, his face grew firmer, he sat up in his chair, and at the last he came to bend upon the speaker a look that made him falter confusedly and stop.

“I can say no more, sir; I should not have said so much.  Oh, Grandad, I wouldn’t have hurt you for all the world, yet I had to let you know why I could not do what you had planned ­and I was fool enough to think I could justify myself to you!”

The old eyes still blazed upon him with a look of sorrow and of horror that was yet, first of all, a look of power; the look of one who had mastered himself to speak calmly while enduring uttermost pain.

“I am glad you have spoken.  You were honest to do so.  It was my error not to be convinced at first, and thus save myself a shock I could ill bear.  But you have been sick, and I felt that I should not believe without seeing you.  I had built so much ­so many years ­on your preaching the gospel of ­of my Saviour.  This hope has been all my life these last years ­now it is gone.  But I have no right to complain.  You are free; I have no claim upon you; and I shall be glad to provide for you ­to educate you further for any profession you may have chosen ­to start you in any business ­away from here ­from this house ­”

The young man flushed ­wincing under this, but answered: 

“Thank you, sir.  I could hardly take anything further.  I don’t know what I want to do, what I can do ­I’m at sea now.  But I will go.  I’m sure only that I want to get out ­away ­I will take a small sum to go with ­I know you would be hurt more if I didn’t; enough to get me away ­far enough away.”

He went out, his head bowed under the old man’s stern gaze.  But when the latter had stepped to the door and locked it, his fortitude was gone.  Helplessly he fell upon his knees before the big chair ­praying out his grief in hard, dry sobs that choked and shook his worn body.

When Clytie knocked at the door an hour later, he was dry-eyed and apparently serene, but busy with papers at his table.

“Is it something bad about Bernal, Mr. Delcher,” she asked, “that he’s going away so queer and sudden?”

“You pray for him, too, Clytie ­you love him ­but it’s nothing to talk of.”

But the alarm of Clytemnestra was not to be put down by this.

“Oh, Mr. Delcher ­” a look of horror grew big in her eyes ­“You don’t mean to say he’s gone and joined the Universalists?”

The old man shook his head.

“And he ain’t a Unitarian?”

“No, Clytie; but our boy has been to college and it has left him rather un ­unconforming in some little matters ­some details ­doubtless his doctrine is sound at core.”

“But I supposed he’d learn everything off at that college, only I know he never got fed half enough.  What with all its studies and football and clubs and things I thought it was as good as a liberal education.”

“Too liberal, sometimes!  Pray for Bernal ­and we won’t talk about it again, Clytie, if you please.”

Presently came Allan, who had heard the news.

“Bernal tells me he will not enter the ministry, sir; that he is going away.”

“We have decided that is best.”

“You know, sir, I have suspected for some time that Bernal was not as sound doctrinally as you could wish.  His mind, if I may say it, is a peculiarly literal one.  He seems to lack a certain spiritual comprehensiveness ­an enveloping intuition, so to say, of the spiritual value in a material fact.  During that unhappy agitation for the revision of our creed, I have heard him, touching the future state of unbaptised infants, utter sentiments of a heterodoxy that was positively effeminate in its sentimentality ­sentiments which I shall not pain you by repeating.  He has often referred, moreover, with the same disordered sentimentality, to the sad fate of our father ­about whose present estate no churchman can have any doubt.  And then about our belief that even good works are an abomination before God if performed by the unregenerate, the things I have heard him ­”

“Yes ­yes ­let us not talk of it further.  Did you wish to see me especially, Allan?”

“Well, yes, sir, I had wished to, and perhaps now is the best moment.  I wanted to ask you, sir, how you would regard my becoming an Episcopalian.  I am really persuaded that its form of worship, translating as it does so much of the spiritual verity of life into visible symbols, is a form better calculated than the Presbyterian to appeal to the great throbbing heart of humanity.  I hope I may even say, without offense, sir, that it affords a wider scope, a broader sweep, a more stimulating field of endeavour, to one who may have a capacity for the life of larger aspects.  In short, sir, I believe there is a great future for me in that church.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if there was,” answered the old man, who had studied his face closely during the speech.  Yet he spoke with an extreme dryness of tone that made the other look quickly up.

“It shall be as you wish,” he continued, after a meditative pause ­“I believe you are better calculated for that church than for mine.  Obey your call.”