HOW A BROTHER WAS DIFFERENT

In contrast with this regrettable performance of Bernal’s, which, alas! bore internal evidence of being a type of many, was the flawless career of Allan, the dutiful and earnest.  Not only did he complete his course at the General Theological Seminary with great honour, but he was ordained into the Episcopal ministry under circumstances entirely auspicious.  Aunt Bell confided to Nancy that his superior presence quite dwarfed the bishop who ordained him.

His ordination sermon, moreover, which his grandfather had been persuaded into journeying to hear, was held by many to be a triumph of pulpit oratory no less than an able yet not unpoetic handling of his text, which was from John ­“The Truth shall make you free.”

Truth, he declared, was the crowning glory in the diadem of man’s attributes, and a subject fraught with vital interest to every thinking man.  The essential nature of man being gregarious, how important that the leader of men should hold Truth to be like a diamond, made only the brighter by friction.  The world is and ever has been illiberal.  Witness the lonely lamp of Erasmus, the cell of Galileo, the dying bed of Pascal, the scaffold of Sidney ­all fighters for truth against the masses who cannot think for themselves.

Truth was, indeed, a potent factor in civilisation.  If only all truth-lovers could feel bound together by the sacred ties of fraternal good-will, independent yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence, succeeding ages could but add a new lustre to their present resplendent glory.

Truth, triumphant out of oppression, is a tear falling on the world’s cold cheek to make it burn forever.  Why fear the revelation of truth?  Greece had her Athens and her Corinth, but where is Greece to-day?  Rome, too, Imperial Rome, with all her pomp and polish!  They were, but they are not ­for want of Truth.  But might not we hope for a land where Truth would reign ­from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the frozen North to the ever-tepid waters of the sunny South?

Truth is the grand motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled the car of civilisation out from the maze of antiquity where it now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living genius.

The young man’s final flight was observed by Aunt Bell to impress visibly even the bishop ­a personage whom she had begun to suspect was the least bit cynical, perhaps from having listened to many first sermons.

“Standing one day,” it began, “near the summit of one of the grand old Rocky Mountains that in primeval ages was elevated from ocean’s depths and now towers its snow-capped peak heavenward touching the azure blue, I witnessed a scene which, for beauty of illustration of the thought in hand, the world cannot surpass.  Placing my feet upon a solid rock, I saw, far down in the valley below, the tempest gathering.  Soon the low-muttered thunder and vivid flashes of lightning gave token of increasing turbulence with Nature’s elements.  Thus the storm raged far below while all around me and above glittered the pure sunlight of heaven, where I mingled in the blue serene; until at last the thought came electric-like, as half-divine, here is exemplified in Nature’s own impressive language the simple grandeurs of Truth.  While we are in the valley below, we have ébullitions of discontent and murmurings of strife; but as we near the summit of Truth our thought becomes elevated.  Then placing our feet on the solid Rock of Ages, we call to those in the valley below to cease their bickerings and come up higher.

“Truth!  Oh, of all the flowers that swing their golden censers in the parterre of the human heart, none so rich, so rare, as this one flower of Truth.  Other flowers there may be that yield as rich perfume, but they must be crushed in order that their fragrance become perceptible.  But the soul of this flower courses its way down the garden walk, out through the deep, dark dell, over the burning plain, up the mountain-side, up and ever UP it rises into the beautiful blue; all along the cloudy corridors of the day, up along the misty pathway to the skies, till it touches the beautiful shore and mingles with the breath of angels!”

Yet a perverse old man had sat stonily under this sermon ­had, even after so effective a baptism, neglected to undo that which he should never have done.  Moreover, even on the day of this notable sermon, he was known to have referred to the young man, within the hearing of a discreet housekeeper, as “the son of his father” ­which was an invidious circumlocution, amounting almost to an epithet.  And he had most weakly continued to grieve for the wayward lost son of his daughter ­the godless boy whom he had driven from his door.

Not even the other bit of news that came a little later had sufficed to make him repair his injustice; and this, though the report came by the Reverend Arthur Pelham Gridley, incumbent of the Presbyterian pulpit at Edom, who could preach sermons the old man liked.

Mr. Gridley, returning from a certain gathering of the brethren at Denver, had brought this news:  That Bernal Linford had been last seen walking south from Denver, like a common tramp, in the company of a poor half-witted creature who had aroused some local excitement by declaring himself to be the son of God, speaking familiarly of the Deity as “Father.”

As this impious person had been of a very simple mind and behaved inoffensively, rather shrinking from publicity than courting it, he had at first attracted little attention.  It appeared, however, that he had presently begun an absurd pretence of healing the sick and the lame; and, like all charlatans, he so cunningly worked upon the imaginations of his dupes that a remarkable number of them believed that they actually had been healed by him.  In fact, the nuisance of his operations had grown to an extent so alarming that thousands of people stood in line from early morning until dusk awaiting their turn to be blessed and “healed” by the impostor.  Just as several of the clergy, said Mr. Gridley, were on the point of denouncing this creature as anti-Christ and thus exploding his pretensions; and when the city authorities, indeed, appealed to by the local physicians, were on the point of suppressing him for disorderly conduct, and a menace to the public health, since he was encouraging the people to forsake their family physicians; and just as the news came that a long train-load of the variously suffering was on its way from Omaha, the wretched impostor had himself solved the difficulty by quietly disappearing.  As he had refused to take money from the thousands of his dupes who had pressed it upon him in their fancied relief from pain, it was known that he could not be far off, and some curiosity was at first felt as to his whereabouts ­particularly by those superstitious ones who continued to believe he had healed them of their infirmities, not a few of whom, it appeared, were disposed to credit his blasphemous claim to have been sent by God.

According to the lookout thus kept for this person, it was reported that he had been seen to pass on foot through towns lying south of Denver, meanly dressed and accompanied by a young man named Linford.  To all inquiries he answered that he was on his way to fast in the desert as his “Father” had commanded.  His companion was even less communicative, saying somewhat irritably that his goings and comings were nobody’s business but his own.

Some six months later the remains of the unfortunate person were found in a wild place far to the south, with his Bible and his blanket.  It was supposed that he had starved.  Of Linford no further trace had been discovered.

The most absurd tales were now told, said Mr. Gridley, of the miracles of healing wrought by this person ­told, moreover, by persons of intelligence whom in ordinary matters one would not hesitate to trust.  There had even been a story started, which was widely believed, that he had raised the dead; moreover, many of those who had been deluded into believing themselves healed, looked forward confidently to his own resurrection.

Mr. Gridley ventured the opinion that we should be thankful to the daily press which now disseminates the news of such things promptly, instead of allowing it to travel slowly by word of mouth, as it did in less advanced times ­a process in which a little truth becomes very shortly a mighty untruth.  Even between Denver and Omaha he had observed that the wonder-tales of this person grew apace, thus proving the inaccuracy of the human mind as a reporter of fact.  Without the check of an unemotional daily press Mr. Gridley suspected that the poor creature’s performances would have been magnified by credulous gossip until he became the founder of a new religion ­a thing especially to be dreaded in a day when the people were crazed for any new thing ­as Paul found them in Athens.

Mr. Gridley mentioned further that the person had suffered from what the alienists called “morbid delusions of grandeur” ­believing, indeed, that but One other in the universe was greater than himself; that he would sit at the right hand of Power to judge all the world.  His most puerile pretension, however, was that he meant to live, even if the work required a thousand years, until such time as he could save all persons into heaven, so that hell need have no occupants.

But this distressing tale did not move old Allan Delcher to reconsider his perverse decision, though there had been ample time for reparation.  Placidly he dropped off one day, a little while after he had cautioned Clytie to keep the house ready for Bernal’s coming; and to have always on hand one of those fig layer-cakes of which he was so fond, since as likely as not he would ask for this the first thing, just as he used to do.  It must seem homelike to him when he did come.

Having betrayed the trust reposed in him by an unsuspecting grandson, it seemed fitting that he should fall asleep over that very psalm wherein David describeth the corruption of the natural man.