The Minister's Wooing

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Oh, I did not mean,” said Mrs. Scudder, “that it was difficult to understand the subject; the right of the matter is clear, but what to do is the thing.”

  “I shall preach about it,” said the Doctor; “my mind has run upon it some time. I shall show to the house of Judah their sin in this matter.”

  “I fear there will be great offence given,” said Mrs. Scudder. “There’s Simeon Brown, one of our largest supporters,—he is in the trade.”

  “Ah, yes,—but he will come out of It,—of course he will,—he is all right, all clear. I was delighted with the clearness of his views the other night, and thought then of bringing them to bear on this point,—only, as others were present, I deferred it. But I can show him that it follows logically from his principles; I am confident of that.”

  “I think you’ll be disappointed in him, Doctor;—I think he’ll be angry, and get up a commotion, and leave the church.”

  “Madam,” said the Doctor, “do you suppose that a man who would be willing even to give up his eternal salvation for the greatest good of the universe could hesitate about a few paltry thousands that perish in the using?”

  “He may feel willing to give up his soul,” said Mrs. Scudder, naively, “but I don’t think he’ll give up his ships,—that’s quite another matter,—he won’t see it to be his duty.”

  “Then, Ma‘am, he’ll be a hypocrite, a gross hypocrite, if he won’t,” said the Doctor. “It is not Christian charity to think it of him. I shall call upon him this morning and tell him my intentions.”

  “But, Doctor,” exclaimed Mrs. Scudder, with a start, “pray, think a little more of it. You know a great many things depend on him. Why! he has subscribed for twenty copies of your ‘System of Theology.’ I hope you’ll remember that.”

  “And why should I remember that?” said the Doctor,—hastily turning round, suddenly enkindled, his blue eyes flashing out of their usual misty calm,—“what has my ‘System of Theology’ to do with the matter?”

  “Why,” said Mrs. Scudder, “it’s of more importance to get right views of the gospel before the world than anything else, is it not?—and if, by any imprudence in treating influential people, this should be prevented, more harm than good would be done.”

  “Madam,” said the Doctor, “I’d sooner my system should be sunk in the sea than it should be a millstone round my neck to keep me from my duty. Let God take care of my theology; I must do my duty.”

  And as the Doctor spoke, he straightened himself to the full dignity of his height, his face kindling with an unconscious majesty, and, as he turned, his eye fell on Mary, who was standing with her slender figure dilated, her large blue eye wide and bright, in a sort of trance of solemn feeling, half smiles, half tears,—and the strong, heroic man started, to see this answer to his higher soul in the sweet, tremulous mirror of womanhood. One of those lightning glances passed between his eyes and hers which are the freemasonry of noble spirits,—and, by a sudden impulse, they approached each other. He took both her outstretched hands, looked down into her face with a look full of admiration, and a sort of naive wonder,—then, as if her inspired silence had been a voice to him, he laid his hand on her head, and said,—

  “God bless you, child! ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger!’ ”2

  In a moment he was gone. “Mary,” said Mrs. Scudder, laying her hand on her daughter’s arm, “the Doctor loves you!”

  “I know he does, mother,” said Mary, innocently; “and I love him,—dearly!—he is a noble, grand man!”

  Mrs. Scudder looked keenly at her daughter. Mary’s eye was as calm as a June sky, and she began, composedly, gathering up the teacups.

  “She did not understand me,” thought the mother.

  CHAPTER X

  The Test of Theology

  THE DOCTOR went immediately to his study and put on his best coat and his wig, and, surmounting them by his cocked hat, walked manfully out of the house, with his gold-headed cane in his hand.

  “There he goes!” said Mrs. Scudder, looking regretfully after him. “He is such a good man!—but he has not the least idea how to get along in the world. He never thinks of anything but what is true; he hasn’t a particle of management about him.”

  “Seems to me,” said Mary, “that is like an Apostle. You know, mother, St. Paul says, ‘In simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world.’ ”1

  “To be sure,—that is just the Doctor,” said Mrs. Scudder; “that’s as like him as if it had been written for him. But that kind of way, somehow, don’t seem to do in our times; it won’t answer with Simeon Brown,—I know the man. I know just as well, now, how it will all seem to him, and what will be the upshot of this talk, if the Doctor goes there! It won’t do any good; if it would, I would be willing. I feel as much desire to have this horrid trade in slaves stopped as anybody; your father, I’m sure, said enough about it in his time; but then I know it’s no use trying. Just as if Simeon Brown, when he is making his hundreds of thousands in it, is going to be persuaded to give it up! He won’t,—he’ll only turn against the Doctor, and won’t pay his part of the salary, and will use his influence to get up a party against him, and our church will be broken up and the Doctor driven away,—that’s all that will come of it; and all the good that he is doing now to these poor negroes will be overthrown, —and they never will have so good a friend. If he would stay here and work gradually, and get his System of Theology printed,—and Simeon Brown would help at that,—and only drop words in season here and there, till people are brought along with him, why, by-and-by something might be done; but now, it’s just the most imprudent thing a man could undertake.”

  “But, mother, if it really is a sin to trade in slaves and hold them, I don’t see how he can help himself. I quite agree with him. I don’t see how he came to let it go so long as he has.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Scudder, “if worst comes to worst, and he will do it, I, for one, shall stand by him to the last.”

  “And I, for another,” said Mary.

  “I would like him to talk with Cousin Zebedee about it,” said Mrs. Scudder. “When we are up there this afternoon, we will introduce the conversation. He is a good, sound man, and the Doctor thinks much of him, and perhaps he may shed some light upon this matter.”

  Meanwhile the Doctor was making the best of his way, in the strength of his purpose to test the orthodoxy of Simeon Brown.

  Honest old granite boulder that he was, no sooner did he perceive a truth than he rolled after it with all the massive gravitation of his being, inconsiderate as to what might lie in his way;—from which it is to be inferred, that, with all his intellect and goodness, he would have been a very clumsy and troublesome inmate of the modern American Church. How many societies, boards, colleges, and other good institutions, have reason to congratulate themselves that he has long been among the saints!

  With him logic was everything, and to perceive a truth and not act in logical sequence from it a thing so incredible, that he had not yet enlarged his capacity to take it in as a possibility. That a man should refuse to hear truth, he could understand. In fact, he had good reason to think the majority of his townsmen had no leisure to give to that purpose. That men hearing truth should dispute it and argue stoutly against it, he could also understand; but that a man could admit a truth and not admit the plain practice resulting from it was to him a thing incomprehensible. Therefore, spite of Mrs. Katy Scudder’s discouraging observations, our good Doctor walked stoutly and with a trusting heart.

  At the moment when the Doctor, with a silent uplifting of his soul to his invisible Sovereign, passed out of his study, on this errand, where was the disciple whom he went to seek?

  In a small, dirty room, down by the wharf, the windows veiled by cobwebs and dingy with the accumulated dust of ages, he sat in a greasy, leat
hern chair by a rickety office-table, on which was a great pewter inkstand, an account-book, and divers papers tied with red tape.

  Opposite to him was seated a square-built individual,—a man of about forty, whose round head, shaggy eyebrows, small, keen eyes, broad chest, and heavy muscles showed a preponderance of the animal and brutal over the intellectual and spiritual. This was Mr. Scroggs, the agent of a rice-plantation, who had come on, bringing an order for a new relay of negroes to supply the deficit occasioned by fever, dysentery, and other causes, in their last year’s stock.

  “The fact is,” said Simeon, “this last ship-load wasn’t as good a one as usual; we lost more than a third of it, so we can’t afford to put them a penny lower.”

  “Ay,” said the other,—“but then there are so many women!”

  “Well,” said Simeon, “women a‘n’t so strong, perhaps, to start with,—but then they stan’ it out, perhaps, in the long run, better. They’re more patient;—some of these men, the Mandingoes,2 particularly, are pretty troublesome to manage. We lost a splendid fellow, coming over, on this very voyage. Let ’em on deck for air, and this fellow managed to get himself loose and fought like a dragon. He settled one of our men with his fist, and another with a marlin-spike that he caught,—and, in fact, they had to shoot him down. You’ll have his wife; there’s his son, too,—fine fellow, fifteen year old by his teeth.”

  “What! that lame one?”

  “Oh, he a’n’t lame!—it’s nothing but the cramps from stowing. You know, of course, they are more or less stiff. He’s as sound as a nut.”

  “Don’t much like to buy relations, on account of their hatching up mischief together,” said Mr. Scroggs.

  “Oh, that’s all humbug! You must keep ‘em from coming together, anyway. It’s about as broad as ’tis long. There’ll be wives and husbands and children among ‘em before long, start ’em as you will. And then this woman will work better for having the boy; she’s kinder set on him; she jabbers lots of lingo to him, day and night.”

  “Too much, I doubt,” said the overseer, with a shrug.

  “Well, well,—I’ll tell you,” said Simeon, rising. “I’ve got a few errands up-town, and you just step over with Matlock and look over the stock;—just set aside any that you want, and when I see ‘em all together, I’ll tell you just what you shall have ’em for. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

  And so saying, Simeon Brown called an underling from an adjoining room, and, committing his customer to his care, took his way up-town, in a serene frame of mind, like a man who comes from the calm performance of duty.

  Just as he came upon the street where was situated his own large and somewhat pretentious mansion, the tall figure of the Doctor loomed in sight, sailing majestically down upon him, making a signal to attract his attention.

  “Good morning, Doctor,” said Simeon.

  “Good morning, Mr. Brown,” said the Doctor. “I was looking for you. I did not quite finish the subject we were talking about at Mrs. Scudder’s table last night. I thought I should like to go on with it a little.”

  “With all my heart, Doctor,” said Simeon, not a little flattered. “Turn right in. Mrs. Brown will be about her house-business, and we will have the keeping-room all to ourselves. Come right in.”

  The “keeping-room” of Mr. Simeon Brown’s house was an intermediate apartment between the ineffable glories of the front-parlor and that court of the gentiles, the kitchen; for the presence of a large train of negro servants made the latter apartment an altogether different institution from the throne-room of Mrs. Katy Scudder.

  This keeping-room was a low-studded apartment, finished with the heavy oaken beams of the wall left full in sight, boarded over and painted. Two windows looked out on the street, and another into a sort of court-yard, where three black wenches, each with a broom, pretended to be sweeping, but were, in fact, chattering and laughing, like so many crows.

  On one side of the room stood a heavy mahogany sideboard, covered with decanters, labelled Gin, Brandy, Rum, etc.,—for Simeon was held to be a provider of none but the best, in his housekeeping. Heavy mahogany chairs, with crewel coverings, stood sentry about the room; and the fireplace was flanked by two broad arm-chairs, covered with stamped leather.

  On ushering the Doctor into this apartment, Simeon courteously led him to the sideboard.

  “We mus’n’t make our discussions too dry, Doctor,” he said. “What will you take?”

  “Thank you, Sir,” said the Doctor, with a wave of his hand,—“nothing this morning.”

  And depositing his cocked hat in a chair, he settled himself into one of the leathern easy-chairs, and, dropping his hands upon his knees, looked fixedly before him, like a man who is studying how to enter upon an inwardly absorbing subject.

  “Well, Doctor,” said Simeon, seating himself opposite, sipping comfortably at a glass of rum-and-water, “our views appear to be making a noise in the world. Everything is preparing for your volumes; and when they appear, the battle of New Divinity, I think, may fairly be considered as won.”

  Let us consider, that, though a woman may forget her first-born, yet a man cannot forget his own system of theology,—because therein, if he be a true man, is the very elixir and essence of all that is valuable and hopeful to the universe; and considering this, let us appreciate the settled purpose of our friend, whom even this tempting bait did not swerve from the end which he had in view.

  “Mr. Brown,” he said, “all our theology is as a drop in the ocean of God’s majesty, to whose glory we must be ready to make any and every sacrifice.”

  “Certainly,” said Mr. Brown, not exactly comprehending the turn the Doctor’s thoughts were taking.

  “And the glory of God consisteth in the happiness of all his rational universe, each in his proportion, according to his separate amount of being; so that, when we devote ourselves to God’s glory, it is the same as saying that we devote ourselves to the highest happiness of his created universe.”

  “That’s clear, Sir,” said Simeon, rubbing his hands, and taking out his watch to see the time.

  The Doctor hitherto had spoken in a laborious manner, like a man who is slowly lifting a heavy bucket of thought out of an internal well.

  “I am glad to find your mind so clear on this all-important point, Mr. Brown,—the more so as I feel that we must immediately proceed to apply our principles, at whatever sacrifice of worldly goods; and I trust, Sir, that you are one who at the call of your Master would not hesitate even to lay down all your worldly possessions for the greater good of the universe.”

  “I trust so, Sir,” said Simeon, rather uneasily, and without the most distant idea what could be coming next in the mind of his reverend friend.

  “Did it never occur to you, my friend,” said the Doctor, “that the enslaving of the African race is a clear violation of the great law which commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves,—and a dishonor upon the Christian religion, more particularly in us Americans, whom the Lord hath so marvellously protected, in our recent struggle for our own liberty?”

  Simeon started at the first words of this address, much as if some one had dashed a bucket of water on his head, and after that rose uneasily, walking the room and playing with the seals of his watch.

  “I—I never regarded it in this light,” he said.

  “Possibly not, my friend,” said the Doctor,—“so much doth established custom blind the minds of the best of men. But since I have given more particular attention to the case of the poor negroes here in Newport, the thought has more and more labored in my mind,—more especially as our own struggles for liberty have turned my attention to the rights which every human creature hath before God,—so that I find much in my former blindness and the comparative dumbness I have heretofore maintained on this subject wherewith to reproach myself; for, though I have borne somewhat of a testimony, I have not given it that force which so important a subject required. I am humbled before God for my neglect, and reso
lved now, by His grace, to leave no stone unturned till this iniquity be purged away from our Zion.”3

  “Well, Doctor,” said Simeon, “you are certainly touching on a very dark and difficult subject, and one in which it is hard to find out the path of duty. Perhaps it will be well to bear it in mind, and by looking at it prayerfully some light may arise. There are such great obstacles in the way, that I do not see at present what can be done; do you, Doctor?”

  “I intend to preach on the subject next Sunday, and hereafter devote my best energies in the most public way to this great work,” said the Doctor.

  “You, Doctor?—and now, immediately? Why, it appears to me you cannot do it. You are the most unfit man possible. Whosever duty it may be, it does not seem to me to be yours. You already have more on your shoulders than you can carry; you are hardly able to keep your ground now, with all the odium of this new theology upon you. Such an effort would break up your church,—destroy the chance you have to do good here,—prevent the publication of your system.”