Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Rest and keep easy” — how easily the words are said! yet how they fall on the ear of a mother, who knows that her whole flock have not yet a garment prepared for winter, that hiring assistance is out of the question, and that the work must all be done by herself — who sees that while she is sick her husband is perplexed, and kept from his appropriate duties, and her children, despite his well-meant efforts, suffering for the want of those attentions that only a mother can give. Will not any mother, so tried, rise from her sick bed before she feels able, to be again prostrated by over-exertion, until the vigor of the constitution year by year declines, and she sinks into an early grave? Yet this is the true history of many a wife and mother, who, in consenting to share the privations of a western minister, has as truly sacrificed her life as did ever martyr on heathen shores. The graves of Harriet Newell and Mrs. Judson are hallowed as the shrines of saints, and their memory made as a watchword among Christians; yet the western valley is full of green and nameless graves, where patient, long-enduring wives and mothers have lain down, worn out by the privations of as severe a missionary field, and “no man knoweth the place of their sepulchre.”

  The crisp air of a November evening was enlivened by the fire that blazed merrily in the bar room of the tavern in L., while a more than usual number crowded about the hearth, owing to the session of the county court in that place.

  “Mr. Lennox is a pretty smart lawyer,” began an old gentleman, who sat in one of the corners, in the half interrogative tone which indicated a wish to start conversation.

  “Yes, sir, no mistake about that,” was the reply; “does the largest business in the state — very smart man, sir, and honest — a church member too, and one of the tallest kinds of Christians they say — gives more money for building meeting houses, and all sorts of religious concerns, than any man around.”

  “Well, he can afford it,” said a man with a thin, care-taking visage, and a nervous, anxious twitch of the hand, as if it were his constant effort to hold on to something—”he can afford it, for he makes money hand over hand. It is not every body can afford to do as he does.”

  A sly look of intelligence pervaded the company; for the speaker, one of the most substantial householders in the settlement, was always taken with distressing symptoms of poverty and destitution when any allusion to public or religious charity was made.

  “Mr. C. is thinking about parish matters,” said a wicked wag of the company; “you see, sir, our minister urged pretty hard last Sunday to have his salary paid up. He has had sickness in his family, and nothing on hand for winter expenses.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Stanton is judicious in making such public statements,” said the former speaker, nervously; “he ought to consult his friends privately, and not bring temporalities into the pulpit.”

  “That is to say, starve decently, and make no fuss,” replied the other.

  “Nonsense! Who talks of starving, when provision is as plenty as blackberries? I tell you I understand this matter, and know how little a man can get along with. I’ve tried it myself. When I first set out in life, my wife and I had not a pair of andirons or a shovel and tongs for two or three years, and we never thought of complaining. The times are hard. We are all losing, and must get along as we can; and Mr. Stanton must bear some rubs as well as the rest of us.”

  “It appears to me, Mr. C,” said the waggish gentleman aforesaid, “that if you’d put Mr. Stanton into your good brick house, and give him your furniture and income, he would be well satisfied to rub along as you do.”

  “Mr. Stanton isn’t so careful in his expenses as he might be,” said Mr. C., petulantly, disregarding the idea started by his neighbor; “he buys things I should not think of buying. Now, I was in his house the other day, and he had just given three dollars for a single book.”

  “Perhaps it was a book he needed in his studies,” suggested the old gentleman who began the conversation.

  “What’s the use of book larnin’ to a minister, if he’s got the real spirit in him?” chimed in a rough-looking man in the farthest corner; “only wish you could have heard Elder North give it off — there was a real genuine preacher for you, couldn’t even read his text in the Bible; yet, sir, he would get up and reel it off as smooth and fast as the best of them, that come out of the colleges. My notion is, it’s the spirit that’s the thing, after all.”

  Several of the auditors seemed inclined to express their approbation of this doctrine, though some remarked that Mr. Stanton was a smarter preacher than Elder North, for all his book larnin’.

  Some of the more intelligent of the circle here exchanged smiles, but declined entering the lists in favor of “larnin’.”

  “O, for my part,” resumed Mr. C., “I am for having a minister study, and have books and all that, if he can afford it; but in hard times like these, books are neither meat, drink, nor fire; and I know I can’t afford them. Now, I’m as willing to contribute my part to the minister’s salary, and every other charity, as any body, when I can get money to do it; but in these times I can’t get it.”

  The elderly gentleman here interrupted the conversation by saying, abruptly, “I am a townsman of Mr. Stanton’s, and it is my opinion that he has impoverished himself by giving in religious charity.”

  “Giving in charity!” exclaimed several voices; “where did he ever get any thing to give?”

  “Yet I think I speak within bounds,” said the old gentleman, “when I say that he has given more than the amount of two thousand dollars yearly to the support of the gospel in this state; and I think I can show it to be so.”

  The eyes of the auditors were now enlarged to their utmost limits, while the old gentleman, after the fashion of shrewd old gentlemen generally, screwed up his mouth in a very dry twist, and looked in the fire without saying a word.

  “Come now, pray tell us how this is,” said several of the company.

  “Well, sir,” said the old man, addressing himself to Mr. C., “you are a man of business, and will perhaps understand the case as I view it. You were speaking this evening of lawyer Lennox. He and your minister were both from my native place, and both there and in college your minister was always reckoned the smartest of the two, and went ahead in every thing they undertook. Now, you see Mr. Lennox, out of his talents and education, makes say three thousand a year. Mr. Stanton had more talent, and more education, and might have made even more; but by devoting himself to the work of the ministry in your state, he gains, we will say, about four hundred dollars. Does he not, therefore, in fact, give all the difference between four hundred and three thousand to the cause of religion in this state? If, during the business season of the year, you, Mr. C., should devote your whole time to some benevolent enterprise, would you not feel that you had virtually given to that enterprise all the money you would otherwise have made? Instead, therefore, of calling it a charity for you to subscribe to your minister’s support, you ought to consider it a very expensive charity for him to devote his existence in preaching to you. To bring the gospel to your state, he has given up a reasonable prospect of an income of two or three thousand, and contents himself with the least sum which will keep soul and body together, without the possibility of laying up a cent for his family in case of his sickness and death. This, sir, is what I call giving in charity.”

  THE ELDER’S FEAST.

  A TRADITION OF LAODICEA.

  At a certain time in the earlier ages there lived in the city of Laodicea a Christian elder of some repute, named Onesiphorus. The world had smiled on him, and though a Christian, he was rich and full of honors. All men, even the heathen, spoke well of him, for he was a man courteous of speech and mild of manner.

  His wife, a fair Ionian lady but half reclaimed from idolatry, though baptized and accredited as a member of the Christian church, still lingered lovingly on the confines of old heathenism, and if she did not believe, still cherished with pleasure the poetic legends of Apollo and Venus, of Jove and Diana.

  A l
arge and fair family of sons and daughters had risen around these parents; but their education had been much after the rudiments of this world, and not after Christ. Though, according to the customs of the church, they were brought to the font of baptism, and sealed in the name of the Father, and the Son, and Holy Ghost, and although daily, instead of libations to the Penates, or flower offerings to Diana and Juno, the name of Jesus was invoked, yet the spirit of Jesus was wanting. The chosen associates of all these children, as they grew older, were among the heathen; and daily they urged their parents, by their entreaties, to conform, in one thing after another, to heathen usage. “Why should we be singular, mother?” said the dark-eyed Myrrah, as she bound her hair and arranged her dress after the fashion of the girls in the temple of Venus. “Why may we not wear the golden ornaments and images which have been consecrated to heathen goddesses?” said the sprightly Thalia; “surely none others are to be bought, and are we to do altogether without?” “And why may we not be at feasts where libations are made to Apollo or Jupiter?” said the sons; “so long as we do not consent to it or believe in it, will our faith be shaken thereby?” “How are we ever to reclaim the heathen, if we do not mingle among them?” said another son; “did not our Master eat with publicans and sinners?”

  It was, however, to be remarked, that no conversions of the heathen to Christianity ever took place through the means of these complying sons and daughters, or any of the number who followed their example. Instead of withdrawing any from the confines of heathenism, they themselves were drawn so nearly over, that in certain situations and circumstances they would undoubtedly have been ranked among them by any but a most scrutinizing observer. If any in the city of Laodicea were ever led to unite themselves with Jesus, it was by means of a few who observed the full simplicity of the ancient faith, and who, though honest, tender, and courteous in all their dealings with the heathen, still went not a step with them in conformity to any of their customs.

  In time, though the family we speak of never broke off from the Christian church, yet if you had been in it, you might have heard much warm and earnest conversation about things that took place at the baths, or in feasts to various divinities; but if any one spoke of Jesus, there was immediately a cold silence, a decorous, chilling, respectful pause, after which the conversation, with a bound, flew back into the old channel again.

  It was now night; and the house of Onesiphorus the Elder was blazing with torches, alive with music, and all the hurry and stir of a sumptuous banquet. All the wealth and fashion of Laodicea were there, Christian and heathen; and all that the classic voluptuousness of Oriental Greece could give to shed enchantment over the scene was there. In ancient times the festivals of Christians in Laodicea had been regulated in the spirit of the command of Jesus, as recorded by Luke, whose classical Greek had made his the established version in Asia Minor. “And thou, when thou makest a feast, call not thy friends and thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, and the maimed, and the lame, and the blind, and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”

  That very day, before the entertainment, had this passage been quoted in the ears of the family by Cleon, the youngest son, who, different from all his family, had cherished in his bosom the simplicity of the old belief.

  “How ridiculous! how absurd!” had been the reply of the more thoughtless members of the family, when Cleon cited the above passage as in point to the evening’s entertainment. The dark-eyed mother looked reproof on the levity of the younger children, and decorously applauded the passage, which she said had no application to the matter in hand.

  “But, mother, even if the passage be not literally taken, it must mean something. What did the Lord Jesus intend by it? If we Christians may make entertainments with all the parade and expense of our heathen neighbors, and thus spend the money that might be devoted to charity, what does this passage mean?”

  “Your father gives in charity as handsomely as any Christian in Laodicea,” said his mother warmly.

  “Nay, mother, that may be; but I bethink me now of two or three times when means have been wanting for the relieving of the poor, and the ransoming of captives, and the support of apostles, when we have said that we could give no more.”

  “My son,” said his mother, “you do not understand the ways of the world.”

  “Nay, how should he?” said Thalia, “shut up day and night with that old papyrus of St. Luke and Paul’s Epistles. One may have too much of a good thing.”

  “But does not the holy Paul say, ‘Be not conformed to this world’?”

  “Certainly,” said the elder; “that means that we should be baptized, and not worship in the heathen temples.”

  “My dear son,” said his mother, “you intend well, doubtless; but you have not sufficient knowledge of life to estimate our relations to society. Entertainments of this sort are absolutely necessary to sustain our position in the world. If we accept, we must return them.”

  But not to dwell on this conversation, let us suppose ourselves in the rooms now glittering with lights, and gay with every costly luxury of wealth and taste. Here were statues to Diana and Apollo, and to the household Juno — not meant for worship — of course not — but simply to conform to the general usages of good society; and so far had this complaisance been carried, that the shrine of a peerless Venus was adorned with garlands and votive offerings, and an exquisitely wrought silver censer diffused its perfume on the marble altar in front. This complaisance on the part of some of the younger members of the family drew from the elder a gentle remonstrance, as having an unseemly appearance for those bearing the Christian name; but they readily answered, “Has not Paul said, ‘We know that an idol is nothing’? Where is the harm of an elegant statue, considered merely as a consummate work of art? As for the flowers, are they not simply the most appropriate ornament? And where is the harm of burning exquisite perfume? And is it worse to burn it in one place than another?”

  “Upon my sword,” said one of the heathen guests, as he wandered through the gay scene, “how liberal and accommodating these Christians are becoming! Except in a few small matters in the temple, they seem to be with us entirely.”

  “Ah,” said another, “it was not so years back. Nothing was heard among them, then, but prayers, and alms, and visits to the poor and sick; and when they met together in their feasts, there was so much of their talk of Christ, and such singing of hymns and prayer, that one of us found himself quite out of place.”

  “Yes,” said an old man present, “in those days I quite bethought me of being some day a Christian; but look you, they are grown so near like us now, it is scarce worth one’s while to change. A little matter of ceremony in the temple, and offering incense to Jesus, instead of Jupiter, when all else is the same, can make small odds in a man.”

  But now, the ancient legend goes on to say, that in the midst of that gay and brilliant evening, a stranger of remarkable appearance and manners was noticed among the throng. None knew him, or whence he came. He mingled not in the mirth, and seemed to recognize no one present, though he regarded all that was passing with a peculiar air of still and earnest attention; and wherever he moved, his calm, penetrating gaze seemed to diffuse a singular uneasiness about him. Now his eye was fixed with a quiet scrutiny on the idolatrous statues, with their votive adornments — now it followed earnestly the young forms that were wreathing in the graceful waves of the dance; and then he turned towards the tables, loaded with every luxury and sparkling with wines, where the devotion to Bacchus became more than poetic fiction; and as he gazed, a high, indignant sorrow seemed to overshadow the calmness of his majestic face. When, in thoughtless merriment, some of the gay company sought to address him, they found themselves shrinking involuntarily from the soft, piercing eye, and trembling at the low, sweet tones in which he replied. What he spoke was brie
f; but there was a gravity and tender wisdom in it that strangely contrasted with the frivolous scene, and awakened unwonted ideas of heavenly purity even in thoughtless and dissipated minds.

  The only one of the company who seemed to seek his society was the youngest, the fair little child Isa. She seemed as strangely attracted towards him as others were repelled; and when, unsolicited, in the frank confidence of childhood she pressed to his side, and placed her little hand in his, the look of radiant compassion and tenderness which beamed down from those eyes was indeed glorious to behold. Yet here and there, as he glided among the crowd, he spoke in the ear of some Christian words which, though soft and low, seemed to have a mysterious and startling power; for one after another, pensive, abashed, and confounded, they drew aside from the gay scene, and seemed lost in thought. That stranger — who was he? Who? The inquiry passed from mouth to mouth, and one and another, who had listened to his low, earnest tones, looked on each other with a troubled air. Ere long he had glided hither and thither in the crowd; he had spoken in the ear of every Christian — and suddenly again he was gone, and they saw him no more. Each had felt the heart thrill within — each spirit had vibrated as if the finger of its Creator had touched it, and shrunk conscious as if an omniscient eye were upon it. Each heart was stirred from its depths. Vain sophistries, worldly maxims, making the false look true, all appeared to rise and clear away like a mist; and at once each one seemed to see, as God sees, the true state of the inner world, the true motive and reason of action, and in the instinctive pause that passed through the company, the banquet was broken up and deserted.

  “And what if their God were present?” said one of the heathen members of the company, next day. “Why did they all look so blank? A most favorable omen, we should call it, to have one’s patron divinity at a feast.”

  “Besides,” said another, “these Christians hold that their God is always every where present; so, at most, they have but had their eyes opened to see Him who is always there!”