Phyllis shook hands with her visitor. He sought to retain her hand, as he had been in the habit of doing, as he stood beside her with something of a proprietary air. He relinquished her hand with a little look of surprise—a sort of pained surprise. She was inexorable. She would not even allow him to maintain his proprietary air.
“Do sit down, Mr. Holland,” she said.
“What! ‘Mr. Holland’ already? Oh, Phyllis!”
He had a good voice, full of expression—something beyond mere musical expression. People (they were mostly women) said that his voice had soul in it, whatever they meant by that.
She made no reply. What reply could she make? She only waited for him to sit down.
“Your letter came as a great shock to me, Phyllis,” said he, when he had seated himself, not too close to her. He did not wish her to fancy that he was desirous of having a subtle influence of propinquity as an ally. “A great shock to me.”
“A shock?” said she. “A shock, after you had written that book?”
“I fancied you would understand it, Phyllis—you, at least. Of course I expected to be misrepresented by the world—the critics—the clerics—what you will—but you——You had not read it when you wrote that letter to me—that terrible letter. You could not have read it.”
“I had only read one notice of it—that was enough.”
“And you could write that letter to me solely as the evidence of one wretched print? Oh, Phyllis!”
Pain was in his voice. It may have been in his face as well, but she did not see it; his face was averted from her.
“Yes,” she said quietly; “I wrote that letter, Mr. Holland. You see, the paper gave large extracts from the book. I did not come to my conclusion from what the newspaper article said, but from what you had said in your book—from the quoted passages.”
“They did not do me justice. I did not look for justice at their hands. But you, Phyllis——”
“I have read your book now, Mr. Holland——”
“Ah, let me plead with you, Phyllis—not ‘Mr. Holland,’ I entreat of you.”
“And my first thought on reading it was that I had not written to you so strongly as I should have done.”
“My dear Phyllis, do not say that, I beg of you. You cannot know how you pain me.”
“To be misunderstood by you—you.”
She got upon her feet so quickly that it might almost be said she sprang up.
“You must have misunderstood me greatly, Mr. Holland, if you fancied that you could write such a book as you wrote and not get such a letter from me. The Bible—Ruth—and you a clergyman—reading it daily in the church——Oh! I cannot tell you all that I thought—all that I still think.”
He did not correct the mistake she had made. She had no right to accuse him of reading the Bible daily in his church. He was not in the habit of doing that—it was his curates who did it. He watched her as she stood at a window with her back turned to him. Her hands were behind her. Her breath came audibly, for she had spoken excitedly.
Then he also rose and came beside her.
“I wrote that book, as I believed you would perceive when you had read it, in order to remove from the minds of the people—those people who have not given the matter a thought—the impression—I know it prevails—that our faith—the truth of our religion—is dependent upon the acceptance as good of such persons as our very religion itself enables us to pronounce evil. My aim was to show that our faith is not built upon such a foundation of impurity—of imperfection. The spirit which prevails nowadays—the modern spirit—it is the result of the development of science. This scientific spirit necessitates the consideration of all the elements of our faith from the standpoint of reason.”
“Faith—reason?”
“If the Church is to appeal to all men, its method must be scientific. It is sad to think of all that the Church has lost in the past through the want of wisdom of those who had its best interests at heart, and believed they were doing it good service by opposing scientific research. They fancied that the faith would not survive the light of truth. They professed to believe that the faith was strong enough to work miracles—to change the heart of man, and yet that it would be jeopardized by the calculations of astronomers. The astronomers were prohibited from calculating; the geologists were forbidden to unearth the mysteries of their science, lest the discovery of the truth should be detrimental to the faith. They believed that the truth was opposed to the faith. Warning after warning the Church received that the two were one; that man would only accept the truth, whether it came from the lips of the churchman or from the investigations of science. Grudgingly the Church became tolerant of the seekers after truth—men who were not greatly concerned in the preservation of the mummy dust of dogma. But how many thousand persons are there not, to-day, who think that the Church is on one side, and the truth on the other? The intolerant attitude of the Church, still maintained in these days, when the spirit of science pervades every form of thought, has been productive of probably the largest body that ever existed in the country, of sensible men and women, who never enter a church door. They want to know whatsoever things are true; they do not want to be dredged with the mummy dust of dogma.”
“But the Bible—the Bible!”
“It is necessary for me to tell you all that I feel on this subject; all that I have felt for several years past—ever since I left the divinity school behind me, and went into the world of thinking men and women. It is necessary to tell these men and women in unmistakable language that our faith aims at a perfect type of manhood—at the perfection of truth. It is necessary to tell them that we do not regard, except with abhorrence, such types of men as have for centuries been held up to admiration simply because they have for centuries been the objects of admiration, of imitation, of veneration, on the part of the debased people who gave us the earlier books of the Bible. The memory of Jacob became the dominant influence among the Hebrew nation; hence the continuous curse that rested upon them, the curse that rests upon the cheat, the defrauder of his own household, his brother, his father, his uncle. It is necessary to say that the world should know that our religion is founded upon truth, purity, self-sacrifice—that it abhors the cheat and the sensualist. It is necessary to proclaim to the world our abhorrence of the cult whose highest development was the Pharisee. The aim of the religion of Christ is to produce the perfect man, and to root out the Pharisee. When the Church ceases to connive at falsehood and sensualism; when it openly professes its abhorrence of the religion of the Hebrews; then, and then only, will it become the power in the earth which the exponent of Christianity should become. Humanity had been crying out for the religion of humanity, that is, Christianity, for centuries, but the Church tells it that true religion is an amalgamation of the loveliness of Christianity and the barbarity of Judaism—an impossible amalgamation, and one which millions of poor souls have perished in a vain attempt to accomplish. Humanity wants Christ, and Christ only, and that the Church has hitherto refused to give; hence the millions of thinking men and women, believers in the religion of Christ, who remain forever outside the walls of the Church; hence, also, that terrible record of murder and massacre, perpetrated through long ages with the sanction of the Church. Where, in the religion of Christ, can one find the sanction for massacre? It is nowhere to be found except in the Psalms of the senile sensualist—in the commands of Moses, the leader of the marauders of the desert. Christ swept away the barbarities of the teaching of Moses. He perceived how miserably it had failed; how it had retarded all that was good in man, and sanctioned all that was evil. He perceived how it had kept the nation in a condition of barbarity; how it had made it the prey of the civilized nations around it; how it had made the Hebrew nations the contempt of civilization; and yet the Church that calls itself the Church of Christ has not yet had the courage to offer humanity anything but that impossible task—the amalgamation of the law that came by Moses and the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ.”
He spoke with all the fervor of the preacher, with pale face, brilliant eyes, and clenched hands; but in a voice adapted to a drawing room. Phyllis of Philistia could not but admit that, in the phrase of Philistia he had spoken in perfect taste. He had not alluded definitely to the boldness of Ruth or to the calorific course accepted by the aged David. He had spoken in those general terms which are adopted by the clergymen who never err against good taste as defined by the matrons of Philistia.
She did not know whether she admired him or detested him. But she was certain that she did not love him. He might be right in all that he had said, but she had freed herself from him. He might be destined to become one of the most prominent men of the last ten years of the century, but she would never marry him.
She stood face to face with him when he had spoken.
There was a long silence.
A gleam, a very faint gleam of triumph came to his eyes.
“Good-bye,” said she, flashing out her hand to him, and with her eyes still fixed upon his face.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg