Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel. Jarvis Stinson
don't know that I assist him much. He does the hardest part of the work, and then has to explain it all to me. But I read to him a good deal when his eyes trouble him. After procuring a new book on the subject he never rests till he has exhausted it. We often worry through it together, taking turns at the reading. We have just finished Haeckel's last. We are wild about Haeckel."
"Yes, there is something very spiritual and orthodox about him," said Geoffrey. "And now that you must have got about as far as you can at present, how does the theory affect you?"
"Not at all, except to make me long to know more. If one could live to be two hundred years old, would it not be delightful?" said Margaret, looking far away up the street in front of her.
"But as to your religion?" asked Geoffrey. "Do you find that it makes any difference?"
"I don't think I was ever a very religious person," she replied, mistaking the word religious for 'churchy.' "I never was christened, nor confirmed, nor taught my catechism, nor anything of that sort. Nobody ever promised that I should renounce the devil and all his works, and so – and so I suppose I never have."
She looked at Geoffrey with the round eyes of guilelessness, slightly mirthful, as if, while deprecating this wretched state, she could still enjoy life.
Her companion could scarcely look away from her. There was such a combination of knowledge and purity and all-round goodness in her face that it fascinated him and induced him to say gravely:
"Indeed, one might have almost supposed that you had enjoyed these benefits from your earliest youth."
"No," she answered, "I have been neglected in church matters. Who knows? Perhaps, if I had been different, father and I would never have been such companions. I never remember his going to church, although he pays his pew-rent for mother and me to go. He is afraid people would call him an atheist, you know, and no man cares about being despised or looked upon as peculiar in that way. He says that as long as he pays his pew-rent the good people will let him alone. As for mother, I hardly know what her belief is now. She is mildly contemptuous of evolution; chiefly, I think, because she does not know, or care anything about it. She says the creed she was brought up in is quite enough for her, and if she can keep the dust out of the house and contentment in it she will do more than most people and fullfil the whole duty of woman. I don't think she likes to be cross-questioned about her particular tenets, which really seem to be sufficient for her, except when she is worried over a new phase of the old family lawsuit, and then she oscillates between pugnacity and resignation. So you see I was left pretty much to myself as to assuming any belief that I might care about."
"And what belief did you come to care about?" he asked, feeling interested.
"Well, father seems to think that the most dignified attitude of our ignorance is a respectful silence; but, as you have asked which belief I care about, I can answer frankly that I like best going to church and saying my prayers. It is so much more pleasant and comfortable to try to think our prayers are heard, for, as mother says, reason and logic are poor outlets for emotion when the lawsuit goes wrong. With our information as it is, our conclusions seem to depend on whether we have or have not in us the spirit of research. They tell me in the churches that, being unregenerate, my heart is desperately wicked, and, as I have nothing but a little bad temper now and then to reproach myself with, I do not agree with them. On the contrary, I always feel that my life rather tends to lead me toward believing – or, at any rate, does not make me prejudiced. I like to believe that God watches over and cares for us. There being no proof or disproof of the matter, I would find it as difficult, by way of reasoning, to altogether disbelieve as to altogether believe."
"Then you make evolution a part of your religion?" asked Geoffrey.
Margaret had been brought up in an advanced latter-day school. All the unrecognized passion within her had gone out in quest of knowledge, which her father had taught her to regard as a source of quiet happiness, or at least as comforting to the soul during the maturer years as an intricate knowledge of crochet and quilt work. When she took to her bosom the so-called dry-as-dust facts of science she clothed them in a sort of spirituality. Even slipper-working for a married curate has been known to stir the pulses, and, though she knew that when the objects of our enthusiasm seem to glow it is unsafe to say whether the glow is not merely the reflection of our own fervor, she regarded the lately dug-up facts of science somewhat as if they were mines of long-hidden coal, capable of use and possessed of intrinsic warmth. Her face brightened with all the enthusiasm of a devotee as she answered Geoffrey's question.
"Indeed, yes. The new knowledge seems like the backbone of my religion. I often sit in church and think what a blessed privilege it is to be permitted to know even as little as we do about God's plan of creation."
She joined her hands before her quickly as she walked along, forgetful of all but the idea that enchained her. Her face showed the devotion seen in some old pictures of early saints, but it was too capable and animated to be the production of any of the old masters.
"Oh, it is grand to know even a little!" she exclaimed; "to think that this is God's plan, and that bit by bit we are allowed to unravel it! Is it not true that we acquire knowledge as we are able to receive it? Did not the ruder people receive the simple laws which Moses learned in Egypt? and did not Christianity expand those laws by teaching the religion of sympathy? These are historical facts. Why, then, should we not regard evolution as an advanced gospel, the gospel of the knowledge of God's works, to bind us more closely to him from our admiration of the excellence of his handiwork – as a father might show his growing son how his business is carried on, and how beautiful things are made? Of course, one may reply that all the discoveries do not show that there is a God. Perhaps they don't; but I try to think they do. I never have been able to find that verbal creeds do much toward making us what we are. The gloomy distort Christ's life to prove the necessity for sorrow; the joyous do just the opposite. The naturally cruel practice their cruelty in the name of religion. Though all start with perhaps the same words on their lips, each individual in reality makes his religion for himself according to his nature. Look at the difference between Guiteau and Florence Nightingale. They both had the same creeds."
Hampstead was silent.
"I know that my religion might not suffice for others, because it has no terrors, but to me it is compelling. When I turn it all over more minutely, the beauty of the thoughts seems to carry me away. Let those whose brittle creeds are broken grope about in their gloom, if they will. To me it is glorious first to try to understand things, and then to praise God for his marvelous works."
Margaret grew more intense in her utterance as her subject grew upon her. They had turned off on a quiet street some time before, so there was nothing to interrupt her. As her earnestness gave weight to her voice, the words came out more fervently and more melodiously. Both her hands were raised, in an unconscious gesture, while the words welled forth with a depth and force impossible to describe.
Geoffrey walked on in silence.
He thought of the passage, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," and he wondered whether Christ would have thought that such as Margaret stood in need of any further faith. The shrine of Understanding was the only one she worshiped at, arguing, as she did, that from a proper understanding and true wisdom followed all the goodness of the Christ-life. He became conscious of a vague regret within him that he had, as he thought, passed those impressionable periods when a man's beliefs may be molded again. There was a distinct longing to participate in the assurance and joy which any kind of fixed faith is capable of producing. The Byronic temperament was not absent from him. He was keenly susceptible to anything – either moral or immoral – which called upon his ideality; and these ideas of Margaret's, although he had thought of them before, seemed new to him.
"It seems strange," he said musingly, "to hear of some of the most learned men of the day erecting an altar similar to that which Paul found at Athens 'to the unknown God,' and to find them impelled to worship something which they speak of as unknown and unknowable."
"And yet," she answered, "it is the work of some of these very men, and their predecessors, that gives the light and life to the religion which I, for one, find productive of comfort and enthusiasm. One can understand the practicability of a heaven where