第106章

--These antipathies are at least weaknesses; they may be sins in the eye of the Recording Angel.I often reproach myself with my wrong-doings.I should like sometimes to thank Heaven for saving me from some kinds of transgression, and even for granting me some qualities that if I dared I should be disposed to call virtues.I should do so, I suppose, if I did not remember the story of the Pharisee.That ought not to hinder me.The parable was told to illustrate a single virtue, humility, and the most unwarranted inferences have been drawn from it as to the whole character of the two parties.It seems not at all unlikely, but rather probable, that the Pharisee was a fairer dealer, a better husband, and a more charitable person than the Publican, whose name has come down to us "linked with one virtue,"but who may have been guilty, for aught that appears to the contrary, of "a thousand crimes." Remember how we limit the application of other parables.The lord, it will be recollected, commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely.His shrewdness was held up as an example, but after all he was a miserable swindler, and deserved the state-prison as much as many of our financial operators.

The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is a perpetual warning against spiritual pride.But it must not frighten any one of us out of being thankful that he is not, like this or that neighbor, under bondage to strong drink or opium, that he is not an Erie-Railroad Manager, and that his head rests in virtuous calm on his own pillow.

If he prays in the morning to be kept out of temptation as well as for his daily bread, shall he not return thanks at night that he has not fallen into sin as well as that his stomach has been filled? Ido not think the poor Pharisee has ever had fair play, and I am afraid a good many people sin with the comforting, half-latent intention of smiting their breasts afterwards and repeating the prayer of the Publican.

(Sensation.)

This little movement which I have thus indicated seemed to give the Master new confidence in his audience.He turned over several pages until he came to a part of the interleaved volume where we could all see he had written in a passage of new matter in red ink as of special interest.

--I told you, he said, in Latin, and I repeat it in English, that Ihave freed my soul in these pages,--I have spoken my mind.I have read you a few extracts, most of them of rather slight texture, and some of them, you perhaps thought, whimsical.But I meant, if Ithought you were in the right mood for listening to it, to read you some paragraphs which give in small compass the pith, the marrow, of all that my experience has taught me.Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.I took it early, as we all do, and have treated it all along with the best palliatives I could get hold of, inasmuch as I could find no radical cure for its evils, and have so far managed to keep pretty comfortable under it.

It is a great thing for a man to put the whole meaning of his life into a few paragraphs, if he does it so that others can make anything out of it.If he conveys his wisdom after the fashion of the old alchemists, he may as well let it alone.He must talk in very plain words, and that is what I have done.You want to know what a certain number of scores of years have taught me that I think best worth telling.If I had half a dozen square inches of paper, and one penful of ink, and five minutes to use them in for the instruction of those who come after me, what should I put down in writing? That is the question.

Perhaps I should be wiser if I refused to attempt any such brief statement of the most valuable lesson that life has taught me.I am by no means sure that I had not better draw my pen through the page that holds the quintessence of my vital experiences, and leave those who wish to know what it is to distil to themselves from my many printed pages.But I have excited your curiosity, and I see that you are impatient to hear what the wisdom, or the folly, it may be, of a life shows for, when it is crowded into a few lines as the fragrance of a gardenful of roses is concentrated in a few drops of perfume.

--By this time I confess I was myself a little excited.What was he going to tell us? The Young Astronomer looked upon him with an eye as clear and steady and brilliant as the evening star, but I could see that he too was a little nervous, wondering what would come next.

The old Master adjusted his large round spectacles, and began:

--It has cost me fifty years to find my place in the Order of Things.

I had explored all the sciences; I had studied the literature of all ages; I had travelled in many lands; I had learned how to follow the working of thought in men and of sentiment and instinct in women.Ihad examined for myself all the religions that could make out any claim for themselves.I had fasted and prayed with the monks of a lonely convent; I had mingled with the crowds that shouted glory at camp-meetings; I had listened to the threats of Calvinists and the promises of Universalists; I had been a devout attendant on a Jewish Synagogue; I was in correspondence with an intelligent Buddhist; and I met frequently with the inner circle of Rationalists, who believed in the persistence of Force, and the identity of alimentary substances with virtue, and were reconstructing the universe on this basis, with absolute exclusion of all Supernumeraries.In these pursuits I had passed the larger part of my half-century of existence, as yet with little satisfaction.It was on the morning of my fiftieth birthday that the solution of the great problem I had sought so long came to me as a simple formula, with a few grand but obvious inferences.I will repeat the substance of this final intuition:

The one central fact an the Order of Things which solves all questions is:

At this moment we were interrupted by a knock at the Master's door.