Section 22

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with the hypostases. It is a sad thing to find out, until it is fully found out, that the Providence of the Ignorant is dead ; more truly, that he never lived. This denies miracles. It denies everything but law. Providence being elsewhere than in law. Providence is without mercy. No special Providence exists upon earth. Law is one in its application everywhere and to every person. To do is to have. To leave undone is to lack. Not knowing how to do, or not having strength to do, fur- nishes no excuse to law ; the lacking one goes under ; this whether as to a poisoned child or as to a consump- tive widow stitching out the remnant of a life. What also finds no excuse, as * state of mind' is concerned, and this to its extent perhaps forever and forever, is for physician to hold back the opium from the poisoned child, or for Wealth to deny heed to the widow's need."
"Ah ! how we should sink to the earth in despair,'* interrupted my friend, " if you were not wrong just here ! Time that heals the broken bone effaces little by little the stains of offence, thus forever and forever restoring lost purity."
** Truly it is like the God, as the lesson lies with all nature," I agree.
"For all that," said the doctor, " how mean we are to keep on forever redirtying our faces and holding them up for fresh washing ! The stains of offence are not so much with doing as with not-doing. What are called the better classes seldom offend aggressively. It is not-doing that is offence. It is passing by on the other side. It is eating meat unmindful that another table is furnished only with leeks."
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'*But hoeing and having?" I queried.
**It is not easy," responded the doctor, **to know always just what is best to do. We are hardly to take our lesson from nature ; for nature, unmindful of sick or strong, serves those only who serve themselves. If we say that * Soul' is to be director, charity is found more often abused than made serviceable. One thing is sure, ' ' continued the Illuminate, "you cannot hold a man up that is without a backbone."
**It comes down to the fact," I suggested, "that a man stands upon his own feet or does not stand at all."
The thought passed to compensation, — thought about cripples, about the poor and outcast, about idiots, about differences between capitalist and laborer.
"The Now of an eternal now," I suggested, "is so inappreciable as to duration that it is lost as instantly as seized. Let the duration of matter in its relation with a human body be considered, and it is the same. What a man is as to body oiie moment, that is he strictly not as to any other moment : truly as to body, * once a girl, once a boy, a bird, a bush, a fish which swims the sea;' to-day a cripple, to-day poor and outcast, to- day an idiot; compensation is with another day; this in the law that forever and forever turns Zenith into Nadir and Nadir into Zenith. Matter is eternal in its round of correlation. It is never at a stand-still. The globe itself is a round that is continuous. A man upon whom the sun shines at mid day is carried by his globe to a midnight where he has no sun. On a morrow he is brought out of his darkness into light."
Everything is by turns down and up : water as the
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Stream, water as the cloud, gold as nugget, gold as ring, acorn as seed buried in the ground, acorn as tree waving in the free winds of the sky, man as body- put into a coffin, man as Ego finding ethereal life in a transmigration.
An eternal Now ! Doing ill and paying its price in suffering. Doing good and reaping its reward in re- joicing. Heaven and hell so entirely one as to loca- tion that the face is scorched by a hot blaze or fanned by a cool breeze as it happens to be turned. Suffering continuous or pleasure continuous; or these alternating. Continuous and alternating, and as well eternal, being neither strokes nor favors of the God, but strokes or favors done by men to themselves. Being one in meaning with an ever- existing stream, whose law allows of its use for irrigation or for drowning out.
" Perfect are the mercy and beauty of the God," said the doctor, as he started to go home. ** And of Provi- dence," he turned about to add.
It is not difficult to misunderstand a man like my friend. Yet alas that there are so few who have come to his appreciation of Providence ! His prayers reach from morning unto evening and into the night.
EXCURSIONS.
SWARTHMORE.— CHANGES AS TO THINGS AND
MEN.
Who that has found a laboratory for himself cares, or has occasion to consider, whether or not a man called Rosenkreuz ever existed ?
Whether or not, to be of the guild, one must be by nature a Rosicrucian ? Whether or not the putting on of a drab coat makes a Quaker ?
Whether it is possible, or, if possible, desirable, to court the alembic and to court something else at the same time? Whether it is well or profitable that a person live two lives at once ? Whether it is in accord with demands which belong to the day for men to recognize over-closely that making to themselves riches is necessarily increasing in poverty ? Or, that waning to poverty may mean waxing to wealth ?
Whether or not others besides Rosicrucians are
prepared to apprehend the paradox of getting camels through eyes of needles ?
Swarthmore a Spiritus Sanctus ; — its peacefulness and restfulnessj its most Quakerly of Quaker meeting- houses; its imposing college dedicated to learning.
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SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
On the one hand absolute nature and simplicity; on the other that which is represented in the vapor of crucibles and by the analyses of philosophers; — all and everything about appealing to and exciting the Rosi- crucian instinct. God ! I think to myself, why does a man, once here, not stay forever ?
■ Yet, on still another hand, life, as it is, and its
duties. Remembrance, as a doctor is concerned, of sick men and women lying in hospitals ; the knowledge that by-ways and alleys are filled with people who are not Rosicrucian, and who do not, and perhaps cannot, understand.
Here at Swarthmore, the remove of a few miles only from the whirl and strife and contentions of a great city ; here the associations which invite to meditation and to speculation ; here rolling fields of grass and grain and luscious fruits ; here clouds breaking the glare of a summer mid-day sun; here clouds gathering and lifting moisture out of damp places, flowing rain over dry spots. Evidence here of the mighty capability con- ferred on mortals. To the right of the meeting- house, upon the stone entrance-step of which at this moment I sit writing, a great seat of learning, its massive walls surmounted by aspiring domes. Imme- diately in front an observatory holding a sweeping glass which shows around and beyond the stars. Down somewhat lower the contrasting station of a railroad : winding tracks, swift-moving trains, busy men and women being carried hither and thither.
Evidence, too, of a deliciousness living with nature. Right at the door of tlie meeting-house, a step only to the left, a clump made up of chestnut, oak, hick-
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ory, firs, with an odd mixture of cherry-trees. The floor of the clump berries of the wild rose, flowers of golden -rod and cheerful aster, long unmown grass. Among the leaves music singing an seolian song, soft and soothing as the old stone meeting-house proves restful and religious. From among the golden-rod and asters and red berries the voices of crickets and katydids. Upon a great swing two jacketless college boys, one in a white shirt, the other in checkered blue, faces ruddy brown, limbs lithe and agile, throats full and running over with laughter, the boys swaying back and forth, now touching with outstretched feet limbs just under the sky, now sweeping the asters and grass and red berries j boys fresh and vital in hearts and muscles and nerves and bones.
. . . Moved after a little while to another place ; Crura Creek lying for the moment in a deadness of stillness, the face of the water flecked with fallen leaves, the yellow faces of which tell of the nearness to August of autumn. Here a prostrate tree-trunk, mouldering and getting back into the universal. Chestnut burs grown a year ago, dried hemlock leaves breaking at a touch, withered ferns dropped over upon the moss beds ; a squirrel here, dead and fallen into a crevice of a great rock. Across the stream a triangle of meadow, and above this a hill-side bordered by hand-planted trees. Among the trees a high frame and the symmetrical blades of a windmill, telling further of man and of his conveniences. . . . Red leaves being dropped by sapless twigs. . . . Still song after song, sung by the grasshoppers, the katydids, and the crickets.
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Suddenly a quick wind coming from somewhere
I
beyond the brow of the hill ; acting as lash to the still water; driving the stream and the yellow-faced leaves; frightening and stilling the grasshoppers, the katydids, and the crickets ; twirling and casting to the ground dead limbs of old jungle; bringing pattering drops, which beat for a moment a tattoo upon the green pro- tecting roof overhead, and then speed in hurry under the arches of a near bridge.
Chaste and restful Swarthmore ! Beautiful
Swarthmore, seat of Quaker felicity ! Surely, saith the heart, " Here hath peace taken up her abiding-place." The Rosicrucian saith, "Here is Spiritus Sanctus."
. . . Spiritus Sanctus ! found as well among swamps and brushlands of Jersey; found in silent valleys lying between great mountains; found where tempestuous waves thud ceaselessly the sand and the rock ; found as one wanders reflectively along a railroad track; found as upon the lapstone is beaten the leather ; found as a reader scans the proof of authors ; found as the farmer sows seed or gathers the harvest ; found as an old woman knits stockings or where decrepit men hobble on crutches ; found amongst illumined clouds ; found down in the blackness of coal-mines, — being within and yet without, being without and yet within.
Changes as to Things and Men.* Not so far away from Swarthmore but that an hour spent upon a car carries to where the Brandywine and Christiana mingle their streams, stands a rough stone church,
* See page 192. Also see Utopia, in " Odd Hours of a Physician."
SWARTHMORE.
227
little changed externally from what it was as left by its builders two hundred and nine years back. A retreat, this, for a truant school-boy whose delight was in watching willow-strippers and speculating on ghosts rather than on Latin verbs and the matters of fact of physics. A sanctuary now for an old man devoted to meditation, to retrospection and introspection.
How many the returns made after forty years to the lanes of the willow-strippers and the place of the ghosts, — lanes, alas ! no longer ; streets now, the willow fagots replaced by cobble-stones, the hawthorn hedges by brick-fronted houses.
To-day, old in years and in the world's experiences, I am back in the graveyard. I look with saddened spirit and listless eye on hot streets that have taken the place of cool lanes. Improvements ! the new citizens exclaim energetically and enthusiastically. Perhaps ! — The new citizens ! What as to the old ones ? Walking through the town, for nothing of the village remains, I see only unfamiliar signs and faces. New names ! New faces ! There is large increase in the grave-stones. I see ! I see ! Tired out, or driven out, my familiars have removed.
Forty years are more than a generation ; how
easy to overlook this when one reckons his own years as a score beyond forty ! — Or is it that a generation of years makes understandable that there are no genera- tions, but that so-called end is one with beginning, — one end reached, beginning to a new end entered upon?
The same old wall; not quite so good, how- ever, as in the boy days. Along the east side, sepa-
228 SPIRITUS SANCTUS.
rating ship-yard and church, the track of the railroad
travelled over half a century back. No sight of
remains of old Fort Christiana existing in the other days, nor of a moat in which the boy sailed his minia- ture ships. In place of fort and moat a black and
sooty mill. Cinders and ashes where in the old time
were grazing cows and leaning willows. — —Streets on all sides of the graveyard now. Strange anomaly ! these crowding and pushing for passage ; streets and people and horses and carts held in check by scat- tered handsful of motionless dust.
The archways of the church covered with ivy
vines, recognized by the gnarled trunks as being the acquaintances of fifty years back. The quaint cupola ; the same covering of cedar shingles, nailed in place so long, so very long ago, — shingles lasting their pur- pose so much better than a multitude of bodies lying beneath.
The grave-digger interrupting his work to con- gratulate himself on the easy spading of mould made up of decomposed human bones, muscles, and brains.
Here a look into the interior of the church
through the little panes of a window. A memorial window in old European style seen opposite. This is unfamiliar ; an addition, however, well placed. Other changes felt as a loss. A board floor where in the olden days were rows of broad-faced slabs bearing strange-sounding Swedish names. Cold these marbles, no doubt, to the feet of modern worshippers ; colder to a returned child of the soil this floor which has the seeming meaning of a final shutting out.
Little alteration in the pulpit j the same circu-
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lar, steep steps ; the same round sounding-board \ the same door leading into the chancel j pews, however, in place of the familiar benches.
The bell tolls : old bell ! old acquaintance !
this the same old bell that called to the boy when the vaults were to be opened. Some old trees, too ! Trees, good trees, — alike we are not to stand the heat and the sleet and the blowings and the freezings much longer !
But what a multitude of graves we have alike
seen opened and filled ! How I have slept in your shade and you have fanned me ! How I have climbed into your highest limbs and you have pointed out the distant valleys and streams ! How we are life-long friends, even though at one time years passed without a meeting ! How, old trees, I love you, and now kiss you!
This a Jack-in-the-pulpit growing out of a well- remembered grave. Preach me, occupier of a pulpit from whom to expect a lesson is a right ! Tell of the spirit of the old friend out of whose body you grow, — if, indeed, you know anything more than he whose root is not yet in a grave. How well the name and the person are remembered ! A grand eulogy this borne by his marble ! There must have been some rich friend to rear such a stone. It was a derisive saying of the villagers that the man held the penny so near his eye as not to be able to see the dollar in the distance. — Wiser I now think him than his critics. Pennies satisfied him. His life was serenely slipshod.
You direct attention to the mound across the
path. You are right ! the occupant was indeed rich, powerful, — and a brute. I recall him fully : an old,
20
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gray-haired, tottering man. It was here, was it, that he tumbled finally? Let me, preacher, of myself question. How was it, brute ? How was it when the passions were replaced by compelled quiet existing in a palsy that came to you ? How was it when were not to be remedied helplessness and hopelessness arising out of indiscretions ? Before your body got into the grave, what was seen of the meaning of these mis- takes? or did you drop into the pit without under- standing of who and what dug the hole? I lay a sheet of paper, man, upon your slab. Here, ready, is pen filled with ink. Is there aught to say to a sinner like yourself in the way of consolation or extenuation, or — warning? anything but that a "dead past is to bury its dead" ?
Wonderful ! wonderful ! You have been here
summer after summer, preacher. How deep was the body buried ? Your earth must be porous, that I find so much of this man gotten out of the ground into myself!
"Turn to the other path," you say. Sadly
pleasing indeed. Copy what is graven, pen. "John Stephens," — whoever he was, or is.
" Delusive life, adieu, with all thy train Of folly, labor, care, regret, and pain ; Existence but an animated clod. Death sinks the frame and mounts the soul to God."