LETTER III.

MY DEAR A----: In the note in which you kindly acknowledge my former communications you say that, whatever Christianity may be to me, you cannot see it as I do; its excellences, as they appear to my mind, do not impress you at all, and as long as they do not you cannot be expected to accept it. I admit the conclusion: you cannot receive as good and true what does not seem to be so. But does it follow that a thing is not good and true because you do not see it? The question still comes, Is the cause in the thing or in you?

You remember the Beethoven concert we once attended together in B----? To you it was an occasion of exquisite enjoyment; to me it was nothing. The difference was not in the music: it was in us. You have a musical taste; I have not. I tried--not very sincerely, perhaps--to persuade you that there was nothing beautiful in it; you smiled, but attempted no argument. You were wise. You knew the music was beautiful, for you had experienced it; you had felt its power. If I chose to deny it because I had not felt it, so it must be; you could only pity me.

Now, is it not possible that there may be something like this in religion? May it not be a reality--a supreme reality--though you do not see it or feel it? May I not know it to be real because I have felt its power? And if there are thousands and tens of thousands as intelligent men and women as the world has ever seen who are as ready to testify that they have felt the power and experienced the reality of the Christian religion as you are to testify that you have felt the power and know the sweetness of music, are you wise to dismiss its claims because _you_ have not felt the force of them? You must see this. I leave it to your candor. Christianity may be true though you have not felt its truth. A cloud of witnesses stand ready to testify to you its truth from personal experience. They may not argue with you: multitudes of them could not argue with you; but, after all, they have a proof of the reality of their religion, of the power of Christ to satisfy and bless men, which no arguments in the world can shake. If all this were a new thing, or if the witnesses were only ignorant and superstitious men, you might well enough hesitate to receive the testimony; but when you reflect that it is the accumulated testimony of nearly nineteen centuries, that it comes from all countries and all classes, from the prince on the throne and the beggar at his gate, from the philosopher in his study and the sailor in the forecastle, from the statesman in the cabinet and the ploughman in the furrow, I submit it cannot with wisdom or reason be set aside. It is no answer to say that many great men and learned men and ploughmen can be brought who have had no such experience and give no such testimony. This is true, but it is one of the first laws of evidence that no amount of merely negative testimony can overthrow the explicit evidence of honest, intelligent, trustworthy witnesses. Fifty men who did not see a murder could not set aside the clear testimony of two who did see it. Few of the race have ever seen the moons of Mars, or even of Jupiter; this does not disturb the witness of the few who have: the satellites are there.

I have just been reading--not for the first time--Peter Harvey's account of his visit, with Daniel Webster, to John Colby. You will find it in Harvey's _Reminiscences of Webster_; and if you have not read it, it is worth your reading. Colby had married Webster's oldest sister when Webster was a mere boy. It was in some respects a strange marriage. She was a godly, Christian woman, while Colby was a wild, reckless, ungodly man--"the wickedest man in the neighborhood," Webster believed, "as far as swearing and impiety went." He seems to have been the terror of Webster's boyhood. Singularly enough for New England, though a man of strong natural powers, he never learned to read till he was over eighty years of age. His wife died early, and the families drifted apart. Webster had not seen Colby for over forty years, but he heard that a great change had taken place with him, and he visited him to judge for himself. I should mar the story of the interview if I undertook to condense it. Let me give the essential parts of it in Mr. Harvey's own words. Long as it is, I think you would be sorry to have it shorter.

Webster and Harvey had driven to Andover, and were directed to Mr. Colby's house. "The door was open.... Sitting in the middle of the room was a striking figure who proved to be John Colby. He sat facing the door, in a very comfortably furnished farmhouse room, with a little table--or what perhaps would be called a light-stand--before him. Upon it was a large, old-fashioned Scott's Family Bible in very large print, and, of course, a heavy volume. It lay open, and he had evidently been reading it attentively. As we entered he took off his spectacles and laid them upon the page of the book, and looked up at us as we approached, Mr. Webster in front. He was a man, I should think, over six feet in height, and he retained in a wonderful degree his erect and manly form, although he was eighty-five or six years old. His frame was that of a once powerful, athletic man. His head was covered with very heavy, thick, bushy hair, and it was as white as wool, which added very much to the picturesqueness of his appearance. As I looked in at the door I thought I never saw a more striking figure. He straightened himself up, but said nothing till just as we appeared at the door, when he greeted us with--

"'Walk in, gentlemen.'

"Mr. Webster's first salutation was--

"'This is Mr. Colby--Mr. John Colby--is it not?'

"'That is my name, sir,' was the reply.

"'I suppose you don't know me?' said Mr. Webster.

"'No, sir, I don't know you; and I should like to know how you know me.'

"'I have seen you before, Mr. Colby,' replied Mr. Webster.

"'Seen me before!' said he; 'pray, when and where?'

"'Have you no recollection of me?' asked Mr. Webster.

"'No, sir, not the slightest;' and he looked by Mr. Webster toward me, as if trying to remember if he had seen me.

"Mr. Webster remarked,

"'I think you never saw this gentleman before, but you have seen me.'

"Colby put the question again,

"'When and where?'

"'You married my oldest sister,' replied Mr. Webster, calling her by name.

"'I married your oldest sister!' exclaimed Colby. 'Who are you?'

"'I am "little Dan,"' was the reply.

"It certainly would be impossible to describe the expression of wonder, astonishment and half incredulity that came over Colby's face.

"'_You_ Daniel Webster!' said he; and he started to rise from his chair. As he did so he stammered out some words of surprise. 'Is it possible that this is the little black lad that used to ride the horse to water? Well, I cannot realize it!'

"Mr. Webster approached him. They embraced each other, and both wept.

"'Is it possible,' said Mr. Colby, when the embarrassment of the first shock of recognition was past, 'that you have come up here to see me? Is this Daniel? Why! why!' said he, 'I cannot believe my senses. Now, sit down. I am glad--oh, I am so glad to see you, Daniel. I never expected to see you again. I don't know what to say. I am so glad that my life has been spared that I might see you. Why, Daniel, I read about you and hear about you in all ways. Sometimes some members of the family come and tell us about you, and the newspapers tell us a great deal about you, too. Your name seems to be constantly in the newspapers. They say that you are a great man--that you are a famous man--and you can't tell how delighted I am when I hear such things. But, Daniel, the time is short; you will not stay here long: I want to ask you one important question. You may be a _great_ man: are you a _good_ man? Are you a Christian man? Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? That is the only question that is worth asking or answering? Are you a Christian? You know, Daniel, what I have been: I have been one of the wickedest of men. Your poor sister, who is now in heaven, knows that. But the Spirit of Christ and of almighty God has come down and plucked me as a brand from the everlasting burning. I am here now, a monument to his grace. Oh, Daniel, I would not give what is contained within the covers of this book for all the honors that have been conferred upon men from the creation of the world until now. For what good would it do? It is all nothing, and less than nothing, if you are not a Christian, if you are not repentant. If you do not love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth, all your worldly honors will sink to utter nothingness. Are you a Christian? Do you love Christ? You have not answered me.'

"All this was said in the most earnest and even vehement manner.

"'John Colby,' replied Mr. Webster, 'you have asked me a very important question, and one which should not be answered lightly. I intend to give you an answer, and one that is truthful, or I will not give you any. I hope that I am a Christian. I profess to be a Christian. But, while I say that, I wish to add--and I say it with shame and confusion of face--that I am not such a Christian as I wish I were. I have lived in the world, surrounded by its honors and its temptations, and I am afraid, John Colby, that I am not so good a Christian as I ought to be. I am afraid I have not your faith and your hopes; but still I hope and trust that I am a Christian, and that the same grace which has converted you and made you an heir of salvation will do the same for me. I trust it, and I also trust, John Colby--and it will not be long before our summons will come--that we shall meet in a better world, and meet those who have gone before us whom we knew, and who trusted in that same divine free grace. It will not be long. You cannot tell, John Colby, how much delight it gave me to hear of your conversion. The hearing of that is what has led me here to-day. I came here to see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears the story from a man that I know and remember so well. What a wicked man you used to be!'

"'Oh, Daniel,' exclaimed John Colby, 'you don't remember how wicked I was, how ungrateful I was, how unthankful I was. I never thought of God; I never cared for God; I was worse than a heathen. Living in a Christian land with the light shining all around me and the blessings of Sabbath teachings everywhere about me, I was worse than a heathen until I was arrested by the grace of Christ and made to see my sinfulness and to hear the voice of my Saviour. Now I am only waiting to go home to him, and to meet your sainted sister, my poor wife. And I wish, Daniel, that you might be a prayerful Christian; and I trust you are. Daniel,' he added, with deep earnestness of voice, 'Will you pray with me?'

"We knelt down, and Mr. Webster offered a most touching prayer. As soon as he had pronounced the 'Amen,' Mr. Colby followed in a most pathetic, stirring appeal to God. He prayed for the family, for me and for everybody. Then we rose, and he seemed to feel a serene happiness in having thus joined his spirit with that of Mr. Webster in prayer....

"The brothers-in-law took an affectionate leave of each other, and we left. Mr. Webster could hardly restrain his tears. When we got into the wagon, he began to moralize:

"'I should like,' said he, 'to know what the enemies of religion would say to John Colby's conversion. There was a man as unlikely, humanly speaking, to become a Christian as any man I ever saw. He was reckless, heedless, impious--never attended church, never experienced the good influence of associating with religious people--and here he has been living on in that reckless way until he has got to be an old man, until a period of life when you naturally would not expect his habits to change, and yet he has been brought into the condition in which we have seen him to-day, a penitent, trusting, humble believer. Whatever people may say,' added Mr. Webster, 'nothing can convince me that anything short of the grace of almighty God could make such a change as I with my own eyes have witnessed in the life of John Colby.'"

Mr. Colby was eighty-four years old at the time of his conversion. At that age he learned to read for the single purpose of reading the Bible, and it was the only book he ever did read. He lived for three years after this, and to the end gave the clearest evidences of a change that to Mr. Webster's judicial mind could be explained only by the supposition of a divine interposition; it was a divine reality. The last intelligible words of the once terrible blasphemer were, "Jesus! glory!"

Changing the details, the experience of John Colby has been the experience of thousands upon thousands. And--I put it to you in all candor--is it all a lie? Was Webster--one of the grandest intellects of this or of any age--was he a fanatic or a fool to believe in the reality of the religion that John Colby had experienced? Was he a weakling to put his faith where John Colby had put his, and to trust that when the summons of both should come--as it soon did come--they might meet each other and those who had gone before them trusting in the same divine, free grace?

You may criticise the Bible, you may criticise Christians, but, after all, there is something in Christianity that cannot be explained away as a superstition or a delusion; there is something that cannot be dismissed by a scoff or with indifference. Somewhere and at some time it will have the final word, and it will be heard. I commend it to your honest and earnest judgment now. Try it; I ask no more. Settle the great questions that press on every heart as the Bible opens the way of settlement to you, and wait the issue. You can lose nothing; you may gain everything. The fact is as remarkable as it is familiar that no man in the last hour here--the hour, often, of supernal light--ever wanted to take back or to change his faith in the Man of Nazareth as the Son of God and the Saviour of men. When the shadows are melting in the great realities, and the mysteries of life are about to be finished and the verities of the future are to be proved, no man has yet been found to mourn that in the face of all difficulty and doubt and denial here he was a Christian. Can that, or anything approaching it, be said of any form of atheism or infidelity or unbelief?

As ever, yours, C----.