Chapter 18

In the summer of that same year, while the wheat in the Manchester fields was still green, and the maize had attained but half its growth, while the ox-eyed daisies still stood a happy crowd in the unmown meadows, and pink and yellow orchids blazed in unfrequented dells, the preacher Finney, after long absence, chanced to be again travelling on the Palmyra road. As was his habit, he sought entertainment at the house of Deacon Croom in New Manchester.

The preacher remembered always that his citizenship was in heaven. From the thought he drew great nourishment of peace and hope, but as far as his earthly affairs were concerned the outlook was at present grievous.

He was returning from a long and dreary religious convention held in an eastern town, where one, Mr. Lyman Beecher, had stirred up against him the foremost divines of New York and Boston. They had asserted that Finney's doctrine, that the Spirit of God could suddenly turn men from following evil to pursuing good, was false and pernicious; that his method stirred up the people to unholy excitements which were productive of great evil. Now the accusations of these divines (who, thinking that a man's change of mind must needs be so slow a thing, some of them, gray-haired, had not as yet produced this change in a single sinner) were in many points wholly false, in many exaggerated, and where the article of truth remained in the accusation there was much to be said in defence of work that had resulted, if in some evil, certainly in much palpable good. To such groups of priests and soldiers and publicans as came forth to John's baptism of repentance, the godly Finney, travelling now east and now west, had appealed, and that the wide land was the better for the crying of his voice no candid person who knew the result of his labours could deny. He that had two coats had imparted to him that had none; the extortioner had returned his unfair gains, and some rough men had become gentle. But in the assembly from which Finney had just come the larger numbers and the greater power of rhetoric had been on that side which appeared to show least faith in God and least zeal for men, and Finney had come out from the combat bruised in spirit.

Some natural comfort the weary man experienced from the sweet charm of the summer afternoon, from anticipation of the welcome and sympathy which would soon be his. He heard, but could not see, the Canandaigua water as it ran under its canopy of willows, over whose foliage the light wind passed in silver waves. On the height of the hill above the mill-dam he turned his horse into the yard of the Croom homestead. The stalwart deacon in overalls, his excitable, slender wife, her cap-strings flying, came forth, the one from the barn, the other from her bake-house.

It was not to either of these worthy souls that Finney intended first to confide the story of his glimpse of Susannah. It said much for the sterling truth of this man's soul that, accustomed as he was to demand from himself and others public confession of those experiences most private to the individual soul, he had not lost delicacy of feeling or reverence for individual privacy in human relationships. He had not been at this house since the month after Susannah's departure, when excitement and wrath still raged concerning her. He judged that in the hearts of the older members the wound had healed, leaving only the healthy scar that such sorrows leave in busy lives. He knew, too, that in Ephraim's heart the blade of this grief had cut deeper.

The supper over, the full moon already gilding the last hour of the summer daylight, Ephraim donned his hat to take the solitary evening stroll to which he had become accustomed. He thought to leave the trio who were in complete accord of sentiment to talk longer over the persecution which Finney endured, but on the little brick path between the flower-beds the evangelist came up with him.

Ephraim was but half pleased. It was in this brief evening hour that he set his thoughts free, like children at playtime. Like other students forced to live in invalidish habits, he had established a rule of thought more strict than men of active callings need. At certain hours he would study his country's social, political needs; at others he would help in his father's farm management; at others he would study some exact science. But when the measured hours of his day were over, and before he lit his student's lamp, for a while he turned his fancies loose, and they ran all too surely to play about Susannah's charms, about the circumstances of her life. This was not his happiest hour. The eternal advantage of love was lost for the time in its present distress. Hateful thoughts were the results of this self-indulgence, yet he hated more anything that came as interruption. During these years the lover in him had not grown what the world calls wise.

For some minutes Finney, controlling the briskness of his ordinary pace, walked by Ephraim's side and contented himself with the gracious scene, passing remarks upon weather and crops. Soon, for the value of time always pressed upon him, his business-like voice took a softened tone, and he began preaching a heart-felt sermon to his one listener.

The subject of the sermon was "the fire God gave for other ends," and he ventured to point out to Ephraim, in his plain, logical way, that it was wrong to waste on a woman that devotion which God intends only himself.

Ephraim smiled; it was a good-tempered, buoyant smile. "Did it ever occur to you, Finney, to reflect that, with your opinions, had you been the Creator, you would never have made the world as it is made? What time would you ever have thought it worth while to spend in developing the iridescence on a beetle's wing, in adjusting man's soul till it responds with storm or calm, gloom or glory, to outer influence, as the surface of the ocean to weather?"

Finney was puzzled, as he always was, by Ephraim's _bonhomie_ and his strange ideas. "But what have you to advance against what I have already said, Ephraim?"

"Advance? I advance nothing. I even withdraw my painted insects and the storms of emotion by which I had perhaps thought that God did his best teaching; I withdraw also my exaltation of that strait gate of use without abuse for the making of which I had almost said Heaven hands us the most dangerous things. I withdraw all that offends you, Finney, in order to thank you for having spoken her name. No one else has spoken it in my hearing since they knew of my last parting with her, and I--I am fool enough half the days to wish the clouds in their thunder-claps would name her."

The voice of the whip-poor-will complained over the tops of the woodland in near and far cadence through the warm moonlit air. Beside this and the throb of insect voices there was no sound. "I came out this evening," said Finney, "to tell you that last March in Ohio I saw _her_." His voice fell at the pronoun in sympathetic sorrow.

"Yes?"

"When I was about to return from Cincinnati I was advised to go northward to the Erie Canal, in order that I might pass through that part of the State which has been sorely infected by the cancer of that hypocrite's teaching."

There was no need in the district of Manchester for Finney to explain what hypocrite he meant. In his own country Smith was commonly held to be the arch-hypocrite.

"The devil has surely espoused that cause in earnest, for the number of deluded souls in that part of Ohio and in southern Missouri, and scattered as missionaries up and down the country, is, I hear, between three and four thousand."

"And always among those who worship the letter of the Scripture," remarked Ephraim, "for their missionaries give chapter and verse for all they teach."

"I was told that their customs were peculiarly evil. Even among themselves they lie and steal and are violent and licentious; and they teach openly that it is a merit to steal from the Gentiles, as they call those not of themselves; and, furthermore, they aim at nothing less than setting up a government of their own in the west."

"Who told you all this?"

"I am sorry to say that I had it on good authority. Some of the western brethren had it from a poor fellow who had been deluded into entering the Mormon community, and had barely escaped with his life when he desired to withdraw."

"Would you consider a pervert from your own sect the best witness of its tenets? But you say that you saw my cousin?"

Finney told what had led him to the village of Hiram, and said, "When I spoke of the sins of the Mormons, a young woman seated near the front of the congregation rose up. It was your cousin. I saw at once by the pallor of her face that the Lord was having direct dealing with her soul. The 'power' was indeed very great; a strong man fell as dead near her, who before the night was over gave testimony of sound conversion. After he and your cousin had been led out, many others in different parts of the building cried to God for mercy. When the sermon was over I sought for your cousin, but when I told who she was, the people of the place said that no doubt Mormon messengers had come while she was waiting, and forced her to depart. That night there was a disturbance in the place; some of the more hot-headed men had the leaders out, and tarred and feathered them--a dastardly deed! I have been threatened myself with being rid on a rail and tarred when the devil stirred up the people against my preaching, but the Lord mercifully preserved me. 'Tis a shameful practice, but I hear it was done to these men to intimidate them from the more violent crimes which they had conspired to commit. In the morning I was forced to go, as I was advertised to preach at many stations farther on, or I would have denounced the violence from the pulpit. I could not find out anything more concerning your cousin, but the Lord has never allowed me to doubt that the many prayers which we have offered on her behalf were answered that night, for I could see by the expression of her face that she, like those upon the day of Pentecost, was cut to the heart."

At the garden gate, under the boughs of the quince-tree, which had increased its branches since the day in which Susannah had last passed under them, Ephraim now stood in the moonlight, barring the entrance. At length with a sigh he said, "Alas! Finney, I believe that there are few souls under heaven more true and more worthy than your own; but as for the power of God, 'His way is in the sea and his path in the great waters, but his footsteps are not known.'"

Out of his breast Ephraim took a thin leather book, and from out of the book gave Finney a letter much worn with reading.

Finney took the letter reverently, and read it by the light of his bedroom candle. In those days letters were more formally written; this one from Susannah to Ephraim began with wishes concerning her aunt and uncle and the prosperity of the household. The fine flowing writing filled the large sheet.

"I write to you, my dear cousin, rather than to my aunt, to whom I fear my letter would not be acceptable, for although I can say that I regret my wilfulness and the manner of my disobedience, still I can never regret that, having been forced to choose, I threw in my lot with those who can suffer wrong rather than with those who have it in their hearts to inflict wrong, for if there be a God--ah, Ephraim, this is another reason why I address you, for I am in sore doubt concerning the knowledge of God, as to whether any knowledge is possible. My husband, who denies me nothing, has allowed me to send for some of your books whose names I remembered. I thought at first to write to you about them, but I distrust now my own understanding too much to venture. I would like you to know that they have helped me somewhat, for I do not now say to myself in hard, tearless fashion that I know there is no God, to which thought I was driven by the reflection that most of those who seek him most diligently sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

"But the more immediate occasion of this letter is to tell you that a month since Mr. Finney held a meeting not far from us. I went, thinking to gain some help from him, and to hear news of you, but I was greatly disappointed, and made very angry. He preached as my husband and many of our elders preach, and there were among the crowd the same signs of excitement and peculiar manifestations that we have constantly among us. But toward the end of his sermon Mr. Finney spoke of my husband's Church, and he lent the weight of his influence to very evil slanders that are constantly repeated about us by those who have not sought to know the truth. He did us great injury by stirring up the roughest of the people to violence. Mr. Finney will, I suppose, visit you and repeat those lies, which no doubt he believes, but is most culpable in believing, because he has not investigated the scandal against us as he would have investigated scandal against any who are orthodox. I write now to tell you that that which he says is not true. For although there are a few criminals amongst us, as in every community, evil is not taught or condoned."

As Finney read this letter by his lonely candle he was so far stirred by what he deemed the merely human side of the incident as to say to himself, "Poor Ephraim! She has never even known that he loved her." But next day, in speaking to Ephraim, he pointed out that in the worst communities there were always pure-minded women who knew little or nothing of the evil around them, and said he believed that his message would still be the means of bringing home the truth to Susannah's heart.