Such friends seem
inspired
by a divine gift of
prophecy,- like the mother of St.
prophecy,- like the mother of St.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v24 - Sta to Tal
” said Miss
Ophelia. «Your house is so full of these little plagues now, that
a body can't set down their foot without treading on 'em. I get
up in the morning, and find one asleep behind the door, and see
one black head poking out from under the table, one lying on
the door-mat; and they are mopping and mowing and grinning
between all the railings, and tumbling over the kitchen floor!
What on earth did you want to bring this one for ? »
“For you to educate, didn't I tell you? You're always preach-
ing about educating. I thought I would make you a present
of a fresh-caught specimen, and let you try your hand on her,
and bring her up in the way she should go. ”
"I don't want her, I am sure: I have more to do with 'em
now than I want to. ”
«That's you Christians, all over! You'll get up a society, and
get some poor missionary to spend all his days among just such
heathen; but let me see one of you that would take one into
your house with you, and take the labor of their conversion on
yourselves! No: when it comes to that, they are dirty and dis-
agreeable, and it's too much care, and so on.
"Augustine, you know I didn't think of it in that light,”
said Miss Ophelia, evidently softening. "Well, it might be a real
## p. 14092 (#282) ##########################################
14092
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
((
missionary work,” said she, looking rather more favorably on the
child.
St. Clare had touched the right string. Miss Ophelia's con-
scientiousness was ever on the alert.
But,” she added, "I really didn't see the need of buying this
one: there are enough now in your house to take all my time
and skill. ”
"Well, then, cousin,” said St. Clare, drawing her aside, «I
ought to beg your pardon for my good-for-nothing speeches.
You are so good, after all, that there's no sense in them. Why,
the fact is, this concern belonged to a couple of drunken creat-
ures that keep a low restaurant that I have to pass by every day;
and I was tired of hearing her screaming, and them beating and
swearing at her. She looked bright and funny too, as if some-
thing might be made of her; so I bought her, and I'll give her
to you. Try now, and give her a good orthodox New England
bringing-up, and see what it'll make of her. You know I haven't
any gift that way; but I'd like you to try. ”
“Well, I'll do what I can,” said Miss Ophelia; and she
approached her new subject very much as a person might be
supposed to approach a black spider, supposing them to have
benevolent designs toward it.
«She's dreadfully dirty, and half naked,” she said.
"Well, take her down-stairs, and make some of them clean
and clothe her up. ”
Miss Ophelia carried her to the kitchen regions.
« Don't see what Mas’r St. Clare wants of 'nother nigger! ”
said Dinah, surveying the new arrival with no friendly air.
“Won't have her round under my feet, I know! ”
« Pah! ” said Rosa and Jane, with supreme disgust: let her
keep out of our way! What in the world Mas'r wanted another
of these low niggers for, I can't see! ”
“You go 'long! No more nigger dan you be, Miss Rosa,”
said Dinah, who felt this last remark a reflection on herself.
« You seem to tink yourself white folks. You ain't nerry one,
black nor white. I'd like to be one or turrer. ”
Miss Ophelia saw that there was nobody in the camp that
would undertake to oversee the cleansing and dressing of the new
arrival; and so she was forced to do it herself, with some very
ungracious and reluctant assistance from Jane.
>>>
## p. 14093 (#283) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14093
It is not for ears polite to hear the particulars of the
first toilet of a neglected, abused child. In fact, in this world,
multitudes 'must live and die in a state that it would be too
great a shock to the nerves of their fellow-mortals even to hear
described.
Miss Ophelia had a good, strong, practical deal of resolution:
and she went through all the disgusting details with heroic thor-
oughness, though it must be confessed, with no very gracious
air; for endurance was the utmost to which her principles could
bring her. When she saw, on the back and shoulders of the
child, great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable marks of the
system under which she had grown up thus far, her heart became
pitiful within her.
“ «See there! ” said Jane, pointing to the marks," don't that
show she's a limb ? We'll have fine works with her, I reckon. I
hate these nigger young-uns! so disgusting! I wonder that Mas'r
would buy her! ”
The “young-un ” alluded to heard all these comments with
the subdued and doleful air which seemed habitual to her; only
scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes,
the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears. When arrayed at
last in a suit of decent and whole clothing, her hair cropped
short to her head, Miss Ophelia, with some satisfaction, said she
looked more Christian-like than she did ; and in her own mind
began to mature some plans for her instruction.
Sitting down before her, she began to question her.
“How old are you, Topsy ? ”
« Dunno, Missis,” said the image, with a grin that showed all
her teeth.
« Don't know how old you are ? Didn't anybody ever tell
you? Who was your mother ? ”
“Never had none! ” said the child with another grin.
"Never had any mother ? What do you mean? Where were
»
you born ? »
“Never was born! ” persisted Topsy, with another grin, that
looked so goblin-like that if Miss Ophelia had been at all nerv-
ous, she might have fancied that she had got hold of some
sooty gnome from the land of Diablerie; but Miss Ophelia was
not nervous, but plain and business-like, and she said with some
sternness:
## p. 14094 (#284) ##########################################
14094
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
with you.
(
»
>>
»
(C
« You mustn't answer me in that way, child. I'm not playing
Tell me where you were born, and who your father
and mother were. ”
“Never was born,” reiterated the creature, more emphatically;
“never had no father nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by
a speculator, with lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take
car' on us. ”
The child was evidently sincere; and Jane, breaking into a
short laugh, said: -
“ Laws, Missis, there's heaps of 'em. Speculators buys 'em up
cheap, when they's little, and gets 'em raised for market. ”
“How long have you lived with your master and mistress ? »
"Dunno, Missis. ”
"Is it a year, or more, or less ?
“Dunno, Missis. "
« "Laws, Missis, those low negroes — they can't tell: they don't
know anything about time,” said Jane; "they don't know what
a year is; they don't know their own ages. '
“ Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy ? ”
The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual.
“Do you know who made you ? ”
“Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child with a short laugh.
The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes
twinkled, and she added:
"I spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me. ”
"Do you know how to sew ? ” said Miss Ophelia, who thought
she would turn her inquiries to something more tangible.
“No, Missis. ”
“What can you do? what did you do for your master and
mistress ? »
“Fetch water, and wash dishes, and rub knives, and wait on
folks. ”
« Were they good to you? ”
"Spect they was," said the child, scanning Miss Ophelia cun-
ningly.
Miss Ophelia rose from this encouraging colloquy; St. Clare
was leaning over the back of her chair.
« You find virgin soil there, cousin: put in your own ideas;
you won't find many to pull up. ”
»
(c
## p. 14095 (#285) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14095
On one occasion, Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very
best scarlet India Canton crape shawl wound around her head for
a turban, going on with her rehearsals before the glass in great
style: Miss Ophelia having, with carelessness most unheard-of in
her, left the key for once in her drawer.
"Topsy! ” she would say, when at the end of all patience,
« what does make you act so ? ”
"Dunno, Missis: I spects 'cause I's so wicked! ”
« I don't know anything what I shall do with you, Topsy. ”
« Law, Missis, you must whip me; my old Missis allers
whipped me. I ain't used to workin' unless I gets whipped. ”
“Why, Topsy, I don't want to whip you. You can do well,
if you've a mind to: what is the reason you won't ? ”
“Law, Missis, I's used to whippin': I spects it's good for
me. »
Miss Ophelia tried the recipe, and Topsy invariably made a
terrible commotion, screaming, groaning, and imploring; though
half an hour afterwards, when roosted on some projection of the
balcony, and surrounded by a flock of admiring young-uns," she
would express the utmost contempt of the whole affair.
« Law, Miss Feely whip! Wouldn't kill a skeeter, her whip-
pin's. Oughter see how old Mas'r made de flesh fly: old Mas'r
know'd how !
Topsy always made great capital of her own sins and enor-
mities, evidently considering them as something peculiarly distin-
guishing
"Law, you niggers,” she would say, to some of her auditors,
« does you know you's all sinners? Well, you is, - everybody is.
White folks is sinners too,- Miss Feely says so: but I spects nig-
,
gers is the biggest ones; but lor! ye ain't any on ye up to me.
I's so awful wicked there can't nobody do nothin' with me. I
used to keep old Missis a-swarin' at me half de time. I spects
I'se de wickedest crittur in de world;” and Topsy would cut a
summerset, and come up brisk and shining on to a higher perch,
and evidently plume herself on the distinction.
## p. 14096 (#286) ##########################################
14096
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
AARON BURR AND MARY
From The Minister's Wooing)
W
HEN, with his peculiarly engaging smile, he [Burr] offered
his arm, she felt a little of the flutter natural to a mod-
est young person unexpectedly honored with the notice
of one of the great ones of the earth, whom it is seldom the lot
of humble individuals to know except by distant report.
But although Mary was a blushing and sensitive person, she
was not what is commonly called a diffident girl: her nerves had
that healthy, steady poise which gave her presence of mind in
the most unwonted circumstances,
The first few sentences addressed to her by her new compan-
ion were in a tone and style altogether different from any in
which she had ever been approached, - different from the dash-
ing frankness of her sailor lover, and from the rustic gallantry
of her other admirers.
That indescribable mixture of ease and deference, guided by
refined tact, which shows the practiced, high-bred man of the
world, made its impression on her immediately, as a breeze on
the cords of a wind-harp. She felt herself pleasantly swayed and
breathed upon; it was as if an atmosphere were around her in
which she felt a perfect ease and freedom, an assurance that her
lightest word might launch forth safely, as a tiny boat, on the
smooth, glassy mirror of her listener's pleased attention.
"I came to Newport only on a visit of business,” he said,
I
after a few moments of introductory conversation. « I was not
prepared for its many attractions. ”
“Newport has a great deal of beautiful scenery,” said Mary.
“I have heard that it was celebrated for the beauty of its
scenery, and of its ladies," he answered; but,” he added, with
a quick flash of his dark eye, "I never realized the fact before. ”
The glance of the eye pointed and limited the compliment,
and at the same time there was a wary shrewdness in it: he was
measuring how deep his shaft had sunk, as he always instinct-
ively measured the person he talked with.
Mary had been told of her beauty since her childhood,
notwithstanding her mother had essayed all that transparent,
respectable hoaxing by which discreet mothers endeavor to blind
their daughters to the real facts of such cases: but in her own
calm, balanced mind, she had accepted what she was so often
(
## p. 14097 (#287) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14097
told, as a quiet verity; and therefore she neither fluttered nor
,
blushed on this occasion, but regarded the speaker with a pleased
attention, as one who was saying obliging things.
“Cool! ” he thought to himself; “hum! a little rustic belle, I
suppose, - well aware of her own value; rather piquant, on my
word!
“Shall we walk in the garden ? ” he said: “the evening is so
beautiful. ”
They passed out of the door and began promenading the
long walk. At the bottom of the alley he stopped, and turning,
looked up the vista of box ending in the brilliantly lighted rooms
where gentlemen with powdered heads, lace rufties, and glitter-
ing knee-buckles were handing ladies in stiff brocades, whose
towering heads were shaded by ostrich feathers and sparkling
with gems.
«
»
(
"Quite court-like, on my word! ” he said. “Tell me, do you
often have such brilliant entertainments as this ? »
"I suppose they do,” said Mary. “I never was at one before,
but I sometimes hear of them. ”
"And you do not attend ? ” said the gentleman, with an accent
which made the inquiry a marked compliment.
“No, I do not,” said Mary: “these people generally do not
visit us. ”
“What a pity," he said, "that their parties should want such
an ornament! But,” he added, "this night must make them
aware of their oversight; if you are not always in society after
this, it will surely not be for want of solicitation. ”
"You are very kind to think so," replied Mary; "but even if
it were to be so, I should not see my way clear to be often in
such scenes as this. ”
Her companion looked at her with a glance a little doubtful
and amused, and said, "And pray why not? if the inquiry be not
too presumptuous. ”
"Because,” said Mary, "I should be afraid they would take
too much time and thought, and lead me to forget the great
object of life. ”
The simple gravity with which this was said, as if quite as-
sured of the sympathy of her auditor, appeared to give him a
secret amusement. His bright, dark eyes danced, as if he sup-
pressed some quick repartee; but drooping his long lashes def.
erentially, he said in gentle tones, "I should like to know what
so beautiful a young lady considers the great object of life. ”
XXIV-882
## p. 14098 (#288) ##########################################
14098
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
C
>>
on
Mary answered reverentially, in those words then familiar
from infancy to every Puritan child, “To glorify God, and enjoy
him forever. ”
"Really? ” he said, looking straight into her eyes with that
penetrating glance with which he was accustomed to take the
gauge of every one with whom he conversed.
"Is it not ? ” said Mary, looking back, calm and firm, into the
sparkling, restless depths of his eyes.
At that moment, two souls, going with the whole force of
their being in opposite directions, looked out of their windows at
each other with a fixed and earnest recognition.
Burr was practiced in every art of gallantry; he had made
womankind a study; he never saw a beautiful face and form
without a sort of restless desire to experiment upon it and try
his power over the interior inhabitant: but just at this moment,
something streamed into his soul from those blue, earnest eyes,
which brought back to his mind what pious people had so often
told him of his mother, the beautiful and early-sainted Esther
Burr.
He was
one of those persons who systematically man-
aged and played upon himself and others, as a skillful musician
an instrument. Yet one secret of his fascination was the
naïveté with which, at certain moments, he would abandon him-
self to some little impulse of a nature originally sensitive and
tender. Had the strain of feeling which now awoke in him come
over him elsewhere, he would have shut down some spring in
his mind and excluded it in a moment: but talking with a beau-
tiful creature whom he wished to please, he gave way at once
to the emotion; real tears stood in his fine eyes, and he raised
Mary's hand to his lips and kissed it, saying:-
“Thank you, my beautiful child, for so good a thought. It is
truly a noble sentiment, though practicable only to those gifted
with angelic natures. ”
“Oh, I trust not,” said Mary, earnestly touched and wrought
upon, more than she herself knew, by the beautiful eyes, the
modulated voice, the charm of manner, which seemed to enfold
her like an Italian summer.
Burr sighed, - a real sigh of his better nature, but passed out
with all the more freedom that he felt it would interest his fair
companion, who, for the time being, was the one woman of the
world to him.
« Pure and artless souls like yours,” he said, cannot measure
the temptations of those who are called to the real battle of life
»
## p. 14099 (#289) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14099
»
in a world like this. How many nobler aspirations fall withered
in the fierce heat and struggle of the conflict! ”
He was saying then what he really felt, often bitterly felt,-
but using this real feeling advisedly, and with skillful tact, for the
purpose of the hour.
What was this purpose? To win the regard, the esteem, the
tenderness of a religious, exalted nature shrined in a beautiful
form; to gain and hold ascendency. It was a lifelong habit;
one of those forms of refined self-indulgence which he pursued,
thoughtless and reckless of consequences. He had found now
the keynote of the character: it was a beautiful instrument, and
he was well pleased to play on it.
“I think, sir,” said Mary, modestly, "that you forget the
great provision made for our weakness. ”
“How? ” he said.
«They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, she
replied gently.
He looked at her as she spoke these words, with a pleased,
artistic perception of the contrast between her worldly attire and
the simple, religious earnestness of her words.
“She is entrancing! ” he thought to himself; "so altogether
fresh and naïve ! »
“My sweet saint,” he said, “such as you are the appointed
guardians of us coarser beings. The prayers of souls given up
to worldliness and ambition effect little. You must intercede
for us.
I am very orthodox, you see,” he added with that subtle
smile which sometimes irradiated his features. "I am fully aware
of all that your reverend doctor tells you of the worthlessness of
unregenerate doings; and so when I see angels walking below, I
try to secure a friend at court. » »
He saw that Mary looked embarrassed and pained at this
banter, and therefore added with a delicate shading of earnest-
(
»
ness:
-
“In truth, my fair young friend, I hope you will sometimes
pray for me. I am sure, if I have any chance of good, it will
come in such a way. ”
"Indeed I will,” said Mary fervently,- her little heart full,
tears in her eyes, her breathcoming quick,- and she added
with a deepening color, “I am sure, Mr. Burr, that there should
be a covenant blessing for you if for any one, for you are the
son of a holy ancestry. ”
## p. 14100 (#290) ##########################################
14100
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
A SPIRITUAL LOVE
From "The Minister's Wooing)
W"
HAT Mary loved so passionately, that which came between
her and God in every prayer, was not the gay young
dashing sailor,- sudden in anger, imprudent of speech,
and though generous in heart, yet worldly in plans and schem-
ings, – but her own ideal of a grand and noble man; such a man
as she thought he might become. He stood glorified before her:
an image of the strength that overcomes things physical, of the
power of command which controls men and circumstances, of the
courage which disdains fear, of the honor which cannot lie, of
constancy which knows no shadow of turning, of tenderness which
protects the weak, and lastly, of religious loyalty which should
lay the golden crown of its perfected manhood at the feet of a
Sovereign Lord and Redeemer. This was the man she loved,
and with this regal mantle of glories she invested the person
called James Marvyn; and all that she saw and felt to be want-
ing she prayed for with the faith of a believing woman.
Nor was she wrong; for as to every leaf and every flower
there is an ideal to which the growth of the plant is constantly
urging, so is there an ideal to every human being, - a perfect
form in which it might appear, were every defect removed and
every characteristic excellence stimulated to the highest point.
Once in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in
us not a false imagining, an unreal character, but looking through
all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal
of our nature,- loves, not the man that we are, but the angel
that we may be.
Such friends seem inspired by a divine gift of
prophecy,- like the mother of St. Augustine, who, in the midst
of the wayward, reckless youth of her son, beheld him in a vision,
standing, clothed in white, a ministering priest at the right hand
of God; as he has stood for long ages since. Could the mysteri-
ous foresight unveil to us this resurrection form of the friends
with whom we daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity,
we should follow them with faith and reverence through all the
disguises of human faults and weaknesses, waiting for the mani-
festation of the sons of God. ”
## p. 14101 (#291) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14101
MISS PRISSY TAKES CANDACE'S COUNSEL
From The Minister's Wooing)
C
(C
ANDACE sat on a fragment of granite bowlder which lay there,
her black face relieved against a clump of yellow mulleins,
then in majestic altitude. On her lap was spread a checked
pocket-handkerchief, containing rich slices of cheese and a store of
her favorite brown doughnuts.
“Now, Miss Prissy,” she said, “dar's reason in all tings, an'a
good deal more in some tings dan dar is in oders. Dar's a good
deal more reason in two young, handsome folks comin' togeder
dan dar is in ” — Candace finished the sentence by an emphatic
flourish of her doughnut. “Now as long as eberybody thought
Jim Marvyn was dead, dar wa'n't nothin' else in de world
to be done but marry de doctor. But good lan’! I hearn him
a-talkin' to Miss Marvyn las' night: it kinder 'mos' broke my
heart. Why, dem two poor creeturs, dey's jest as onhappy 's dey
can be!
An' she's got too much feelin' for de doctor to say a
word; and I say he oughter to be told on 't! dat's what I say,”
said Candace, giving a decisive bite to her doughnut.
“I say so too,” said Miss Prissy. “Why, I never had such
bad feelings in my life as I did yesterday, when that young man
came down to our house. He was just as pale as a cloth. I
tried to say a word to Miss Scudder, but she snapped me up so!
She's an awful decided woman when her mind's made up.
telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel, - she came round me this noon,-
that it didn't exactly seem to me right that things should go on
as they are going. And says I, Cerinthy Ann, I don't know
anything what to do. ' And says she, “If I was you, I know
what I'd do,— I'd tell the doctor,' says she. “Nobody ever takes
offense at anything you do, Miss Prissy. ' To be sure,” added
Miss Prissy, "I have talked to people about a good many things
that it's rather strange I should; 'cause I ain't one, somehow,
that can let things go that seem to want doing. I always told
folks that I should spoil a novel before it got half-way through
the first volume, by blurting out some of those things that they
let go trailing on so, till everybody gets so mixed up they don't
know what they're doing. ”
“Well, now, honey,” said Candace authoritatively, “ef you's
got any notions o’ dat kind, I tink it mus' come from de good
I was
(
## p. 14102 (#292) ##########################################
14102
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
You jes'
Lord, an' I 'dvise you to be 'tendin' to 't right away.
go 'long an' tell de doctor yourself all you know, an' den le's see
what 'll come on 't. I tell you, I b’liebe it'll be one o' de bes'
day's works you eber did in your life! ”
« Well," said Miss Prissy, "I guess to-night, before I go to
bed, I'll make a dive at him. When a thing's once out, it's out,
and can 't be got in again, even if people don't like it; and that's
a mercy, anyhow. It really makes me feel 'most wicked to think
of it, for he is the most blessedest man!
«Dat's what he is,” said Candace. “But de blessedest man in
de world oughter know de truth: dat's what I tink! ”
« Yes -- true enough! ” said Miss Prissy. “I'll tell him, any-
(
>>
»
way! ”
(
riences.
-
Miss Prissy was as good as her word; for that evening, when
the doctor had retired to his study, she took her life in her
hand, and walking swiftly as a cat, tapped rather timidly at the
study-door, which the doctor opening, said benignantly:-
"Ah, Miss Prissy! »
“If you please, sir,” said Miss Prissy, “I'd like a little con-
versation. ”
The doctor was well enough used to such requests from the
female members of his church, which generally were the pre-
lude to some disclosures of internal difficulties or spiritual expe-
He therefore graciously motioned her to a chair.
“I thought I must come in,” she began, busily twirling a bit
of her Sunday gown. "I thought — that is-I felt it my duty -
I thought — perhaps — I ought to tell you — that perhaps you
ought to know - »
The doctor looked civilly concerned. He did not know but
Miss Prissy's wits were taking leave of her. He replied, how-
ever, with his usual honest stateliness:-
"I trust, dear madam, that you will feel at perfect freedom to
open to me any exercises of mind that you may have. ”
“It isn't about myself,” said Miss Prissy. “If you please, it's
about you and Mary! ”
The doctor now looked awake in right earnest, and very much
astonished besides; and he looked eagerly at Miss Prissy, to have
her go on.
"I don't know how you would view such a matter," said Miss
Prissy; but the fact is that James Marvyn and Mary always did
love each other, ever since they were children. ”
## p. 14103 (#293) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14103
Still the doctor was unawakened to the real meaning of the
words, and he answered simply:-
“I should be far from wishing to interfere with so very nat-
ural and universal a sentiment, which I make no doubt is all
quite as it should be. ”
“No-but-” said Miss Prissy, "you don't understand what I
mean. I mean that James Marvyn wanted to marry Mary, and
that she was — well- she wasn't engaged to him, but — »
"Madam! ” said the doctor, in a voice that frightened Miss
Prissy out of her chair, while a blaze like sheet-lightning shot
from his eyes, and his face flushed crimson.
« Mercy on us! Doctor, I hope you'll excuse me; but there -
the fact is — I've said it out — the fact is, they wa’n’t engaged:
but that Mary loved him ever since he was a boy, as she
never will and never can love any man again in this world, is
what I am just as sure of as that I'm standing here; and I've
felt you ought to know it, 'cause I'm quite sure that if he'd
been alive, she'd never given the promise she has — the promise
that she means to keep, if her heart breaks and his too. The'
wouldn't anybody tell you, and I thought I must tell you; 'cause
I thought you'd know what was right to do about it. ”
During all this latter speech the Doctor was standing with
his back to Miss Prissy, and his face to the window, just as he
did some time before, when Mrs. Scudder came to tell him of
Mary's consent. He made a gesture backward, without speaking,
that she should leave the apartment: and Miss Prissy left, with
a guilty kind of feeling as if she had been striking a knife into
her pastor; and rushing distractedly across the entry into Mary's
little bedroom, she bolted the door, threw herself on the bed,
and began to cry.
Well, I've done it ! ” she said to herself.
strong, hearty man,” she soliloquized, “so I hope it won't put
him in a consumption: men do go into a consumption about
such things sometimes. I remember Abner Seaforth did; but
then he was always narrow-chested, and had the liver com-
plaint or something. I don't know what Miss Scudder will say;
- but I've done it. Poor man! such a good man, too! I declare,
I feel just like Herod taking off John the Baptist's head. Well,
well! it's done, and can't be helped. ”
Just at this moment Miss Prissy heard a gentle tap at the
door, and started as if it had been a ghost, — not being able to
« He's a very
## p. 14104 (#294) ##########################################
14104
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
rid herself of the impression that somehow she had committed a
great crime, for which retribution was knocking at the door.
It was Mary, who said in her sweetest and most natural
tones, Miss Prissy, the doctor would like to see you. "
Mary was much astonished at the frightened, discomposed
manner with which Miss Prissy received this announcement, and
said:
“I'm afraid I've waked you up out of sleep.
I don't think
there's the least hurry. ”
Miss Prissy didn't, either: but she reflected afterwards that
she might as well get through with it at once; and therefore
smoothing her tumbled cap-border, she went to the doctor's study.
This time he was quite composed, and received her with a mourn-
ful gravity, and requested her to be seated.
"I beg, madam,” he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of
my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for
the communication you had to make, that I was perhaps unsuit-
ably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were
requested by any of the parties to communicate to me what you
did ? »
"No, sir,” said Miss Prissy.
" Have any of the parties ever communicated with you on the
subject at all ? ” said the doctor.
“No, sir,” said Miss Prissy.
“That is all," said the doctor. « I will not detain you.
very much obliged to you, madam. ”
He rose, and opened the door for her to pass out; and Miss
Prissy, overawed by the stately gravity of his manner, went out
in silence.
»
I am
THE MINISTER'S SACRIFICE
From "The Minister's Wooing)
W"
HEN Miss Prissy left the room, the doctor sat down by the
table and covered his face with his hands. He had a
large, passionate, determined nature; and he had just
come to one of those cruel crises in life in which it is apt to
seem to us that the whole force of our being, all that we can
hope, wish, feel, enjoy, has been suffered to gather itself into
## p. 14105 (#295) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14105
one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable
fate, and go back, moaning, into emptiness.
In such hours men and women have cursed God and life,
and thrown violently down and trampled under their feet what
yet was left of life's blessings, in the fierce bitterness of despair.
« This, or nothing! ” the soul shrieks in her frenzy. At just such
points as these, men have plunged into intemperance and wild
excess; they have gone to be shot down in battle; they have
broken life and thrown it away like an empty goblet, and gone
like wailing ghosts out into the dread unknown.
The possibility of all this lay in that heart which had just
received that stunning blow. Exercised and disciplined as he had
been by years of sacrifice, by constant, unsleeping self-vigilance,
there was rising there in that great heart an ocean tempest of
passion; and for a while his cries unto God seemed as empty
and as vague as the screams of birds tossed and buffeted in the
clouds of mighty tempests.
The will that he thought wholly subdued seemed to rise under
him as a rebellious giant. A few hours before, he thought himself
established in an invincible submission to God's will that nothing
could shake. Now he looked into himself as into a seething vor-
tex of rebellion; and against all the passionate cries of his lower
nature, could, in the language of an old saint, cling to God only
by the naked force of his will. That will rested unmelted amid
the boiling sea of passion, waiting its hour of renewed sway. He
walked the room for hours; and then sat down to his Bible, and
roused once or twice to find his head leaning on its pages, and
his mind far gone in thoughts from which he woke with a bit-
ter throb. Then he determined to set himself to some definite
work; and taking his Concordance, began busily tracing out and
numbering all the proof-texts for one of the chapters of his
theological system,- till at last he worked himself down to such
calmness that he could pray: and then he schooled and reasoned
with himself, in a style not unlike, in its spirit, to that in which
a great modern author has addressed suffering humanity:-
“What is it that thou art fretting and self-tormenting about?
Is it because thou art not happy? Who told thee that thou wast
to be happy? Is there any ordinance of the universe that thou
shouldst be happy? Art thou nothing but a vulture screaming
for prey ? Canst thou not do without happiness? Yea, thou canst
do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness. ”
## p. 14106 (#296) ##########################################
14106
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
The doctor came lastly to the conclusion that blessedness,
which was all the portion his Master had on earth, might for
him also; and therefore he kissed and blessed that silver dove of
happiness which he saw was weary of sailing in his clumsy old
ark, and let it go out of his hand without a tear.
He slept little that night: but when he came to breakfast,
all noticed an unusual gentleness and benignity of manner; and
Mary, she knew not why, saw tears rising in his eyes when he
looked at her.
## p. 14107 (#297) ##########################################
14107
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
(1808–1874)
Tay
was
a
HE German renaissance, which had its beginnings in that
great literary movement of which Goethe was the central
Ce figure, was destined to express itself at a later period in an
output of philosophical and religious thought almost without parallel
in its comprehensiveness and in its subtlety. Like other manifesta-
tions of intellectual and spiritual vigor, it was not without its nega-
tive and destructive principle: a principle which found, perhaps, its
most significant expression in the life and work of David Friedrich
Strauss,- a man modern only in the let-
ter of what he performed; in the spirit a
dogmatist of almost mediæval intensity and
narrowness.
He was born at Ludwigsburg, near Stutt-
gart, January 27th, 1808. His father, al-
though a tailor by trade, devoted much of
his time to literary pursuits; his mother
woman of strong common-sense,
whose piety was of an extremely practical
character. The son inherited his father's
taste for books, his mother's distaste of
mysticism. Being designed for the church,
he was sent in his thirteenth year to an D. F. STRAUSS
evangelical seminary at Blaubeuren near
Ulm, to study theology. Two of his teachers there, Professors Kern
and F. C. Baur, were to have a deep influence upon his life. There
also he met Christian Märklin, a student whose biography he was
afterwards to write. Four years later, in 1825, he entered the Uni-
versity of Tübingen; but finding in the curriculum little nourish-
ment, he sought satisfaction for his needs in Schelling's pantheistic
philosophy, and in the writings of the romanticists, Jacob Böhme,
and others.
In 1826 Professors Baur and Kern came to the University, resum-
ing the intellectual oversight of their former pupils, Strauss and
Märklin. Baur introduced Strauss to the works of Schleiermacher,
whose mystical conception of religion, as having its roots in the
emotional life, was for a time attractive to the future author of the
## p. 14108 (#298) ##########################################
14108
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
'Leben Jesu,' drawing him away from the influence of the rational
philosophy of Kant and the pantheism of Schelling. But he was not
to remain long a disciple of Schleiermacher. His own temperament,
as well as outside forces, was drawing him to the consideration of
the overwhelming Hegelian philosophy. In the last year at Tübingen
he read Hegel's Phänomenologie,' - strong meat even for a Ger-
inan youth to digest. Hegel, in direct opposition to Schleiermacher,
sought the roots of religion in thought, not feeling: his conception of
Begriff and Vorstellung, of Notion and Representation, the Absolute,
and the finite presentation of the Absolute, was to exert a tremendous
influence upon Strauss; leading him at last to the inquiry embodied
in the Life of Jesus,' how much of dogmatic religion is but the
shadowing forth, the vorstellung, of great underlying truths.
He was not at once, however, to apply the Hegelian philosophy
to the doctrines of the Christian religion. In 1830 he passed his
examination with honor, becoming soon after assistant to a country
clergyman; but a man of his restless and eager intellect could not
long remain in the quiet atmosphere of a country parish. In 1831
he resigned his pastorate, to study under Schleiermacher and Hegel
in the University of Berlin. The latter dying suddenly, shortly after
Strauss's coming to Berlin, he removed to Tübingen, where he be-
came a repetent or assistant professor, lecturing upon logic, history
of philosophy, and history of ethics. In 1833 he resigned this position
to devote himself to writing the 'Life of Jesus. ' In 1834 the first
volume, and in 1835 the second volume, was published.
In the Life of Jesus,' Strauss attempted to apply the Hegelian
philosophy to the dogmatic system of the Christian religion: or
rather, influenced by the Hegelian principle that the Absolute is
expressed in finite terms, he attempted to show that the miraculous
elements in the life of Jesus were ideally but not historically true;
that the immaculate conception, the transfiguration, the resurrection,
the ascension into heaven, were symbols of profound truth, myths
created out of the Messianic hopes of the followers of Christ. This
mythical theory was directly in the face of the theory of the deists,
that the miraculous events in Christ's life were proof of the fallibility
of the evangelists; and in the face of the theory of the rationalists,
that those events were capable of natural explanation. The mythical
theory of Strauss was not original with him. It had been applied to
certain parts of the Old Testament by Eichhorn, Bauer, and others;
in the secular domain, it was being applied by Niebuhr to early
Roman history, and by Wolff to the Homeric poems: but no
before Strauss had applied it to the four Gospels thoroughly and
exhaustively,- thoroughly and exhaustively, however, only in so far
that Strauss never lost sight of his theory for one moment, bending
one
## p. 14109 (#299) ##########################################
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
14109
everything to its shape. Of the critical study of the gospels in the
modern sense Strauss knew little,— his dogmatic temper being impa-
tient of the restraints of scholarship; added to that, a certain irrev-
erence of temperament prevented him not only from appreciation of
the essential in Christianity, but by a kind of paradox, from arriving
at anything like scientific truth. He disproved everything but proved
nothing. The Jesus of Strauss's Life is not even a historical per-
sonage like the Jesus of Renan's Life); but a faint shadow, just
discerned through dead mists of theory. The great work was to
have but a negative mission: it prepared the way by its blankness
for positive scholarship, for positive criticism; it is the reflection of
the colorless mood of one standing between two worlds, without the
spiritual insight necessary to understand that between the old order
and the new there must be an organic link, else both will perish.
The replies to the Leben Jesu,' by Neander, Ullmann, Schweizer,
and others, led to a reply from Strauss in 1837. In 1839 a third edi-
tion of the work appeared, in which concessions were made to the
critics, to be withdrawn in the edition of 1840, of which George Eliot
made an English translation. In the same year Christliche Glaubens-
lehre,' a history of Christian doctrines in their disintegration, ap-
peared. Strauss meanwhile had been elected to the chair of theology
in the University of Zurich, but the opposition this appointment
aroused led to its annulment. In 1842 he married Agnes Schebest,
an opera singer, with whom he lived until their separation in 1847,
and who bore him three children. In 1847 he published a satire, in
which he drew a parallel between Julian the Apostate and Frederick
William IV. of Prussia. In 1848 he was nominated a member of the
Frankfort Parliament, but was defeated; was elected to the Würtem-
berg Chamber, but his constituents asked him to resign because of his
conservative action.
In 1849 he began to publish those biographies which contribute
most directly to his literary fame. The Life of Schubart) was fol-
lowed by the Life of Christian Märklin,' in 1851; the Life of
Frischlin, in 1855; and the Life of Ulrich von Hutten,' 1858-60. In
1862 appeared the Life of Reimarus'; in 1877, A Life of Jesus for
the German People,' — in substance much like the former Life. '
Previous to its publication, “The Christ of Dogma and the Jesus of
History' had appeared in 1865. In 1872 Strauss took up his residence
at Darmstadt, where he made the acquaintance of the Princess Alice
and the Crown Princess of Germany, who befriended him, and before
whom he lectured on Voltaire. In 1870 these lectures were pub-
lished; in the same year occurred his correspondence with Renan on
the subject of the Franco-Prussian War,-a correspondence which led
to the severing of their friendship.
## p. 14110 (#300) ##########################################
14110
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
a
In 1872 appeared (The Old Faith and the New. It is this work
rather than the Life of Jesus, which is a monument of destructive
criticism; although it is less scholarly and more superficial, written
with a certain indifference, as if even once stimulating subject
had become wearisome. The book is without light or heat. Its
author had drifted away from all philosophy, whether of Hegel or
Schelling or Schleiermacher; had cast anchor in a port of No-man's-
land. To his intellect at least, God and the soul of man had become
unreal. Yet he was perhaps not wholly satisfied with the aridity of
his choice. The last picture of him is of an old man in hired lodg-
ings, reading in the days before his death the Phædo' of Plato.
He died in February 1874.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF GRÆCO-ROMAN CULTIVATION
From (A New Life of Jesus)
IM
N OPPOSITION to the religious tendency of the Jewish people, all
the efforts of the Greeks were applied to the perfecting of the
really human element in man. This position does not, speak-
ing generally, require any proof; as in the politics and morals, in
the poetry and fine arts, of that people, it lies before us as a rec-
ognized fact. But in their religion it shows itself in the resem-
blance of the Greek gods to men. The Indian, the Egyptian, the
Assyrian, did not shape their divinities in purely human form.
And the cause of this was not merely deficiency in artistic skill
and taste, but above all, the fact that these nations did not con-
ceive of their gods as being simply human. Whether the Greek
obtained his divinities in part from abroad, or from native prede-
cessors, the peculiar change which he as a Greek in every
instance set about making, is this: that he converted the original
natural symbolism into a relation of human life; made them,
instead of types of cosmical powers, representatives of the powers
of the human mind and social institutions; and in connection
with this, approximated their outward form more completely to
the human.
Now, a piety which produced human ideals in god-like forms
- in those of an Apollo, an Athene, a Zeus - stands indisputably
higher than that which had not divested its divinities externally
of the form of beasts, and internally of the wild creating or de.
stroying power of nature; but the human element in the Greek
gods had, - corresponding to its original natural signification, as
## p. 14111 (#301) ##########################################
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
14111
-
well as to the state of the cultivation of the popular mind at the
time when these imaginations were realized in form,- together
with its moral side, so strongly marked a sensual side, that as
soon as the moral ideas were enlightened, offense could not fail
to be taken at the cruelties of a Kronos, the adulteries of a Zeus,
the pilferings of a Hermes, etc. Hence the poets of the later
period endeavored to give a moral coloring to the myths that
offended them: but there were individual philosophers of an earlier
time - above all Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school —
who rejected the unworthy and in general human conceptions of
the gods, as they were represented by Homer and Hesiod; and
as is well known, it was on this ground that Plato banished
Homer from his ideal republic. But even independently of this
moral stumbling-block, the plurality of gods was soon discovered
to be irreconcilable with the idea of the Divine nature; which, as
the most perfect possible and the supreme cause of everything,
could be only one and indivisible: and thus, among educated
Greeks, we see Polytheism continually more and more displaced
by the conception of Monotheism, or at all events reconciled with
it by a stricter subordination of separate divinities to one supreme
God. Thus in this respect the Greek gradually raised himself
to the point of view on which the Hebrew stood from the first;
and in so far as the former had attained to his conception of the
one God by the philosophical method, that conception, in its later
contact with Jewish Monotheism, might be of special service to
the latter in the way of purifying it from many anthropomorphic
features which still clung to it in the writings of the Old Testa-
ment.
But in all this the Greek formed his conceptions of man, his
nature and his duties, far in advance of those ideal gods in
Homer; and in a manner that never would have been possible
on Jewish soil. "Humanitarianism,” says Welcker, “could never
have issued from Hebrew supranaturalism; for in proportion
as the apprehension is earnest and exalted, must the authority
and the law of the one God and Lord suppress that human
religious freedom out of which all power and cheerfulness is
derived in the best and noblest form. ” It was precisely because
the Divinity did not confront the Greek in the form of a
commanding law, that the Greek was compelled to be a law
to himself; because he did not like the Jew, see his whole
life ordered for him, step by step, by religious ordinance, he was
»
## p. 14112 (#302) ##########################################
14112
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
(
compelled to seek for a moral rule within his own mind. That
this was
a difficult problem, that the way to the solution of
it led over dangerous ground, we see by the corruption of
morals which broke in over the Greek nation after the most
brilliant and flourishing age, by the arbitrary manner in which
the contemporary Sophists confounded all moral notions. To
them, according to the maxim of Protagoras, man was the meas-
ure of all things: nothing was naturally good or bad, but only
by reason of an arbitrary rule of men, to which the individual
need not bind himself; but as the authors of those rules estab-
lished them for their own advantage, it was open to the indi-
vidual to call good and put in practice whatever was agreeable
or useful to himself. The art of justifying such conduct argu-
mentatively, of shaking the foundations of all existing principles
in religion and morals, of strengthening the weaker cause," —
i. e. , of making right of wrong,- was taught and published by
the Sophists; but in point of fact, all that they did was to put
into a methodical form what all the world around them was prac-
ticing already.
It is well known how this moral license among the people of
Greece, and the sophistical palliation of it, was resisted by Socra-
tes. He could not, like a Hebrew prophet, refer to a written law
of God,-- which indeed in the case of his fellow-countrymen,
long before moved to religious skepticism, would have done
no good; like the opponents, therefore, whom he endeavored
to combat, he kept to man: to him too, in a certain sense, man
was the measure of all things; but not man in so far as he
follows his own caprice or pleasure, but in so far as he seeks in
earnest to know himself, and by well-regulated thought to come
to an understanding with himself as to what contributes to his
own true happiness. He who acts upon such true knowledge
will on all occasions act right; and this right conduct will ever
make man happy: this was the condensed substance of the moral
system of Socrates, for the establishment of which he required
no divine command; although he delivered very pure notions
respecting the nature of God, in the sense of the reconciliation
alluded to above of the national Polytheism with a rational
Monotheism. That Socrates delivered these doctrines not scholas.
tically in an exclusive circle, but publicly and as it were socially;
that moreover, as an exalted example, he at the same time
practiced what he taught, in his own life and conduct; that
## p. 14113 (#303) ##########################################
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
14113
lastly he became a martyr to his convictions, - to his efforts,
misunderstood by the mass of his fellow-citizens, for spiritual
and moral elevation, - all this gives him a resemblance to Christ
which has always been observed: in fact, notwithstanding the
wide difference occasioned by the opposition between the systems
of the nations and the religions on both sides, there is not in the
whole of antiquity previous to Christianity, that of the Hebrews
not excepted, any figure to be found so closely resembling Christ
as that of Socrates.
After Socrates, no Greek did more to raise the tone of Greek
cultivation to a point at which it might come into contact with
the religion of the Hebrews, consequently towards the prepara-
tion for Christianity, than his disciple Plato. According to him,
Ideas constituted all that was true in things; i. e.
Ophelia. «Your house is so full of these little plagues now, that
a body can't set down their foot without treading on 'em. I get
up in the morning, and find one asleep behind the door, and see
one black head poking out from under the table, one lying on
the door-mat; and they are mopping and mowing and grinning
between all the railings, and tumbling over the kitchen floor!
What on earth did you want to bring this one for ? »
“For you to educate, didn't I tell you? You're always preach-
ing about educating. I thought I would make you a present
of a fresh-caught specimen, and let you try your hand on her,
and bring her up in the way she should go. ”
"I don't want her, I am sure: I have more to do with 'em
now than I want to. ”
«That's you Christians, all over! You'll get up a society, and
get some poor missionary to spend all his days among just such
heathen; but let me see one of you that would take one into
your house with you, and take the labor of their conversion on
yourselves! No: when it comes to that, they are dirty and dis-
agreeable, and it's too much care, and so on.
"Augustine, you know I didn't think of it in that light,”
said Miss Ophelia, evidently softening. "Well, it might be a real
## p. 14092 (#282) ##########################################
14092
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
((
missionary work,” said she, looking rather more favorably on the
child.
St. Clare had touched the right string. Miss Ophelia's con-
scientiousness was ever on the alert.
But,” she added, "I really didn't see the need of buying this
one: there are enough now in your house to take all my time
and skill. ”
"Well, then, cousin,” said St. Clare, drawing her aside, «I
ought to beg your pardon for my good-for-nothing speeches.
You are so good, after all, that there's no sense in them. Why,
the fact is, this concern belonged to a couple of drunken creat-
ures that keep a low restaurant that I have to pass by every day;
and I was tired of hearing her screaming, and them beating and
swearing at her. She looked bright and funny too, as if some-
thing might be made of her; so I bought her, and I'll give her
to you. Try now, and give her a good orthodox New England
bringing-up, and see what it'll make of her. You know I haven't
any gift that way; but I'd like you to try. ”
“Well, I'll do what I can,” said Miss Ophelia; and she
approached her new subject very much as a person might be
supposed to approach a black spider, supposing them to have
benevolent designs toward it.
«She's dreadfully dirty, and half naked,” she said.
"Well, take her down-stairs, and make some of them clean
and clothe her up. ”
Miss Ophelia carried her to the kitchen regions.
« Don't see what Mas’r St. Clare wants of 'nother nigger! ”
said Dinah, surveying the new arrival with no friendly air.
“Won't have her round under my feet, I know! ”
« Pah! ” said Rosa and Jane, with supreme disgust: let her
keep out of our way! What in the world Mas'r wanted another
of these low niggers for, I can't see! ”
“You go 'long! No more nigger dan you be, Miss Rosa,”
said Dinah, who felt this last remark a reflection on herself.
« You seem to tink yourself white folks. You ain't nerry one,
black nor white. I'd like to be one or turrer. ”
Miss Ophelia saw that there was nobody in the camp that
would undertake to oversee the cleansing and dressing of the new
arrival; and so she was forced to do it herself, with some very
ungracious and reluctant assistance from Jane.
>>>
## p. 14093 (#283) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14093
It is not for ears polite to hear the particulars of the
first toilet of a neglected, abused child. In fact, in this world,
multitudes 'must live and die in a state that it would be too
great a shock to the nerves of their fellow-mortals even to hear
described.
Miss Ophelia had a good, strong, practical deal of resolution:
and she went through all the disgusting details with heroic thor-
oughness, though it must be confessed, with no very gracious
air; for endurance was the utmost to which her principles could
bring her. When she saw, on the back and shoulders of the
child, great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable marks of the
system under which she had grown up thus far, her heart became
pitiful within her.
“ «See there! ” said Jane, pointing to the marks," don't that
show she's a limb ? We'll have fine works with her, I reckon. I
hate these nigger young-uns! so disgusting! I wonder that Mas'r
would buy her! ”
The “young-un ” alluded to heard all these comments with
the subdued and doleful air which seemed habitual to her; only
scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes,
the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears. When arrayed at
last in a suit of decent and whole clothing, her hair cropped
short to her head, Miss Ophelia, with some satisfaction, said she
looked more Christian-like than she did ; and in her own mind
began to mature some plans for her instruction.
Sitting down before her, she began to question her.
“How old are you, Topsy ? ”
« Dunno, Missis,” said the image, with a grin that showed all
her teeth.
« Don't know how old you are ? Didn't anybody ever tell
you? Who was your mother ? ”
“Never had none! ” said the child with another grin.
"Never had any mother ? What do you mean? Where were
»
you born ? »
“Never was born! ” persisted Topsy, with another grin, that
looked so goblin-like that if Miss Ophelia had been at all nerv-
ous, she might have fancied that she had got hold of some
sooty gnome from the land of Diablerie; but Miss Ophelia was
not nervous, but plain and business-like, and she said with some
sternness:
## p. 14094 (#284) ##########################################
14094
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
with you.
(
»
>>
»
(C
« You mustn't answer me in that way, child. I'm not playing
Tell me where you were born, and who your father
and mother were. ”
“Never was born,” reiterated the creature, more emphatically;
“never had no father nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by
a speculator, with lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take
car' on us. ”
The child was evidently sincere; and Jane, breaking into a
short laugh, said: -
“ Laws, Missis, there's heaps of 'em. Speculators buys 'em up
cheap, when they's little, and gets 'em raised for market. ”
“How long have you lived with your master and mistress ? »
"Dunno, Missis. ”
"Is it a year, or more, or less ?
“Dunno, Missis. "
« "Laws, Missis, those low negroes — they can't tell: they don't
know anything about time,” said Jane; "they don't know what
a year is; they don't know their own ages. '
“ Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy ? ”
The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual.
“Do you know who made you ? ”
“Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child with a short laugh.
The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes
twinkled, and she added:
"I spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me. ”
"Do you know how to sew ? ” said Miss Ophelia, who thought
she would turn her inquiries to something more tangible.
“No, Missis. ”
“What can you do? what did you do for your master and
mistress ? »
“Fetch water, and wash dishes, and rub knives, and wait on
folks. ”
« Were they good to you? ”
"Spect they was," said the child, scanning Miss Ophelia cun-
ningly.
Miss Ophelia rose from this encouraging colloquy; St. Clare
was leaning over the back of her chair.
« You find virgin soil there, cousin: put in your own ideas;
you won't find many to pull up. ”
»
(c
## p. 14095 (#285) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14095
On one occasion, Miss Ophelia found Topsy with her very
best scarlet India Canton crape shawl wound around her head for
a turban, going on with her rehearsals before the glass in great
style: Miss Ophelia having, with carelessness most unheard-of in
her, left the key for once in her drawer.
"Topsy! ” she would say, when at the end of all patience,
« what does make you act so ? ”
"Dunno, Missis: I spects 'cause I's so wicked! ”
« I don't know anything what I shall do with you, Topsy. ”
« Law, Missis, you must whip me; my old Missis allers
whipped me. I ain't used to workin' unless I gets whipped. ”
“Why, Topsy, I don't want to whip you. You can do well,
if you've a mind to: what is the reason you won't ? ”
“Law, Missis, I's used to whippin': I spects it's good for
me. »
Miss Ophelia tried the recipe, and Topsy invariably made a
terrible commotion, screaming, groaning, and imploring; though
half an hour afterwards, when roosted on some projection of the
balcony, and surrounded by a flock of admiring young-uns," she
would express the utmost contempt of the whole affair.
« Law, Miss Feely whip! Wouldn't kill a skeeter, her whip-
pin's. Oughter see how old Mas'r made de flesh fly: old Mas'r
know'd how !
Topsy always made great capital of her own sins and enor-
mities, evidently considering them as something peculiarly distin-
guishing
"Law, you niggers,” she would say, to some of her auditors,
« does you know you's all sinners? Well, you is, - everybody is.
White folks is sinners too,- Miss Feely says so: but I spects nig-
,
gers is the biggest ones; but lor! ye ain't any on ye up to me.
I's so awful wicked there can't nobody do nothin' with me. I
used to keep old Missis a-swarin' at me half de time. I spects
I'se de wickedest crittur in de world;” and Topsy would cut a
summerset, and come up brisk and shining on to a higher perch,
and evidently plume herself on the distinction.
## p. 14096 (#286) ##########################################
14096
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
AARON BURR AND MARY
From The Minister's Wooing)
W
HEN, with his peculiarly engaging smile, he [Burr] offered
his arm, she felt a little of the flutter natural to a mod-
est young person unexpectedly honored with the notice
of one of the great ones of the earth, whom it is seldom the lot
of humble individuals to know except by distant report.
But although Mary was a blushing and sensitive person, she
was not what is commonly called a diffident girl: her nerves had
that healthy, steady poise which gave her presence of mind in
the most unwonted circumstances,
The first few sentences addressed to her by her new compan-
ion were in a tone and style altogether different from any in
which she had ever been approached, - different from the dash-
ing frankness of her sailor lover, and from the rustic gallantry
of her other admirers.
That indescribable mixture of ease and deference, guided by
refined tact, which shows the practiced, high-bred man of the
world, made its impression on her immediately, as a breeze on
the cords of a wind-harp. She felt herself pleasantly swayed and
breathed upon; it was as if an atmosphere were around her in
which she felt a perfect ease and freedom, an assurance that her
lightest word might launch forth safely, as a tiny boat, on the
smooth, glassy mirror of her listener's pleased attention.
"I came to Newport only on a visit of business,” he said,
I
after a few moments of introductory conversation. « I was not
prepared for its many attractions. ”
“Newport has a great deal of beautiful scenery,” said Mary.
“I have heard that it was celebrated for the beauty of its
scenery, and of its ladies," he answered; but,” he added, with
a quick flash of his dark eye, "I never realized the fact before. ”
The glance of the eye pointed and limited the compliment,
and at the same time there was a wary shrewdness in it: he was
measuring how deep his shaft had sunk, as he always instinct-
ively measured the person he talked with.
Mary had been told of her beauty since her childhood,
notwithstanding her mother had essayed all that transparent,
respectable hoaxing by which discreet mothers endeavor to blind
their daughters to the real facts of such cases: but in her own
calm, balanced mind, she had accepted what she was so often
(
## p. 14097 (#287) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14097
told, as a quiet verity; and therefore she neither fluttered nor
,
blushed on this occasion, but regarded the speaker with a pleased
attention, as one who was saying obliging things.
“Cool! ” he thought to himself; “hum! a little rustic belle, I
suppose, - well aware of her own value; rather piquant, on my
word!
“Shall we walk in the garden ? ” he said: “the evening is so
beautiful. ”
They passed out of the door and began promenading the
long walk. At the bottom of the alley he stopped, and turning,
looked up the vista of box ending in the brilliantly lighted rooms
where gentlemen with powdered heads, lace rufties, and glitter-
ing knee-buckles were handing ladies in stiff brocades, whose
towering heads were shaded by ostrich feathers and sparkling
with gems.
«
»
(
"Quite court-like, on my word! ” he said. “Tell me, do you
often have such brilliant entertainments as this ? »
"I suppose they do,” said Mary. “I never was at one before,
but I sometimes hear of them. ”
"And you do not attend ? ” said the gentleman, with an accent
which made the inquiry a marked compliment.
“No, I do not,” said Mary: “these people generally do not
visit us. ”
“What a pity," he said, "that their parties should want such
an ornament! But,” he added, "this night must make them
aware of their oversight; if you are not always in society after
this, it will surely not be for want of solicitation. ”
"You are very kind to think so," replied Mary; "but even if
it were to be so, I should not see my way clear to be often in
such scenes as this. ”
Her companion looked at her with a glance a little doubtful
and amused, and said, "And pray why not? if the inquiry be not
too presumptuous. ”
"Because,” said Mary, "I should be afraid they would take
too much time and thought, and lead me to forget the great
object of life. ”
The simple gravity with which this was said, as if quite as-
sured of the sympathy of her auditor, appeared to give him a
secret amusement. His bright, dark eyes danced, as if he sup-
pressed some quick repartee; but drooping his long lashes def.
erentially, he said in gentle tones, "I should like to know what
so beautiful a young lady considers the great object of life. ”
XXIV-882
## p. 14098 (#288) ##########################################
14098
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
C
>>
on
Mary answered reverentially, in those words then familiar
from infancy to every Puritan child, “To glorify God, and enjoy
him forever. ”
"Really? ” he said, looking straight into her eyes with that
penetrating glance with which he was accustomed to take the
gauge of every one with whom he conversed.
"Is it not ? ” said Mary, looking back, calm and firm, into the
sparkling, restless depths of his eyes.
At that moment, two souls, going with the whole force of
their being in opposite directions, looked out of their windows at
each other with a fixed and earnest recognition.
Burr was practiced in every art of gallantry; he had made
womankind a study; he never saw a beautiful face and form
without a sort of restless desire to experiment upon it and try
his power over the interior inhabitant: but just at this moment,
something streamed into his soul from those blue, earnest eyes,
which brought back to his mind what pious people had so often
told him of his mother, the beautiful and early-sainted Esther
Burr.
He was
one of those persons who systematically man-
aged and played upon himself and others, as a skillful musician
an instrument. Yet one secret of his fascination was the
naïveté with which, at certain moments, he would abandon him-
self to some little impulse of a nature originally sensitive and
tender. Had the strain of feeling which now awoke in him come
over him elsewhere, he would have shut down some spring in
his mind and excluded it in a moment: but talking with a beau-
tiful creature whom he wished to please, he gave way at once
to the emotion; real tears stood in his fine eyes, and he raised
Mary's hand to his lips and kissed it, saying:-
“Thank you, my beautiful child, for so good a thought. It is
truly a noble sentiment, though practicable only to those gifted
with angelic natures. ”
“Oh, I trust not,” said Mary, earnestly touched and wrought
upon, more than she herself knew, by the beautiful eyes, the
modulated voice, the charm of manner, which seemed to enfold
her like an Italian summer.
Burr sighed, - a real sigh of his better nature, but passed out
with all the more freedom that he felt it would interest his fair
companion, who, for the time being, was the one woman of the
world to him.
« Pure and artless souls like yours,” he said, cannot measure
the temptations of those who are called to the real battle of life
»
## p. 14099 (#289) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14099
»
in a world like this. How many nobler aspirations fall withered
in the fierce heat and struggle of the conflict! ”
He was saying then what he really felt, often bitterly felt,-
but using this real feeling advisedly, and with skillful tact, for the
purpose of the hour.
What was this purpose? To win the regard, the esteem, the
tenderness of a religious, exalted nature shrined in a beautiful
form; to gain and hold ascendency. It was a lifelong habit;
one of those forms of refined self-indulgence which he pursued,
thoughtless and reckless of consequences. He had found now
the keynote of the character: it was a beautiful instrument, and
he was well pleased to play on it.
“I think, sir,” said Mary, modestly, "that you forget the
great provision made for our weakness. ”
“How? ” he said.
«They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, she
replied gently.
He looked at her as she spoke these words, with a pleased,
artistic perception of the contrast between her worldly attire and
the simple, religious earnestness of her words.
“She is entrancing! ” he thought to himself; "so altogether
fresh and naïve ! »
“My sweet saint,” he said, “such as you are the appointed
guardians of us coarser beings. The prayers of souls given up
to worldliness and ambition effect little. You must intercede
for us.
I am very orthodox, you see,” he added with that subtle
smile which sometimes irradiated his features. "I am fully aware
of all that your reverend doctor tells you of the worthlessness of
unregenerate doings; and so when I see angels walking below, I
try to secure a friend at court. » »
He saw that Mary looked embarrassed and pained at this
banter, and therefore added with a delicate shading of earnest-
(
»
ness:
-
“In truth, my fair young friend, I hope you will sometimes
pray for me. I am sure, if I have any chance of good, it will
come in such a way. ”
"Indeed I will,” said Mary fervently,- her little heart full,
tears in her eyes, her breathcoming quick,- and she added
with a deepening color, “I am sure, Mr. Burr, that there should
be a covenant blessing for you if for any one, for you are the
son of a holy ancestry. ”
## p. 14100 (#290) ##########################################
14100
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
A SPIRITUAL LOVE
From "The Minister's Wooing)
W"
HAT Mary loved so passionately, that which came between
her and God in every prayer, was not the gay young
dashing sailor,- sudden in anger, imprudent of speech,
and though generous in heart, yet worldly in plans and schem-
ings, – but her own ideal of a grand and noble man; such a man
as she thought he might become. He stood glorified before her:
an image of the strength that overcomes things physical, of the
power of command which controls men and circumstances, of the
courage which disdains fear, of the honor which cannot lie, of
constancy which knows no shadow of turning, of tenderness which
protects the weak, and lastly, of religious loyalty which should
lay the golden crown of its perfected manhood at the feet of a
Sovereign Lord and Redeemer. This was the man she loved,
and with this regal mantle of glories she invested the person
called James Marvyn; and all that she saw and felt to be want-
ing she prayed for with the faith of a believing woman.
Nor was she wrong; for as to every leaf and every flower
there is an ideal to which the growth of the plant is constantly
urging, so is there an ideal to every human being, - a perfect
form in which it might appear, were every defect removed and
every characteristic excellence stimulated to the highest point.
Once in an age, God sends to some of us a friend who loves in
us not a false imagining, an unreal character, but looking through
all the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal
of our nature,- loves, not the man that we are, but the angel
that we may be.
Such friends seem inspired by a divine gift of
prophecy,- like the mother of St. Augustine, who, in the midst
of the wayward, reckless youth of her son, beheld him in a vision,
standing, clothed in white, a ministering priest at the right hand
of God; as he has stood for long ages since. Could the mysteri-
ous foresight unveil to us this resurrection form of the friends
with whom we daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity,
we should follow them with faith and reverence through all the
disguises of human faults and weaknesses, waiting for the mani-
festation of the sons of God. ”
## p. 14101 (#291) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14101
MISS PRISSY TAKES CANDACE'S COUNSEL
From The Minister's Wooing)
C
(C
ANDACE sat on a fragment of granite bowlder which lay there,
her black face relieved against a clump of yellow mulleins,
then in majestic altitude. On her lap was spread a checked
pocket-handkerchief, containing rich slices of cheese and a store of
her favorite brown doughnuts.
“Now, Miss Prissy,” she said, “dar's reason in all tings, an'a
good deal more in some tings dan dar is in oders. Dar's a good
deal more reason in two young, handsome folks comin' togeder
dan dar is in ” — Candace finished the sentence by an emphatic
flourish of her doughnut. “Now as long as eberybody thought
Jim Marvyn was dead, dar wa'n't nothin' else in de world
to be done but marry de doctor. But good lan’! I hearn him
a-talkin' to Miss Marvyn las' night: it kinder 'mos' broke my
heart. Why, dem two poor creeturs, dey's jest as onhappy 's dey
can be!
An' she's got too much feelin' for de doctor to say a
word; and I say he oughter to be told on 't! dat's what I say,”
said Candace, giving a decisive bite to her doughnut.
“I say so too,” said Miss Prissy. “Why, I never had such
bad feelings in my life as I did yesterday, when that young man
came down to our house. He was just as pale as a cloth. I
tried to say a word to Miss Scudder, but she snapped me up so!
She's an awful decided woman when her mind's made up.
telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel, - she came round me this noon,-
that it didn't exactly seem to me right that things should go on
as they are going. And says I, Cerinthy Ann, I don't know
anything what to do. ' And says she, “If I was you, I know
what I'd do,— I'd tell the doctor,' says she. “Nobody ever takes
offense at anything you do, Miss Prissy. ' To be sure,” added
Miss Prissy, "I have talked to people about a good many things
that it's rather strange I should; 'cause I ain't one, somehow,
that can let things go that seem to want doing. I always told
folks that I should spoil a novel before it got half-way through
the first volume, by blurting out some of those things that they
let go trailing on so, till everybody gets so mixed up they don't
know what they're doing. ”
“Well, now, honey,” said Candace authoritatively, “ef you's
got any notions o’ dat kind, I tink it mus' come from de good
I was
(
## p. 14102 (#292) ##########################################
14102
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
You jes'
Lord, an' I 'dvise you to be 'tendin' to 't right away.
go 'long an' tell de doctor yourself all you know, an' den le's see
what 'll come on 't. I tell you, I b’liebe it'll be one o' de bes'
day's works you eber did in your life! ”
« Well," said Miss Prissy, "I guess to-night, before I go to
bed, I'll make a dive at him. When a thing's once out, it's out,
and can 't be got in again, even if people don't like it; and that's
a mercy, anyhow. It really makes me feel 'most wicked to think
of it, for he is the most blessedest man!
«Dat's what he is,” said Candace. “But de blessedest man in
de world oughter know de truth: dat's what I tink! ”
« Yes -- true enough! ” said Miss Prissy. “I'll tell him, any-
(
>>
»
way! ”
(
riences.
-
Miss Prissy was as good as her word; for that evening, when
the doctor had retired to his study, she took her life in her
hand, and walking swiftly as a cat, tapped rather timidly at the
study-door, which the doctor opening, said benignantly:-
"Ah, Miss Prissy! »
“If you please, sir,” said Miss Prissy, “I'd like a little con-
versation. ”
The doctor was well enough used to such requests from the
female members of his church, which generally were the pre-
lude to some disclosures of internal difficulties or spiritual expe-
He therefore graciously motioned her to a chair.
“I thought I must come in,” she began, busily twirling a bit
of her Sunday gown. "I thought — that is-I felt it my duty -
I thought — perhaps — I ought to tell you — that perhaps you
ought to know - »
The doctor looked civilly concerned. He did not know but
Miss Prissy's wits were taking leave of her. He replied, how-
ever, with his usual honest stateliness:-
"I trust, dear madam, that you will feel at perfect freedom to
open to me any exercises of mind that you may have. ”
“It isn't about myself,” said Miss Prissy. “If you please, it's
about you and Mary! ”
The doctor now looked awake in right earnest, and very much
astonished besides; and he looked eagerly at Miss Prissy, to have
her go on.
"I don't know how you would view such a matter," said Miss
Prissy; but the fact is that James Marvyn and Mary always did
love each other, ever since they were children. ”
## p. 14103 (#293) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14103
Still the doctor was unawakened to the real meaning of the
words, and he answered simply:-
“I should be far from wishing to interfere with so very nat-
ural and universal a sentiment, which I make no doubt is all
quite as it should be. ”
“No-but-” said Miss Prissy, "you don't understand what I
mean. I mean that James Marvyn wanted to marry Mary, and
that she was — well- she wasn't engaged to him, but — »
"Madam! ” said the doctor, in a voice that frightened Miss
Prissy out of her chair, while a blaze like sheet-lightning shot
from his eyes, and his face flushed crimson.
« Mercy on us! Doctor, I hope you'll excuse me; but there -
the fact is — I've said it out — the fact is, they wa’n’t engaged:
but that Mary loved him ever since he was a boy, as she
never will and never can love any man again in this world, is
what I am just as sure of as that I'm standing here; and I've
felt you ought to know it, 'cause I'm quite sure that if he'd
been alive, she'd never given the promise she has — the promise
that she means to keep, if her heart breaks and his too. The'
wouldn't anybody tell you, and I thought I must tell you; 'cause
I thought you'd know what was right to do about it. ”
During all this latter speech the Doctor was standing with
his back to Miss Prissy, and his face to the window, just as he
did some time before, when Mrs. Scudder came to tell him of
Mary's consent. He made a gesture backward, without speaking,
that she should leave the apartment: and Miss Prissy left, with
a guilty kind of feeling as if she had been striking a knife into
her pastor; and rushing distractedly across the entry into Mary's
little bedroom, she bolted the door, threw herself on the bed,
and began to cry.
Well, I've done it ! ” she said to herself.
strong, hearty man,” she soliloquized, “so I hope it won't put
him in a consumption: men do go into a consumption about
such things sometimes. I remember Abner Seaforth did; but
then he was always narrow-chested, and had the liver com-
plaint or something. I don't know what Miss Scudder will say;
- but I've done it. Poor man! such a good man, too! I declare,
I feel just like Herod taking off John the Baptist's head. Well,
well! it's done, and can't be helped. ”
Just at this moment Miss Prissy heard a gentle tap at the
door, and started as if it had been a ghost, — not being able to
« He's a very
## p. 14104 (#294) ##########################################
14104
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
rid herself of the impression that somehow she had committed a
great crime, for which retribution was knocking at the door.
It was Mary, who said in her sweetest and most natural
tones, Miss Prissy, the doctor would like to see you. "
Mary was much astonished at the frightened, discomposed
manner with which Miss Prissy received this announcement, and
said:
“I'm afraid I've waked you up out of sleep.
I don't think
there's the least hurry. ”
Miss Prissy didn't, either: but she reflected afterwards that
she might as well get through with it at once; and therefore
smoothing her tumbled cap-border, she went to the doctor's study.
This time he was quite composed, and received her with a mourn-
ful gravity, and requested her to be seated.
"I beg, madam,” he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of
my manner in our late interview. I was so little prepared for
the communication you had to make, that I was perhaps unsuit-
ably discomposed. Will you allow me to ask whether you were
requested by any of the parties to communicate to me what you
did ? »
"No, sir,” said Miss Prissy.
" Have any of the parties ever communicated with you on the
subject at all ? ” said the doctor.
“No, sir,” said Miss Prissy.
“That is all," said the doctor. « I will not detain you.
very much obliged to you, madam. ”
He rose, and opened the door for her to pass out; and Miss
Prissy, overawed by the stately gravity of his manner, went out
in silence.
»
I am
THE MINISTER'S SACRIFICE
From "The Minister's Wooing)
W"
HEN Miss Prissy left the room, the doctor sat down by the
table and covered his face with his hands. He had a
large, passionate, determined nature; and he had just
come to one of those cruel crises in life in which it is apt to
seem to us that the whole force of our being, all that we can
hope, wish, feel, enjoy, has been suffered to gather itself into
## p. 14105 (#295) ##########################################
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
14105
one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable
fate, and go back, moaning, into emptiness.
In such hours men and women have cursed God and life,
and thrown violently down and trampled under their feet what
yet was left of life's blessings, in the fierce bitterness of despair.
« This, or nothing! ” the soul shrieks in her frenzy. At just such
points as these, men have plunged into intemperance and wild
excess; they have gone to be shot down in battle; they have
broken life and thrown it away like an empty goblet, and gone
like wailing ghosts out into the dread unknown.
The possibility of all this lay in that heart which had just
received that stunning blow. Exercised and disciplined as he had
been by years of sacrifice, by constant, unsleeping self-vigilance,
there was rising there in that great heart an ocean tempest of
passion; and for a while his cries unto God seemed as empty
and as vague as the screams of birds tossed and buffeted in the
clouds of mighty tempests.
The will that he thought wholly subdued seemed to rise under
him as a rebellious giant. A few hours before, he thought himself
established in an invincible submission to God's will that nothing
could shake. Now he looked into himself as into a seething vor-
tex of rebellion; and against all the passionate cries of his lower
nature, could, in the language of an old saint, cling to God only
by the naked force of his will. That will rested unmelted amid
the boiling sea of passion, waiting its hour of renewed sway. He
walked the room for hours; and then sat down to his Bible, and
roused once or twice to find his head leaning on its pages, and
his mind far gone in thoughts from which he woke with a bit-
ter throb. Then he determined to set himself to some definite
work; and taking his Concordance, began busily tracing out and
numbering all the proof-texts for one of the chapters of his
theological system,- till at last he worked himself down to such
calmness that he could pray: and then he schooled and reasoned
with himself, in a style not unlike, in its spirit, to that in which
a great modern author has addressed suffering humanity:-
“What is it that thou art fretting and self-tormenting about?
Is it because thou art not happy? Who told thee that thou wast
to be happy? Is there any ordinance of the universe that thou
shouldst be happy? Art thou nothing but a vulture screaming
for prey ? Canst thou not do without happiness? Yea, thou canst
do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness. ”
## p. 14106 (#296) ##########################################
14106
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
The doctor came lastly to the conclusion that blessedness,
which was all the portion his Master had on earth, might for
him also; and therefore he kissed and blessed that silver dove of
happiness which he saw was weary of sailing in his clumsy old
ark, and let it go out of his hand without a tear.
He slept little that night: but when he came to breakfast,
all noticed an unusual gentleness and benignity of manner; and
Mary, she knew not why, saw tears rising in his eyes when he
looked at her.
## p. 14107 (#297) ##########################################
14107
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
(1808–1874)
Tay
was
a
HE German renaissance, which had its beginnings in that
great literary movement of which Goethe was the central
Ce figure, was destined to express itself at a later period in an
output of philosophical and religious thought almost without parallel
in its comprehensiveness and in its subtlety. Like other manifesta-
tions of intellectual and spiritual vigor, it was not without its nega-
tive and destructive principle: a principle which found, perhaps, its
most significant expression in the life and work of David Friedrich
Strauss,- a man modern only in the let-
ter of what he performed; in the spirit a
dogmatist of almost mediæval intensity and
narrowness.
He was born at Ludwigsburg, near Stutt-
gart, January 27th, 1808. His father, al-
though a tailor by trade, devoted much of
his time to literary pursuits; his mother
woman of strong common-sense,
whose piety was of an extremely practical
character. The son inherited his father's
taste for books, his mother's distaste of
mysticism. Being designed for the church,
he was sent in his thirteenth year to an D. F. STRAUSS
evangelical seminary at Blaubeuren near
Ulm, to study theology. Two of his teachers there, Professors Kern
and F. C. Baur, were to have a deep influence upon his life. There
also he met Christian Märklin, a student whose biography he was
afterwards to write. Four years later, in 1825, he entered the Uni-
versity of Tübingen; but finding in the curriculum little nourish-
ment, he sought satisfaction for his needs in Schelling's pantheistic
philosophy, and in the writings of the romanticists, Jacob Böhme,
and others.
In 1826 Professors Baur and Kern came to the University, resum-
ing the intellectual oversight of their former pupils, Strauss and
Märklin. Baur introduced Strauss to the works of Schleiermacher,
whose mystical conception of religion, as having its roots in the
emotional life, was for a time attractive to the future author of the
## p. 14108 (#298) ##########################################
14108
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
'Leben Jesu,' drawing him away from the influence of the rational
philosophy of Kant and the pantheism of Schelling. But he was not
to remain long a disciple of Schleiermacher. His own temperament,
as well as outside forces, was drawing him to the consideration of
the overwhelming Hegelian philosophy. In the last year at Tübingen
he read Hegel's Phänomenologie,' - strong meat even for a Ger-
inan youth to digest. Hegel, in direct opposition to Schleiermacher,
sought the roots of religion in thought, not feeling: his conception of
Begriff and Vorstellung, of Notion and Representation, the Absolute,
and the finite presentation of the Absolute, was to exert a tremendous
influence upon Strauss; leading him at last to the inquiry embodied
in the Life of Jesus,' how much of dogmatic religion is but the
shadowing forth, the vorstellung, of great underlying truths.
He was not at once, however, to apply the Hegelian philosophy
to the doctrines of the Christian religion. In 1830 he passed his
examination with honor, becoming soon after assistant to a country
clergyman; but a man of his restless and eager intellect could not
long remain in the quiet atmosphere of a country parish. In 1831
he resigned his pastorate, to study under Schleiermacher and Hegel
in the University of Berlin. The latter dying suddenly, shortly after
Strauss's coming to Berlin, he removed to Tübingen, where he be-
came a repetent or assistant professor, lecturing upon logic, history
of philosophy, and history of ethics. In 1833 he resigned this position
to devote himself to writing the 'Life of Jesus. ' In 1834 the first
volume, and in 1835 the second volume, was published.
In the Life of Jesus,' Strauss attempted to apply the Hegelian
philosophy to the dogmatic system of the Christian religion: or
rather, influenced by the Hegelian principle that the Absolute is
expressed in finite terms, he attempted to show that the miraculous
elements in the life of Jesus were ideally but not historically true;
that the immaculate conception, the transfiguration, the resurrection,
the ascension into heaven, were symbols of profound truth, myths
created out of the Messianic hopes of the followers of Christ. This
mythical theory was directly in the face of the theory of the deists,
that the miraculous events in Christ's life were proof of the fallibility
of the evangelists; and in the face of the theory of the rationalists,
that those events were capable of natural explanation. The mythical
theory of Strauss was not original with him. It had been applied to
certain parts of the Old Testament by Eichhorn, Bauer, and others;
in the secular domain, it was being applied by Niebuhr to early
Roman history, and by Wolff to the Homeric poems: but no
before Strauss had applied it to the four Gospels thoroughly and
exhaustively,- thoroughly and exhaustively, however, only in so far
that Strauss never lost sight of his theory for one moment, bending
one
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DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
14109
everything to its shape. Of the critical study of the gospels in the
modern sense Strauss knew little,— his dogmatic temper being impa-
tient of the restraints of scholarship; added to that, a certain irrev-
erence of temperament prevented him not only from appreciation of
the essential in Christianity, but by a kind of paradox, from arriving
at anything like scientific truth. He disproved everything but proved
nothing. The Jesus of Strauss's Life is not even a historical per-
sonage like the Jesus of Renan's Life); but a faint shadow, just
discerned through dead mists of theory. The great work was to
have but a negative mission: it prepared the way by its blankness
for positive scholarship, for positive criticism; it is the reflection of
the colorless mood of one standing between two worlds, without the
spiritual insight necessary to understand that between the old order
and the new there must be an organic link, else both will perish.
The replies to the Leben Jesu,' by Neander, Ullmann, Schweizer,
and others, led to a reply from Strauss in 1837. In 1839 a third edi-
tion of the work appeared, in which concessions were made to the
critics, to be withdrawn in the edition of 1840, of which George Eliot
made an English translation. In the same year Christliche Glaubens-
lehre,' a history of Christian doctrines in their disintegration, ap-
peared. Strauss meanwhile had been elected to the chair of theology
in the University of Zurich, but the opposition this appointment
aroused led to its annulment. In 1842 he married Agnes Schebest,
an opera singer, with whom he lived until their separation in 1847,
and who bore him three children. In 1847 he published a satire, in
which he drew a parallel between Julian the Apostate and Frederick
William IV. of Prussia. In 1848 he was nominated a member of the
Frankfort Parliament, but was defeated; was elected to the Würtem-
berg Chamber, but his constituents asked him to resign because of his
conservative action.
In 1849 he began to publish those biographies which contribute
most directly to his literary fame. The Life of Schubart) was fol-
lowed by the Life of Christian Märklin,' in 1851; the Life of
Frischlin, in 1855; and the Life of Ulrich von Hutten,' 1858-60. In
1862 appeared the Life of Reimarus'; in 1877, A Life of Jesus for
the German People,' — in substance much like the former Life. '
Previous to its publication, “The Christ of Dogma and the Jesus of
History' had appeared in 1865. In 1872 Strauss took up his residence
at Darmstadt, where he made the acquaintance of the Princess Alice
and the Crown Princess of Germany, who befriended him, and before
whom he lectured on Voltaire. In 1870 these lectures were pub-
lished; in the same year occurred his correspondence with Renan on
the subject of the Franco-Prussian War,-a correspondence which led
to the severing of their friendship.
## p. 14110 (#300) ##########################################
14110
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
a
In 1872 appeared (The Old Faith and the New. It is this work
rather than the Life of Jesus, which is a monument of destructive
criticism; although it is less scholarly and more superficial, written
with a certain indifference, as if even once stimulating subject
had become wearisome. The book is without light or heat. Its
author had drifted away from all philosophy, whether of Hegel or
Schelling or Schleiermacher; had cast anchor in a port of No-man's-
land. To his intellect at least, God and the soul of man had become
unreal. Yet he was perhaps not wholly satisfied with the aridity of
his choice. The last picture of him is of an old man in hired lodg-
ings, reading in the days before his death the Phædo' of Plato.
He died in February 1874.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF GRÆCO-ROMAN CULTIVATION
From (A New Life of Jesus)
IM
N OPPOSITION to the religious tendency of the Jewish people, all
the efforts of the Greeks were applied to the perfecting of the
really human element in man. This position does not, speak-
ing generally, require any proof; as in the politics and morals, in
the poetry and fine arts, of that people, it lies before us as a rec-
ognized fact. But in their religion it shows itself in the resem-
blance of the Greek gods to men. The Indian, the Egyptian, the
Assyrian, did not shape their divinities in purely human form.
And the cause of this was not merely deficiency in artistic skill
and taste, but above all, the fact that these nations did not con-
ceive of their gods as being simply human. Whether the Greek
obtained his divinities in part from abroad, or from native prede-
cessors, the peculiar change which he as a Greek in every
instance set about making, is this: that he converted the original
natural symbolism into a relation of human life; made them,
instead of types of cosmical powers, representatives of the powers
of the human mind and social institutions; and in connection
with this, approximated their outward form more completely to
the human.
Now, a piety which produced human ideals in god-like forms
- in those of an Apollo, an Athene, a Zeus - stands indisputably
higher than that which had not divested its divinities externally
of the form of beasts, and internally of the wild creating or de.
stroying power of nature; but the human element in the Greek
gods had, - corresponding to its original natural signification, as
## p. 14111 (#301) ##########################################
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
14111
-
well as to the state of the cultivation of the popular mind at the
time when these imaginations were realized in form,- together
with its moral side, so strongly marked a sensual side, that as
soon as the moral ideas were enlightened, offense could not fail
to be taken at the cruelties of a Kronos, the adulteries of a Zeus,
the pilferings of a Hermes, etc. Hence the poets of the later
period endeavored to give a moral coloring to the myths that
offended them: but there were individual philosophers of an earlier
time - above all Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school —
who rejected the unworthy and in general human conceptions of
the gods, as they were represented by Homer and Hesiod; and
as is well known, it was on this ground that Plato banished
Homer from his ideal republic. But even independently of this
moral stumbling-block, the plurality of gods was soon discovered
to be irreconcilable with the idea of the Divine nature; which, as
the most perfect possible and the supreme cause of everything,
could be only one and indivisible: and thus, among educated
Greeks, we see Polytheism continually more and more displaced
by the conception of Monotheism, or at all events reconciled with
it by a stricter subordination of separate divinities to one supreme
God. Thus in this respect the Greek gradually raised himself
to the point of view on which the Hebrew stood from the first;
and in so far as the former had attained to his conception of the
one God by the philosophical method, that conception, in its later
contact with Jewish Monotheism, might be of special service to
the latter in the way of purifying it from many anthropomorphic
features which still clung to it in the writings of the Old Testa-
ment.
But in all this the Greek formed his conceptions of man, his
nature and his duties, far in advance of those ideal gods in
Homer; and in a manner that never would have been possible
on Jewish soil. "Humanitarianism,” says Welcker, “could never
have issued from Hebrew supranaturalism; for in proportion
as the apprehension is earnest and exalted, must the authority
and the law of the one God and Lord suppress that human
religious freedom out of which all power and cheerfulness is
derived in the best and noblest form. ” It was precisely because
the Divinity did not confront the Greek in the form of a
commanding law, that the Greek was compelled to be a law
to himself; because he did not like the Jew, see his whole
life ordered for him, step by step, by religious ordinance, he was
»
## p. 14112 (#302) ##########################################
14112
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
(
compelled to seek for a moral rule within his own mind. That
this was
a difficult problem, that the way to the solution of
it led over dangerous ground, we see by the corruption of
morals which broke in over the Greek nation after the most
brilliant and flourishing age, by the arbitrary manner in which
the contemporary Sophists confounded all moral notions. To
them, according to the maxim of Protagoras, man was the meas-
ure of all things: nothing was naturally good or bad, but only
by reason of an arbitrary rule of men, to which the individual
need not bind himself; but as the authors of those rules estab-
lished them for their own advantage, it was open to the indi-
vidual to call good and put in practice whatever was agreeable
or useful to himself. The art of justifying such conduct argu-
mentatively, of shaking the foundations of all existing principles
in religion and morals, of strengthening the weaker cause," —
i. e. , of making right of wrong,- was taught and published by
the Sophists; but in point of fact, all that they did was to put
into a methodical form what all the world around them was prac-
ticing already.
It is well known how this moral license among the people of
Greece, and the sophistical palliation of it, was resisted by Socra-
tes. He could not, like a Hebrew prophet, refer to a written law
of God,-- which indeed in the case of his fellow-countrymen,
long before moved to religious skepticism, would have done
no good; like the opponents, therefore, whom he endeavored
to combat, he kept to man: to him too, in a certain sense, man
was the measure of all things; but not man in so far as he
follows his own caprice or pleasure, but in so far as he seeks in
earnest to know himself, and by well-regulated thought to come
to an understanding with himself as to what contributes to his
own true happiness. He who acts upon such true knowledge
will on all occasions act right; and this right conduct will ever
make man happy: this was the condensed substance of the moral
system of Socrates, for the establishment of which he required
no divine command; although he delivered very pure notions
respecting the nature of God, in the sense of the reconciliation
alluded to above of the national Polytheism with a rational
Monotheism. That Socrates delivered these doctrines not scholas.
tically in an exclusive circle, but publicly and as it were socially;
that moreover, as an exalted example, he at the same time
practiced what he taught, in his own life and conduct; that
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DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
14113
lastly he became a martyr to his convictions, - to his efforts,
misunderstood by the mass of his fellow-citizens, for spiritual
and moral elevation, - all this gives him a resemblance to Christ
which has always been observed: in fact, notwithstanding the
wide difference occasioned by the opposition between the systems
of the nations and the religions on both sides, there is not in the
whole of antiquity previous to Christianity, that of the Hebrews
not excepted, any figure to be found so closely resembling Christ
as that of Socrates.
After Socrates, no Greek did more to raise the tone of Greek
cultivation to a point at which it might come into contact with
the religion of the Hebrews, consequently towards the prepara-
tion for Christianity, than his disciple Plato. According to him,
Ideas constituted all that was true in things; i. e.
