"Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own."
Such heroic treatment always relieves any cause from contemptuous neglect, the one thing which is always harder to bear than the fires of martyrdom. Every reader of Bunyan knows that he complains far less of his twelve years' imprisonment than he exults over the success of his prison born, world-ranging Pilgrim. He would doubtless have preferred lying in that "den," Bedford jail, other twelve years to being unable to say,--
"My Pilgrim's book has travelled sea and land, Yet could I never come to understand That it was slighted or turned out of door By any kingdom, were they rich or poor."
The dreariest period in religious discussion commonly occurs when men have just ceased to inflict legal penalties upon the heterodox, but have not yet learned those amenities which lend so sweet and gentle a dignity to debate. In looking over the dusty pamphlets which entomb so many clerical controversies of our Colonial times, it has often seemed as though we had lighted on some bar-room wrangle, translated out of its original billingsgate into scholarly classical quotations and wofully wrested tests of Holy Writ. This illusion seems all the more probable when we remember that the potations which inspired the loose jester and the ministerial pamphleteer of that period but too often flowed from the same generous tap. This phase of theological dispute is best typified in that eminent English divine who wrote,--"I say, without the least heat whatever, that Mr. Wesley lies." The manner in which such reverend disputants sought to force their conclusions on the reluctant has not infrequently reminded us of sturdy old Grimshawe, the predecessor of Bronté at Haworth, of whom Mrs. Gaskell reports, that, finding so many of his parishioners inclined to loiter away their Sundays at the ale-house as greatly to thin the attendance upon his ministry, he was wont to rush in upon them armed with a heavy whip, and scourge them with many a painful stroke to church, where, doubtless, he scourged them again with still more painful sermons.
But, bad as were the controversial habits of the clergy, those of their skeptical opponents were still worse. That was surely a strange state of things where such freethinking as the "Age of Reason" could win a wide circulation and considerable credit. But it was not merely the vulgar among freethinkers who then substituted sophistry and declamation for honesty and sense. The philosophers of the Institute caught the manners of the rabble. What a revolting scene does M. Martin sketch in his "Essay on the Life and Works of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre"! "The Institute had proposed this as a prize-question:--'What institutions are best adapted to establish the morals of a nation?' Bernardin was to offer the report. The competitors had treated the theme in the spirit of their judges. Terrified at the perversity of their opinions, the author of "Studies of Nature" wished to oppose to them more wholesome and consoling ideas, and he closed his report with one of those morsels of inspiration into which his soul poured the gentle light of the Gospel. On the appointed day, in the assembled Institute, Bernardin read his report. The analysis of the memoirs was heard at first with calmness; but, at the first words of the exposition of the principles of a theistical philosopher, a furious outcry arose from every part of the hall. Some mocked him, asking where he had seen God, and what form He bore. Others styled him weak, credulous, superstitious; they threatened to expel him from the assembly of which he had proved himself unworthy; they even pushed madness so far as to challenge him to single combat, in order to prove, sword in hand, that there is no God. Cabanis, celebrated by Carlyle for his dogma, 'Thought is secreted, like bile, somewhere in the region of the small intestines,' cried out, 'I swear that there is no God, and I demand that His name shall never be spoken in this place.' The reporter left the members in grave dispute, not whether there is a God, but whether the mention of His name should be permitted."