Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-03-17

SN$d1lAS umphantly remarked,
is of the head and not
of the heart; is of the matter and not of the
manner. Both Mrs. Ward and the author
of John Ward, Preacher"
women-have set an admirable example,
especially to theological and scientific dis
putants. They have avoided disgusting
their opponents by vulgarity of treatment.
They have attributed to their antagonists
the same refinement and elevation of char
acter that they have bestowed upon the rep
resentatives of their own views.
Mrs. Ward has even gone further than
this, with perhaps unconscious generosity
generosity not less magnanimous beea use
instinctive-she has pictured the orthodox
as far superior to the agnostic. Agnosti-
cism has far more reason to complain than
orthodoxy. Indeed, her statement cannot
be accepted as presentation of agposticism
in its present stage unless we qualify 1t by
remembering always that what it presents is
the present popular stage; the conclusions
and condition of the intelligent receptive,
agnostic lay mind, not of the original ag-
nostic student, scholar, thinker.
MAN OF STRAW.
Mrs. Ward loves her agnostic hero Just as
MANY a woman loves herhusband-for what
she thinks he is, not for what he is. She
fancies him a man of thought and he is but
a man of straw. He has as little apprecia-
tion of the vital point of agnosticism as he
has of orthodoxy. Il fact, he has far less.
His orthodox wife, in the silent nobleness
of her character, in the force and fact of her
love, selfsustaining but never self-assert-
ing, grandly docile, renewedly battling and
repeatedly overcoming the narrowness of
her inherited and taught belief, represents
practical if old-fashioned Calvanism far bet
ter than her "liberal'' husband, groaning,
dependent, timorous, accepting without dis
elimination and bowled over without re-
sistance, represents the glory and the joy of
agnosticism. He thinks that he is ham,
pered by his wife's intellectual limita-
tions;" but he himself has no intellect. From
beginning to end, so far as theology is con-
cerned, there is not one single convolution
under his skull.
He is fneslad; he makes love charming
ly; he falls into the wiles of the adventures
as a high-minded male idiot may; he breaks
away from her with simple and direct hor-
ror as the high-minded man, though an i'd
lot, must. But when it comes to theology he
has not word to say for himself. He is
pushed into agnosticism by one man, he is
pushed into his wife's confidence BY anoth-
er;he is pushed into his city work by third;
he is pure and sweet and unselfsh, but as
an advocate and recommender of agnosti-
cism he is incarnated weakness.
Nor can one too emphatically repel and
resent the inference-nay, even practically,
the assertion of Mrs. Ward that the way of
truth is dismal, desperate, destructive of
happiness. Her reverend investigator
revels in misery. The reading of his first
book of critical exegesis he ever afterward
remembered with such a tightening of the
heart, associated with such night of misery.
that We almost forget to ask how it happens
that an Oxford student should have taken
holy orders, and be in active and regular
service in the Established Church without
having read single book of critical exc
gesis! 1t would seem as if the church in
stalled over her fiocks not strong-limbed
shepherds, but bleating and delenceless
lambs.
GRoANs TOO MUCH.
So it is perhaps less to be wondered that
with the first breath of critical exegesis there
swept over the soul of this little lamb dry
destroying whirlwind of thought. Elements.
and as it passed seemed to scorch his heart
He groaned indefatigably, sometimes with
only half-groan, occasionally with almost
a groan, but everywhere was the element of
groan. He claimed to be an object of pity
till his will refused, as it were, to carry on
the struggle any longer at such lite-de-
stroylng pitch of intensity. The intellec-
tual oppression of itself brought about wild
reaction and recoil till some chord even of
physical endurance gave way and some
thing seemed to snap within him. This is
not thought, it is hysteria. 1t came, not
because the young man was q conscientious
high thinker, but because he had never re-
ceived a proper theological training, and
had not sufficient intellectual impulse to
train himself. 1t reminds one of nothing
so much as OF the emotion and the commo-
ton which pervaded the household of the
Rev. Horace Crewlef, when Tommy Traddles
announced his engagement to Sophy, where
upon says simple Tommy in awe-stricken
tones to gaping David Copperfeld:
Mrs. Crewler gave a scream and became
insensible. Sarah clinched both her hands.
shut her eyes, turned lead color and became
perfectly stiff, with various effects upon the
other eight of most pathetic nature as it
was broken to them, while the marriage
mounted from her legs into her chest and
then to her head, and then pervaded the
whole system in a most alarming manner!
1t is not simply that Mrs. Wards hero
suffered all this, but that she thinks it
ought to be suffered. She thinks it is the
normal way of thought. She fancies that it
is moral and intellectual superiority instead
of pure intellectual inferiority or lack of in
tellectual training. She asserts that his re-
ligious dread and shame and terror are such
fao1, =. 1 -
it is only the good weakling who feels it; the
good athlete feels nothing of the sort. The
Oxford tutor was struck with the simplicity
and fullness of his former pupils avo~al,
and reflected that lesser man would hard
ly have made it in the same way. 1t would
have been more to the purpose to reflect that
a great man would not have made it at all.
There would have been no avowal to make.
A TIMID NATURE.
There is uggestion-somewhat timid.
indeed-that the young man belongs to the
minority of natures that are ct the mercy of
thought, at the mercy of truth-the minority
from whom, in fact, all human advance
comes; but all that is sensible in the sug-
gestion is its timidity. Gripped, rigid, re-
wheels of truth, perhaps he does rightly
represent the manner in which the great
mass of humanity advances; but he in no
way represents the leader and charioteer of
thought, panoplIed and upright, guiding
his course with keen eye and strong hand,
rejoicing in the contest and sure of victory.
He has little perception of the nature Of
truth who does not know that the world
offers no greater joy than its discovery
whether that unfolding come slowly like
the rapturous dawn, or suddenly dazzling
forth from clouds and thick darkness.
To him who had once been a Christian of
the old sort, says the great Oxford tutor,