The Reign of Law

ed to delve at learning. His brain was like that of a healthy wild animal freshly captured from nature. And as such an animal learns to snap at flung bits of food, springing to meet them and si

n. It seemed a hardship to him to have to spend priceless money for a thing like apples, which had always been as cheap and plentiful as spring water. But those evening suppers in the dormitory with the disciples! Even when he was filled (which was not often) he was never comforted; and one day happening upon one of those pomological pyramids, he paused, yearned, and bought the apex. It was harder not to buy than to buy. After that he fell into this fruitful vice almost diurnally; and with mortifying worldl

rior city of the state. From childhood he had longed to visit it. The thronged streets, the curious stores, the splendid residences, the flashing equipages-what a new world it was to him! But

dsome boarding-house on a fashionable street. He thought he had never even dreamed of anything so fine as was this house-nor had he. As he sat in the rich parlors, waiting to learn whether his friends were at home,

elow was a garden full of old vines black with grapes and pear trees bent down with pears and beds bright with cool autumn flowers. (The lad made a note of how much money he would save on apples if he could only live in reach of those pear trees.) There was a big rumpled bed in the room; and stretched across this bed on his stomach lay a student studying and w

you find your way t

heavily over, sat up dejectedly, and o

atriculated

t like it in the nature of man. But during the years since he had seen them, old times were gone, old manners changed. And was it not in the hemp fields of the father of one of them that he had

rch recorded. There it all was!-all written down to hold good while the world lasted: that perpetual grant of part and parcel of his land, for the

they should be which becomes in time the best seasoned staff of age. He hunted out especially the Catholic Church. His great-grandfather had founded his as free for Catholics as Protestants, but he recalled the fact that no priest had ever preached there. He felt very curious to see a priest. A synagogue in the town he could not find. He was sorry. He had a great desire to lay eyes on a synagogue-temple of that

ng gas). It was under this chandelier that he himself soon found a seat. All the Bible students sat there who could get there, that being the choir of male voices; and before a month passed he had been taken into this choir: for a s

f the Catholics and Jews: it would scarcely be necessary to speak of the Mohammedans and such others. He was driven to do this, he declared, and was anxious to do it, as part of the work of his brethren all over t

aps his motive resembled that which prompts us to visit a battle-field and count the slain. Only, not a soul of those people seemed even to have been wounded. The

or himself and to learn more about those worldly churches which had departed from the faith

come his acquaintances, discussed with him the impropriety of these absences: they agreed that he would better stick to his own church. He gave reasons why he should follow up the pastor's demonstrations with actual visits to the others: he contended that the pastor established the fact of the errors; but that the best way to understand any error was to study the err

action of all present, had riddled his own church, every wo

k in its own time. The next thing the lad knew was that a professor requested him to remain after class one day; and speaking with grave kindness, advised him to go regularly to his

gone. He could not have said what this feeling was, did not himself know. Only, a slight film seemed to

o old farmers in the pew behind him talked in smothered tones of stock and crops, till it fairly made him homesick. The sermon of the priest, too, filled him with amazement. It weighed the claims of various Protestant sects to be reckoned as parts of the one true historic church of God. In passing, he barely referred to the most modern of these self-constituted Protestant bodies-David's own church-and dismissed it with one blast of scorn, which seemed to strike the lad's face like a hot wind: it left it burning. But to the Episcopal Church the priest dispensed the most vitriolic criticism. And that night, carried away by the old impul

ture. Had Kentucky been peopled by her same people several generations earlier, the land would have run red with the blood of religious persecutions, as never were England and Scotland at their worst. So that this lad, brought in from his solemn, cloistered fields and introduced to wrangling, sarcastic, envious creeds, had already begun to feel doubtful and distressed, not knowing what to believe nor whom to follow. He had commenced by bei

Not while men are fighting their wars of conscience do they hate most, but after they have fought; and Southern and Union now hated to the bottom and nowhere else as at their prayers. David found a Presbyterian Church on one street called "Southern" and one a few blocks away called "Northern": how those brethren dwelt toge

ures and Apostolic music. He saw young people haled before the pulpit as before a tribunal of exact statutes and expelled for moving their feet in certain ways. If in dancing they whirled like a top instead of b

n his room at the dormitory one Sunday afternoon heard a debate on whether a tuning

ou think?"

worth talking about

ciled to each other; t

shifted. Out on the farm alone with it for two years, reading it never with a critical but always with a worshipping mind, it had been to him simply the summons to a great and good life, earthly and immortal. As he sat in the lecture rooms, studying it book by book, paragraph by paragraph, writing chalk notes about it on the blackboard, hearing the students recite it as they recited arithmetic or rhetoric, a lit

e one afternoon some seven months

the left and proceeded until he stood opposite a large brick church. Passing along the outside of this, he descended a few steps, traversed an alley, knocked timidly at a door, and by a voice w

hrough a valley, drinking the same water, nipping the same grass, and finding it what they wanted. His professors had singled him out as a case needing peculiar guidance. Not in his decorum as a student: he was the

at that big shock-head, at those grave brows, into those eager, troubled eyes. His persistent demonstrations that he and his brethren alone were right and all other churches Scriptural

s, he addressed the logician

once built a church simply to God,

e off a

ue. "Voltaire built a church to God: 'Erexit deo Voltaire' Your

Voltaire. The information

mire Voltaire," he o

. Then he added pleasantly, for he had

et Voltaire

. Is he coming he

hell-or will be after the

in the study

aking composedly all at once. "You think

roking his beard with syllogistic self-respect. "My dea

ng to tell you. My

begin with mor

tian believers. It stands in our neighborhood. I have always gone there. I joined the church there. All the different denominations in our part of the count

ou and your grandfather and Voltai

e was not

the lad, pressing across the interruption,

h?" inquired the pastor sharply

a

now that it is th

e it to their satisfaction. They declare that if I become a preacher of what my church believes, I shall becom

as entered into a man, he can mak

keeps the other churches from se

ung man, that Satan d

." There was silence agai

out of my future. I come to you then. You are my pastor. Where is the truth-the reason-the pr

f these things. Here was a plain, ignorant country lad who had rejected his logic and who apparently had not tact enough at t

opy of the Ne

school-master of old times

hav

an rea

c

the faith of the original church-the ear

d

stles, THEIR faith and THEIR practice, with the tea

tried to

d the LAW. We have no creed but the creed of the Apostolic churches; no practi

e that young men were to be prepared to preach the simple Gospel

ne taught you se

ly. Inevitably-perhaps. That is m

el

you some

't seem to have any creed, but you DO seem to have a catechism! Well, o

n, the l

ity to declare that infant

ly came like a f

to the contrary vio

ey

ty to affirm that only imme

t

any other form viol

ey

y to celebrate the Lord's Su

t

a different custom vi

ey

to have no such officer in the

t

then, is a violation of

t

on, no matter how small or influenced by passion, an a

t

of its members, so it may turn them out into the world, ban

t

other system of church

ey

ianity to teach that fa

t

n is itself the great reason why we

ey

nity to turn people out o

t

n worship-is that a vi

t

e that the believer in it shall likewis

t

teach that everything contained in what

ey

his church, his pulpit of authority and his baptismal pool of regeneration directly over his head, all round him in the city the solid hundreds of his followers, he forgot himself as a man and a minister and remembered only that as a servant of the Most High he was being interrogated and dishonored. His soul shook and thundered within him to repel these attacks up

essing behind-a few issuing bees of an aroused swarm. But they ceased. The past

some

tor might well believe his questioner beaten, brought back to modesty and silence. To a deeper-seeing eye, however, the truth would have been plain that the lad was not seeing his pastor at all, b

hem! Out with them ALL! Make

he had laid on the floor, and sto

ch Apostolic Christianity," he

t, he wheeled

do believe. My God!" he cried again, burying his face in his hands. "I believe I am beginning to d

f two storms which were approaching: one appoint

to burst upon the University was like its other storms that had gon

aring the name of the commonwealth and opening at the close of the Civil War as a sign of the new peace of the new nation, having begun so fairly and risen in a few years to fourth or fifth place in patronage among all those in the land, was already entering

in the district and contribute them. The early Kentuckians, for their part, planned and sold out a lottery-to help along the incorruptible work. For such an institution Washington and Adams and Aaron Burr and Thomas Marshall and many another opened their purses. For it thousands and thousands of dollars were raised among friends scattered throughout the Atlantic states, these responding to a petition addressed to all religious sects, to all political parties. A library and philosophical apparatus were wagoned over the Alleghanies. A committee was sent to England to choose further equipments. When Kentucky came to have a legislature of its own, it decreed tha

the Kentuckians! Perhaps the s

to cease murdering. Standing there in the heart of the people's land, it must have grown to stand in the heart of their affections: and so standing, to stand for peace. For true learning al