Harriet Stowe - We and Our Neighbors - or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

So Harry and I have settled on attending an Episcopal mission church in our part of the city. Its worshipers are mostly among the poor, and Harry thinks we might do good by going there. Our rector is a young Mr. St. John, a man as devoted as any of the primitive Christians. I never saw anybody go into work for others with more entire self-sacrifice. He has some property, and he supports himself and pays about half the expenses of the mission besides. All this excites Harry's respect, and he is willing to do himself and have me do all we can to help him. Both Alice and I, and my younger sisters, Angelique and Marie, have taken classes in his mission school, and the girls help every week in a sewing-school, and, so far as practical work is concerned, everything moves beautifully. But then, Mr. St. John is very high church and very stringent in his notions, and Harry, who is ultra-liberal, says he is good, but narrow; and so when they are together I am quite nervous about them. I want Mr. St. John to appear well to Harry, and I want Harry to please Mr. St. John. Harry is æsthetic and likes the church services, and is ready to go as far as anybody could ask in the way of interesting and beautiful rites and ceremonies, and he likes antiquities and all that, and so to a certain extent they get on nicely; but come to the question of church authority, and Lloyd Garrison and all the radicals are not more untamable. He gets quite wild, and frightens me lest dear Mr. St. John should think him an infidel. And, in fact, Harry has such a sort of latitudinarian way of hearing what all sorts of people have to say, and admitting bits of truth here and there in it, as sometimes makes me rather uneasy. He talks with these Darwinians and scientific men who have an easy sort of matter-of-course way of assuming that the Bible is nothing but an old curiosity-shop of by-gone literature, and is so tolerant in hearing all they have to say, that I quite burn to testify and stand up for my faith – if I knew enough to do it; but I really feel afraid to ask Mr. St. John to help me, because he is so set and solemn, and confines himself to announcing that thus and so is the voice of the church; and you see that don't help me to keep up my end with people that don't care for the church.

But, Mother dear, isn't there some end to toleration; ought we Christians to sit by and hear all that is dearest and most sacred to us spoken of as a by-gone superstition, and smile assent on the ground that everybody must be free to express his opinions in good society? Now, for instance, there is this young Dr. Campbell, whom Harry is in treaty with for articles on the brain and nervous system – a nice, charming, agreeable fellow, and a perfect enthusiast in science, and has got so far that love or hatred or inspiration or heroism or religion is nothing in his view but what he calls "cerebration" – he is so lost and absorbed in cerebration and molecules, and all that sort of thing, that you feel all the time he is observing you to get facts about some of his theories as they do the poor mice and butterflies they experiment with.

The other day he was talking, in his taking-for-granted, rapid way, about the absurdity of believing in prayer, when I stopped him squarely, and told him that he ought not to talk in that way; that to destroy faith in prayer was taking away about all the comfort that poor, sorrowful, oppressed people had. I said it was just like going through a hospital and pulling all the pillows from under the sick people's heads because there might be a more perfect scientific invention by and by, and that I thought it was cruel and hard-hearted to do it. He looked really astonished, and asked me if I believed in prayer. I told him our Saviour had said, "Ask, and ye shall receive," and I believed it. He seemed quite astonished at my zeal, and said he didn't suppose any really cultivated people now-a-days believed those things. I told him I believed everything that Jesus Christ said, and thought he knew more than all the philosophers, and that he said we had a Father that loved us and cared for us, even to the hairs of our heads, and that I shouldn't have courage to live if I didn't believe that. Harry says I did right to speak up as I did. Dr. Campbell don't seem to be offended with me, for he comes here more than ever. He is an interesting fellow, full of life and enthusiasm in his profession, and I like to hear him talk.

But here I am, right in the debatable land between faith and no faith. On the part of a great many of the intelligent, good men whom Harry, for one reason or other, invites to our house, and wants me to be agreeable to, are all shades of opinion, of half faith, and no faith, and I don't wish to hush free conversation, or to be treated like a baby who will cry if they make too much noise; and then on the other hand is Mr. St. John – whom I regard with reverence on account of his holy, self-denying life – who stands so definitely entrenched within the limits of the church, and does not in his own mind ever admit a doubt of anything which the church has settled; and between them and Harry and all I don't know just what I ought to do.

I am sure, if there is a man in the world who means in all things to live the Christian life, it's Harry. There is no difference between him and Mr. St. John there. He is ready for any amount of self-sacrifice, and goes with Mr. St. John to the extent of his ability in his efforts to do good; and yet he really does not believe a great many things that Mr. St. John thinks are Christian doctrines. He says he believes only in the wheat, and not in the chaff, and that it is only the chaff that will be blown away in these modern discussions. With all this, I feel nervous and anxious, and sometimes wish I could go right into some good, safe, dark church, and pull down all the blinds, and shut all the doors, and keep out all the bustle of modern thinking, and pray, and meditate, and have a lovely, quiet time.

Mr. St. John lends me from time to time some of his ritualistic books; and they are so refined and scholarly, and yet so devout, that Harry and I are quite charmed with their tone; but I can't help seeing that, as Harry says, they lead right back into the Romish church – and by a way that seems enticingly beautiful. Sometimes I think it would be quite delightful to have a spiritual director who would save you all the trouble of deciding, and take your case in hand, and tell you exactly what to do at every step. Mr. St. John, I know, would be just the person to assume such a position. He is a natural school-master, and likes to control people, and, although he is so very gentle, I always feel that he is very stringent, and that if I once allowed him ascendancy he would make no allowances. I can feel the " main de fer " through the perfect gentlemanly polish of his exterior; but you see I know Harry never would go completely under his influence, and I shrink from anything that would divide me from my husband, and so I don't make any move in that direction.

You see, I write to you all about these matters, for my mamma is a sweet, good little woman who never troubles her head with anything in this line, and my god-mother, Aunt Maria, is a dear worldly old soul, whose heart is grieved within her because I care so little for the pomps and vanities. She takes it to heart that Harry and I have definitely resolved to give up party-going, and all that useless round of calling and dressing and visiting that is called "going into society," and she sometimes complicates matters by trying her forces to get me into those old grooves I was so tired of running in. I never pretend to talk to her of the deeper wants or reasons of my life, for it would be ludicrously impossible to make her understand. She is a person over whose mind never came the shadow of a doubt that she was right in her views of life; and I am not the person to evangelize her.