Burned Bridges | Page 9

not try to extend our field, if we made no effort to bear light into the dark places. Man's spiritual need is always greater than any material need can ever be. I hardly expect to accomplish a great deal at first. But the work will grow."
"I see, I see," MacLeod chuckled dryly. "It's partly a matter of the Methodist Church tryin' to compete with the fathers, eh? Well, I am no what ye'd call devout. I ha' had much experience wi' these red folk, an' them that's both red an' white. An' I dinna agree with ye aboot their speeritual needs. I think ye sky-pilots would do better to leave them to their ain gods, such as they are. Man, do ye know that it's better than a century since the fathers began their missionary labors? A hundred years of teachin' an' preachin'. The sum of it a' is next to nothin'--an' naebody knows that better than the same fathers. They're wise, keen-sighted men, too. What good they do they do in a material way. If men like ye came here wi' any certitude of lightenin' the struggle for existence--but ye canna do that; or at least ye dinna do that. Ye'll find that neither red men nor white ha' time or inclination to praise the Lord an' his grace an' bounty when their life's one long struggle wi' hardships an' adversity. The God ye offer them disna mitigate these things. Forbye that, the Indian disna want to be Christianized. When ye come to a determination of abstract qualities, his pagan beliefs are as good for him as the God of the Bible. What right ha' we to cram oor speeritual dogmas doon his gullet?"
MacLeod applied himself to relighting his pipe. Thompson gathered himself together. He was momentarily stricken with speechless amazement. He knew there were such things as critical unbelievers, but he had never encountered one in the flesh. His life had been too excellently supervised and directed in youth by the spinster aunts. Nor does materialistic philosophy flourish in a theological seminary. Young men in training for the ministry are taught to strangle doubt whenever it rears its horrid head, to see only with the single eye of faith.
Neither the bitterness of experience nor a natural gentleness of spirit had ever permitted Thompson to know the beauty and wisdom of tolerance. Whosoever disputed his creed and his consecrated purpose must be in error. The evangelical spirit glowed within him when he faced the factor across the little table. Figuratively speaking he cleared for action. His host, being a hard-headed son of a disputatious race, met him more than half-way. As a result midnight found them still wordily engaged, one maintaining with emotional fervor that man's spiritual welfare was the end and aim of human existence; the other as outspoken--if more calmly and critically so--in his assertion that a tooth-and-toenail struggle for existence left no room in any rational man's life for the manner of religion set forth in general by churches and churchmen. The edge of acrimony crept into the argument.
"The Lord said, 'Leave all thou hast and follow me,'" Thompson declared. "My dear sir, you cannot dispute--"
"Ay, but yon word was said eighteen hundred years past," MacLeod interrupted. "Since which day there's been a fair rate o' progress in man's knowledge of himself an' his needs. The Biblical meeracles in the way o' provender dinna happen nowadays--although some ither modern commonplaces would partake o' the meeraculous if we didna have a rational knowledge of their process. Men are no fed wi' loaves and fishes until they themselves ha' first gotten the loaves an' the fish. At least, it disna so happen i' the Pachugan deestreect. It's much the same the world over, but up here especially ye'll find that the problem o' subsistence is first an' foremost, an' excludes a' else till it's solved."
With this MacLeod, weary of an unprofitable controversy, arose, took up a candle and showed his scandalized guest the way to bed.
Thompson was full of a willingness to revive the argument when he was roused for breakfast at sunrise. But MacLeod had said his say. He abhorred vain repetition. Since it takes two to keep an argument going, Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which presently died weakly of inattention. When he gave over trying to inject a theological motif into the conversation, he found MacLeod responsive enough. The factor touched upon native customs, upon the fur trade, upon the vast and unexploited resources of the North, all of which was more or less hazy to Thompson.
His men had intimated an early start. Their journey down the Athabasca had impressed Thompson with the wisdom of that. Only so could they escape the brazen heat of the sun, and still accomplish a