The Onlooker | Page 6

She may have prepared the coffee and then read the letter, or read the letter and then prepared the coffee, but she did not do both simultaneously unless she were, not a realist, but an acrobat.
* * * * *
Foreign Devils Again
Among the many reforms foisted upon China by the Powers is a college. At the head of this college is a Foreign Devil and among its professors are six Foreign Devils. The court of last resort, however, is the Governor of Shantung, who is a native of China. He, quite recently, filled the Foreign Devils with indignation because he expelled from the college a student who refused to subscribe to the teachings of Confucius, who was a wise as well as a learned man. The Foreign Devils transferred some of their indignation to Mr. Conger, the United States Minister, who "warned the Throne against infractions of the treaties in respect to the freedom of the Chinese to practice Christianity." This warning probably filled the Throne with even more and hotter indignation than that which seethed in the Foreign Devils. Why should Mr. Conger not follow the custom of his own country and permit every religion to take care of itself? Here is a case in point. A Mr. Noll applied for a license to preach and it was denied to him by a Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian brand because he refused to believe in the personality of Adam. He would not have carried his case to the President even if he had not died. It has been asserted by a Minister of another denomination that Noll was murdered, not in the orthodox way, but simply because he was refused a license to preach. If the murder theory be not untenable Noll was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made, and as all Preachers hold that they are made of this stuff Noll conferred a favor upon the profession by dying of consumption.
* * * * *
Heaven or Hell
Even before Noll died a number of Presbyterian Preachers had announced that they considered Adam, Moses, Jonah and other personages of Note in Bible literature as Myths. With rare exceptions, there is about as little initiative in Professional Preachers as there is in Professional Pugilists, and the last sect of which one might have expected such iconoclastic utterances is that which claims Calvin and John Knox as its shining lights. I remember, as a small boy, feeling sorry for a chum because, as a Presbyterian, he did not know and had no means of finding out whether he had been born to go to Heaven or Hell, and in those days both of those resorts were spelled with capitals and pronounced with awe. Had he been able by a most rigorous observance of all the rules laid down by God and Man to make certain of living in a future state of beatitude I would have felt sorry for him still, as he would be compelled, of necessity, to miss many of the joys of this world; still his future then--though in a hard and grinding measure--would have lain in his own hands. But whether he became a Pirate or a Preacher was all one; he had been born to go to Heaven or Hell and nothing that he could do could enable him to change his final destination. In later life he, evidently, appreciated this, for he became a Stock-Broker, after, as a Preacher, having broken most of the Commandments and fractured the rest. Had the Dominie of the flock of which he was a member expressed a doubt of the existence, some years ago, of Adam, Moses or Jonah, but particularly Adam, he would have saved my friend from much mental and some physical distress.
* * * * *
Adam a Myth
When a hide-bound, moss-grown bigot begets doubts and then removes them, he is like a bull in a china shop and wants to break everything in sight, not through an innate love of destruction, but because he has lost his rope and is too delirious to find the corral. This throwing overboard of Adam so suddenly and without any recently discovered evidence upon his personality or lack of it, comes in the nature of a shock. The act has been perpetrated after the fashion of Captain Kidd in his worst days. It shows a complete lack of even a faint acquaintance with the small amenities that help to smooth the ruts in social intercourse to not only order a personage of Adam's standing and reputation to "walk the plank," but to push him off. Besides, it shows an utter disregard for the feelings of that large body of people who do not think, to wipe out, at one fell wipe, the whole scheme of creation without substituting