The Zeit-Geist | Page 3

all the young men go to his house, except a few that we've
got in our Christian Association."

The speaker was stricter in his views than I saw cause to be; but then, I
knew something of his life; he was giving it day by day to save the men
of whom he was talking. He had a better right than I to know what was
best for them.
"When you have a thorough-going man of the world," he said, "every
one knows what that means, and there's not so much harm done. But
this Mr. Toyner is always talking about God, and using his influence to
make people pray to God. Such men are not ready to pray until they are
prepared to give up the world! The God that he tells them of is a fiction
of his imagination; indeed, I might say a mere creature of his fancy,
who is going to save all men in the end, whatever they do!"
"A Universalist!"
"Oh, worse than that--at least, I have read the books of Universalists
who, though their error was great, did not appear to me so far astray. I
cannot understand it! I cannot understand it!" he went on; "I cannot
understand the influence that he has obtained over our more educated
class; for twenty years ago he was himself a low, besotted drunkard,
and his wife is the daughter of a murderer! Still less do I understand
how such people can claim to be religious at all, and yet not see to what
awful evil the small beginnings of vice must lead. I tell you, if a man is
allowed by Providence to lead an easy life, and remains unfaithful, he
may still have some good metal in him which adversity might refine;
but when people have gone through all that Toyner and his wife have
been through--not a child that has been born to them but has died at the
breast--I say, when they have been through all that, and still lead a
worldly, unsatisfactory life, you may be sure that there is nothing in
them that has the true ring of manhood or womanhood."
I was left alone to enter Mr. Toyner's gates. I found myself in a large
pleasure-ground, where Nature had been guided, not curtailed, in her
work. I was walking upon a winding drive, walled on either side by a
wild irregular line of shrubs, where the delicate forms of acacias and
crab-apples lifted themselves high in comparison to the lower lilac and
elderberry-bushes. I watched the sunlit acacias as they fluttered,
spreading their delicate leaves and golden pods against the blue above

me. I made my way leisurely in the direction of music which I heard at
some distance. I had not advanced far before another person came into
my path.
He was a slight, delicate man of middle size. His hair and moustache
were almost quite white. Something in the air of neatness and
perfection about his dress, in the extreme gravity and clearness of his
grey eyes, even in the fine texture of that long, thin, drooping
moustache, made it evident to me that this new companion was not
what we call an ordinary person.
"Your friend did not come in with you." The voice spoke
disappointment; the speaker looked wistfully at the form of the
retreating clergyman which he could just see through a gap in the
shrubs.
"You wished him to come?"
"I saw you coming. I came toward the gate in the hope that he might
come in." Then he added a word of cordial greeting. I perceived that I
was walking with my host.
There are some men to whom one instinctively pays the compliment of
direct speech. "I have been walking with two clergymen. I understand
that you differ from both with regard to religious opinion."
It appeared to me that after this speech of mine he took my measure
quietly. He did not say in so many words he did not see that this
difference of opinion was a sufficient reason for their absence, but by
some word or sign he gave me to understand that, adding:
"I feel myself deprived of a great benefit in being without their society.
They are the two best and noblest men I know."
"It is rare for men to take pleasure in the society of their opponents."
"Yet you will admit that to be willing to learn from those from whom
we differ is the only path to wisdom."

"It is difficult to tread that path without letting go what we already have,
and that produces chaos."
With intensity both of thought and feeling he took up the words that I
had dropped half idly, and showed me what he thought to be the truth
and untruth