Adventures in Contentment Part 14

"Before you say such things," he said, "I beg you to read my book."

He took the tract from my hands and opened it on his knee.

"The Bible tells us," he said, "that in the beginning G.o.d created the heavens and the earth, He made the firmament and divided the waters.

But does the Bible say that He created a h.e.l.l or a devil? Does it?"

I shook my head.

"Well, then!" he said triumphantly, "and that isn't all, either. The historian Moses gives in detail a full account of what was made in six days. He tells how day and night were created, how the sun and the moon and the stars were made; he tells how G.o.d created the flowers of the field, and the insects, and the birds, and the great whales, and said, 'Be fruitful and multiply,' He accounts for every minute of the time in the entire six days--and of course G.o.d rested on the seventh--and there is not one word about h.e.l.l. Is there?"

I shook my head.

"Well then--" exultantly, "where is it? I'd like to have any man, no matter how wise he is, answer that. Where is it?"

"That," I said, "has troubled me, too. We don't always know just where our h.e.l.ls are. If we did we might avoid them. We are not so sensitive to them as we should be--do you think?"

He looked at me intently: I went on before he could answer:

"Why, I've seen men in my time living from day to day in the very atmosphere of perpetual torment, and actually arguing that there was no h.e.l.l. It is a strange sight, I a.s.sure you, and one that will trouble you afterwards. From what I know of h.e.l.l, it is a place of very loose boundaries. Sometimes I've thought we couldn't be quite sure when we were in it and when we were not."

I did not tell my friend, but I was thinking of the remark of old Swedenborg: "The trouble with h.e.l.l is we shall not know it when we arrive."

At this point Mr. Purdy burst out again, having opened his little book at another page.

"When Adam and Eve had sinned," he said, "and the G.o.d of Heaven walked in the garden in the cool of the evening and called for them and they had hidden themselves on account of their disobedience, did G.o.d say to them: Unless you repent of your sins and get forgiveness I will shut you up in yon dark and dismal h.e.l.l and torment you (or have the devil do it) for ever and ever? Was there such a word?"

I shook my head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He reached into his pocket and handed me a little paper-covered booklet"]

"No, sir," he said vehemently, "there was not."

"But does it say," I asked, "that Adam and Eve had not themselves been using their best wits in creating a h.e.l.l? That point has occurred to me.

In my experience I've known both Adams and Eves who were most adroit in their capacity for making places of torment--and afterwards of getting into them. Just watch yourself some day after you've sown a crop of desires and you'll see promising little h.e.l.ls starting up within you like pigweeds and pusley after a warm rain in your garden. And our heavens, too, for that matter--they grow to our own planting: and how sensitive they are too! How soon the hot wind of a pa.s.sion withers them away! How surely the fires of selfishness blacken their perfection!"

I'd almost forgotten Mr. Purdy--and when I looked around, his face wore a peculiar puzzled expression not unmixed with alarm. He held up his little book eagerly almost in my face.

"If G.o.d had intended to create a h.e.l.l," he said, "I a.s.sert without fear of successful contradiction that when G.o.d was there in the Garden of Eden it was the time for Him to have put Adam and Eve and all their posterity on notice that there was a place of everlasting torment. It would have been only a square deal for Him to do so. But did He?"

I shook my head.

"He did not. If He had mentioned h.e.l.l on that occasion I should not now dispute its existence. But He did not. This is what He said to Adam--the very words: 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' You see He did not say 'Unto h.e.l.l shalt thou return.' He said, 'Unto dust.' That isn't h.e.l.l, is it?"

"Well," I said, "there are in my experience a great many different kinds of h.e.l.ls. There are almost as many kinds of h.e.l.ls as there are men and women upon this earth. Now, your h.e.l.l wouldn't terrify me in the least.

My own makes me no end of trouble. Talk about burning pitch and brimstone: how futile were the imaginations of the old fellows who conjured up such puerile torments. Why, I can tell you of no end of h.e.l.ls that are worse--and not half try. Once I remember, when I was younger----"

I happened to glance around at my companion. He sat there looking at me with horror--fascinated horror.

"Well, I won't disturb your peace of mind by telling _that_ story," I said.

"Do you believe that we shall go to h.e.l.l?" he asked in a low voice.

"That depends," I said. "Let's leave out the question of 'we'; let's be more comfortably general in our discussion. I think we can safely say that some go and some do not. It's a curious and noteworthy thing," I said, "but I've known of cases--There are some people who aren't really worth good honest tormenting--let alone the rewards of heavenly bliss.

They just haven't anything to torment! What is going to become of such folks? I confess I don't know. You remember when Dante began his journey into the infernal regions----"

"I don't believe a word of that Dante," he interrupted excitedly; "it's all a made up story. There isn't a word of truth in it; it is a blasphemous book. Let me read you what I say about it in here."

"I will agree with you without argument," I said, "that it is not _all_ true. I merely wanted to speak of one of Dante's experiences as an ill.u.s.tration of the point I'm making. You remember that almost the first spirits he met on his journey were those who had never done anything in this life to merit either heaven or h.e.l.l. That always struck me as being about the worst plight imaginable for a human being. Think of a creature not even worth good honest brimstone!"

Since I came home, I've looked up the pa.s.sage; and it is a wonderful one. Dante heard wailings and groans and terrible things said in many tongues. Yet these were not the souls of the wicked. They were only those "who had lived without praise or blame, thinking of nothing but themselves." "Heaven would not dull its brightness with those, nor would lower h.e.l.l receive them."

"And what is it," asked Dante, "that makes them so grievously suffer?"

"Hopelessness of death," said Virgil, "Their blind existence here, and immemorable former life, make them so wretched that they envy every other lot. Mercy and Justice alike disdain them. Let us speak of them no more. Look, and pa.s.s!"

But Mr. Purdy, in spite of his timidity, was a man of much persistence.

"They tell me," he said, "when they try to prove the reasonableness of h.e.l.l, that unless you show sinners how they're goin' to be tormented, they'd never repent. Now, I say that if a man has to be scared into religion, his religion ain't much good."

"There," I said, "I agree with you completely."

His face lighted up, and he continued eagerly:

"And I tell 'em: You just go ahead and try for heaven; don't pay any attention to all this talk about everlasting punishment."

"Good advice!" I said.

It had begun to grow dark. The brown cow was quiet at last. We could hear small faint sounds from the calf. I started slowly through the bracken. Mr. Purdy hung at my elbow, stumbling sideways as he walked, but continuing to talk eagerly. So we came to the place where the calf lay. I spoke in a low voice:

"So boss, so boss."

I would have laid my hand on her neck but she started back with a wild toss of her horns. It was a beautiful calf! I looked at it with a peculiar feeling of exultation, pride, ownership. It was red-brown, with a round curly pate and one white leg. As it lay curled there among the ferns, it was really beautiful to look at. When we approached, it did not so much as stir. I lifted it to its legs, upon which the cow uttered a strange half-wild cry and ran a few steps off, her head thrown in the air. The calf fell back as though it had no legs.

"She is telling it not to stand up," said Mr. Purdy.

I had been afraid at first that something was the matter!

"Some are like that," he said. "Some call their calves to run. Others won't let you come near 'em at all; and I've even known of a case where a cow gored its calf to death rather than let anyone touch it."

I looked at Mr. Purdy not without a feeling of admiration. This was a thing he knew: a language not taught in the universities. How well it became him to know it; how simply he expressed it! I thought to myself: There are not many men in this world, after all, that it will not pay us to go to school to--for something or other.

I should never have been able, indeed, to get the cow and calf home, last night at least, if it had not been for my chance friend. He knew exactly what to do and how to do it. He wore a stout coat of denim, rather long in the skirts. This he slipped off, while I looked on in some astonishment, and spread it out on the ground. He placed my staff under one side of it and found another stick nearly the same size for the other side. These he wound into the coat until he had made a sort of stretcher. Upon this we placed the unresisting calf. What a fine one it was! Then, he in front and I behind, we carried the stretcher and its burden out of the wood. The cow followed, sometimes threatening, sometimes bellowing, sometimes starting off wildly, head and tail in the air, only to rush back and, venturing up with trembling muscles, touch her tongue to the calf, uttering low maternal sounds.

"Keep steady," said Mr. Purdy, "and everything'll be all right."

When we came to the brook we stopped to rest. I think my companion would have liked to start his argument again, but he was too short of breath.

It was a prime spring evening! The frogs were tuning up. I heard a drowsy cowbell somewhere over the hills in the pasture. The brown cow, with eager, outstretched neck, was licking her calf as it lay there on the improvised stretcher. I looked up at the sky, a blue avenue of heaven between the tree tops; I felt the peculiar sense of mystery which nature so commonly conveys.