XII

ABOUT RELIGION

I HAD a long talk, myself, with Patience Strong the other day. Now and then she comes to see me, and it is always a lovely visit. For Patience is my "alter ego, "-my altior ego, rather; the personality beyond my present, which I yet gladly recognize and wait for; in the hope we all have of the thing to be.

She found me busy with these letters, and somewhat perplexed as to the writing of one more, which it seemed to me ought to be written; and yet I was afraid that if I tried to do it, I should fall into something too abstract, too much seemingly in old ruts, or worse, in new presumptuous departures, in dealing with a subject that is above and beyond, and yet within and integral to, all subjects.

I mean Religion.

Patience Strong showed me just why I felt so and what it was I had to do.

"I ought, in gathering up these papers," I said to her, "to add one other. I have not touched the highest subject of all.” "Are you sure?"

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Well, not distinctly. I mean I have not considered it as a distinct subject."

"Is it?" she asked.

But I did not let her little query interrupt "I want to write a sep

me in

my

statement.

arate letter about it," I said.

“Do you?”

Miss Strong's manner rather surprised me. "Don't I? Why not?" I questioned back. Patience laughed; that gentle, wise laugh of hers, that often says something very earnest, but more discreetly and happily than set solemnity could do it.

I began to see her meaning, but I wanted her to speak it; so I looked up at her, as I always do in answer to that laugh, putting my inquiry with my eyes. She knows then that I know the whole matter is clear and untroubled to her thought, and that I am already assured, awaiting only the full particular of her word to satisfy me.

"Haven't you been telling them something of it all along?"

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Maybe. I have tried to give them something of the truth of things."

"The truth is never separate from the things. It is the Marriage of the King's Son."

"That is one of your beautiful riddles."

"It is no riddle at all, except as everything is a riddle. It is perfectly transparent when you see it."

"That is the riddle. Why don't people see?"

"They see double, where it is only one. They have seen double all along. Things truth the life of things.

with one eye;

with the other.

they were, the

truth

Their eyes are not single. If

whole body -the things and

forms of life would be full of light."

"Tell me more."

Then Patience put me through a little catechism.

"Which came first, sin or religion?"

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'Religion, I suppose; natural religion." "That was not re-ligion. There was no such word then, nor had need to be. Re-ligion is a binding back, a re-uniting. Something has been separated into two, that ought to

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have been kept one. It has to be brought into unity again. Our lives have to be ‘amended according to His word.' That is all; that is all religion means.”

“Sin came first, then, I suppose; but before

that?"

“Before that was the simple beauty of life with the Lord. It was the Garden of Eden. It lay eastward, in the continual sunrising."

“And sin? — Oh, you need not tell me! I see it now, in the very word. Sin was the sundering, the cutting off; the turning away of the earth life into its own darkness. It was making self separate.”

"That was it. That is it. It is the story of humanity, of the individual and the race. - The prodigal took his portion of goods, and went away with it, into the far, foreign country. He might have had all the good in his Father's house. But he went away, and wasted it, in a base, separate living, with those who knew not his Father; and with the husks of things he fed the lowest life. -Going our own way, as far as the separated natural, which so becomes the sensual, will take us, that is sin; that is cutting loose from God, and lying

down among the swine! There has to be a coming back, and a joining again." "Repentance: conversion."

- that re

"Yes; but see how sweet it was, turning to the Father! It was full re-instatement. The robe and the ring and the shoes were all given back, in more rich and precious form than ever. The rags, the nakedness, were done with. The coming back was not to be another sundering, a forced relinquishment of all joy in things; an ascetic repudiation. The prodigal knew this was what he deserved. 'I am no more worthy to be thy son; make me a hired servant,' he said, in his abasement. But the Father restored to him everything. A stern theology has stopped at the hired service, and it has made the service hard. It has relegated the robe and the ring, even the shoes of peace, to a far, separate, disembodied future. It has made a warfare of life, instead of an instant reconciling. There has been a time of fierce crusading; a battling about the tomb of the Christ, not seeing that Christ is arisen and is alive for evermore." "But is n't it a struggle, - this coming back; this recognizing and obeying the Divine again?"