Tea was not quite ready when they arrived at their boarding-house, and they sat on the porch while waiting for it, Captain Raymond looking over the daily paper just taken from the mail.
Sandy McAlpine and a younger brother named Hugh were sitting near by looking over a picture-book together.
“Is your mother not well, boys?” asked the captain, glancing from his paper to them. “I think I have not seen her at all to-day.”
“No, sir,” replied Sandy; “She’s lying down with a headache.”
“She got a letter,” added Hugh; “one of those letters that always make her cry and get a bad headache. I wish they wouldn’t come, ever any more.”
“Hush, hush, Hugh!” muttered Sandy, frowning at his brother and nudging him with his elbow. “You know mother wouldn’t like you talking so, especially to a stranger.”
“I haven’t said anything wicked,” returned the little fellow. “May be you like to see mother cry and have a headache, but I don’t, and I’d just thrash the man that sends her such horrid letters, if I could; and I will, too, when I’m a big, strong man.”
Captain Raymond was seemingly quite occupied with his paper during this little aside between the lads, but he heard every word, and was thinking to himself, “It is probably some financial trouble, and I must see what I can do for her relief; there are very special promises to widows, and as one of the Lord’s stewards it becomes me to be ready to assist them in distress.”
Marian came to the door at that moment with the announcement that tea was ready.
The Raymonds at once rose and obeyed the summons, the captain with his newspaper still in his hand. He laid it aside before sitting down to his meal, and forgot it on leaving the room after supper.
He presently remembered it, however, and went back in search of it. He found Mrs. McAlpine there alone, in tears, and with an open letter in her hand. He would have retreated, but perceived that it was already too late. She was aware of his presence, and opening her lips to speak.
“Excuse me, my dear madam,” he said. “I had no thought of intruding upon your privacy, but—”
“You are entirely excusable, sir,” she answered gently, and with an effort to recover her composure; “this room is public to you and your children, and you have a perfect right to enter it unceremoniously when you will. Will you take a seat?”
“Although I merely stepped in to get my paper, which I carelessly left here, I shall accept your invitation with pleasure, dear madam, if you will allow me the privilege of talking with you as a friend,” he said, in a deeply sympathizing tone. “I can not be blind to the fact that you are in trouble, and if in any way I can assist you, it will give me sincere pleasure to do so.”
Then with the greatest delicacy he offered financial assistance, if that were what she stood in need of.
“Sir, you are most kind,” she said, with grateful emotion, “but it is not that; it is something far worse;—it is that this wicked, rebellious heart will not submit, as it ought, to the cross He—my blessed Lord and Master—has laid upon me. Oh!” clasping her hands together, while the big tears streamed down over her pale and sunken cheeks, “I fear—I very much fear—I hae loved the creature more than the Creator, and that this is why this cross has been laid upon me; this cross, so heavy that it bears me to the earth!”
She sank sobbing into a chair.
He drew up another and seated himself beside her. “Dear madam,” he said, in moved tones, “we have not a high-priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
“I know not what your trouble is, but sure I am that thus you may find grace, mercy, peace, and the fulfillment of the promise, ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be!’”
“Yes, yes, I know,” she sobbed, covering her face with her hands, “and whiles I’m willing to bear whatever He sends; but at times the cross seems heavier than mortal strength can endure, so that it crushes me to the very earth! O Willie, my Willie, how happy we were in those early years o’ our married life, when you were all the world to me and I was all the world to you! but now—I can no longer feel that you are mine. Others hae come between us; they have stolen your love from me, and my heart is breaking, breaking!
“But, oh, this is sinful, sinful! Lord, help a poor, frail worm of the dust to be obedient and submissive to Thy will!” She seemed to have forgotten the captain’s presence, but light was dawning upon him.
“I think you are accusing yourself unjustly, my dear madam,” he said, in pitying tones; “are mistaking God-implanted feelings for the suggestions of the evil one.”
“Alas, no!” she sighed. “Has not God given a new revelation to his prophet, ordaining that ‘it is the duty of every woman to give other wives to her husband, even as Sara gave Hagar to Abram, and that if she refuses it shall be lawful for the husband to take them without her consent, and she shall be destroyed for her disobedience’?”
“No,” returned the captain, and there was stern indignation in his tone—not against the poor, deluded woman, but toward her base deceivers—“a thousand times, no! any pretence to a new revelation, no matter by whom it may be set up, must be a base fabrication. Listen!—”
“Ah, sir, you mean kindly,” she said, “but I must not listen to you, for I perceive—what I had already suspected—that you are not one of the saints; that you do not believe the teachings of the new gospel.”
“New gospel!” he exclaimed, his eyes kindling. “Tell me, Mrs. McAlpine, were you not brought up to believe the Bible?” taking out a pocket edition constantly carried with him, as he spoke.
“Surely, sir, and I may say with the Psalmist, ‘Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction.’”
He opened his Bible, and turning to the first chapter of Galatians, read aloud: “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel; which is not another; but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.”
“Could anything be plainer or stronger than that?” he asked, with emphasis.
“No,” she said slowly, looking like one waking from a dream. “Why have I not remembered those words before? But—there has been a new revelation; at least, they told me so.”
“A new revelation!” he repeated, in a tone of utter incredulity. “Listen again to God’s own word, inspired and written many hundreds of year before the birth of your so-called prophets, (‘false prophets, dreamers of dreams, who have spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God ... to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in’).”
Opening to the very last page of the New Testament he read again: “I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”
She gazed at him for an instant in awestruck silence, then rousing herself, said slowly, “But they say there are corruptions, mis-translations.” She paused, leaving her sentence unfinished.
“There is no lack of proof that the Scriptures are the revealed word of God, that the writers were inspired by God, and that if any corruptions or mis-translations have crept in they are so few and slight as to be of little account, making small difference in the meaning,” he said. “The proofs of the authenticity and inspiration of the Scriptures are so many that it would take a long time to state them all.”
“There is no need in my case, sir,” she interrupted. “I know they are divine; the internal evidence alone would be all-sufficient to me.”
“And yet their teachings are directly opposed to those of Mormonism.”
“Not against polygamy, surely? God knows I would be glad to think so; but how many of the prominent characters of the Old Testament had a plurality of wives. Even David, ‘the man after God’s own heart,’ had many more than one.”
“But the Bible nowhere tells us that God approved of the practice; and how often the history it gives shows that polygamy brought sin and misery on those who practised it. God made but one wife for Adam.”
“But Sarai gave Hagar to Abram.”
“But God did not command it, nor are we anywhere told that he approved it. It was a sinful deed done in unbelief, and brought forth the bitter fruits of sin.”
For a moment or more she sat silent, evidently in deep thought. Then she spoke:
“I believe you are right, sir; though it has not struck me in that way before. It did bring ‘forth the bitter fruits of sin,’ very much the same fruits that polygamy brings forth here and in this day,” she concluded with a heavy sigh.
Captain Raymond was again turning over the leaves of his Bible. “Listen to the words of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Have ye not read, that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh! Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.’”
“That passage is from Matthew, and Mark also gives these words of the Master,” the captain said. “And have you not noticed how Paul in his epistles always seems to take it for granted, when speaking of the marriage tie, that a man can lawfully have but one wife at a time?
“‘For the husband is the head of the wife’ (not wives).
“‘He that loveth his wife loveth himself,’ ... ‘Let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself.’
“‘A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife.’
“But Mormonism teaches that bishops may have, and ought to have, many wives. Polygamy is encouraged on the ground that the rank and dignity of its members is in proportion to the number of their wives and children. Is not that the fact?”
“Yes,” she answered with a heavy sigh, “it is according to the revelation made to Bishop Young.”
“A revelation indeed! though, as we have seen, the record was closed in the time of the Apostle John, and a fearful curse pronounced on any who should add to it. A revelation opposed to all the teachings of God’s word on that subject. It came from the father of lies, for God never contradicts himself; all the teachings of every part of his word are consistent with each other, which is one of the proofs of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures.
“From Genesis to Revelation the teaching, both direct and implied, is that God made of twain one flesh, and a man may have but one wife. Adam had but one, and in the book of Revelation John tells us the angel said to him, ‘Come hither, and I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife,’—not wives, you will observe; there was but one.”
“You shake my faith in Mormonism,” she said, with a startled, troubled look.
“I rejoice to hear it,” he responded; “would that I could shake it to its utter destruction.
“Popery has been well called ‘Satan’s masterpiece,’ and Mormonism is another by the same hand; the points of resemblance are sufficient to prove that to my mind.”
“Points of resemblance?” she repeated inquiringly, “I have never thought there were any, and I have a heart hatred to Popery, as you may well suppose, coming, as I do, from a land where she slew, in former ages, so many of God’s saints. But surely in one thing the two are very different—the one forbidding to marry, the other encouraging men to take many wives.”
“The difference in regard to that is not so great as may appear at first sight,” he returned; “both pander to men’s lusts—for what are nunneries but ‘priests’ prisons for women,’ as one who left the ranks of the Popish priesthood has called them?
“Both teach children to forsake their parents; both teach lying and murder, when by such crimes they are expected to advance the cause of their church.”
“Oh, sir, so bad as that?” she exclaimed, with a shudder.
“It is computed that Popery has slain fifty millions of those she calls heretics, and oftentimes she has secured her victims by the basest treachery. All that in past ages, to be sure, but she claims infallibility and denies that she has ever done wrong; besides, to this day she shows the same persecuting spirit, and actually kills, too, wherever she has the power.
“As to Mormonism doing likewise, look at the Mountain Meadow massacre, the lying and perjury to prevent convictions for polygamy, and the private assassinations committed to carry out their fearful and wicked doctrine of blood atonement.
“In that doctrine also—asserting that the blood of Christ does not cleanse from all sin those who accept his offered salvation—they agree with the Church of Rome, whose teaching is that forgiveness of sins and final salvation are to be obtained by penance and good works supplementing the finished work of Christ; that good works are to be done not—as the Bible teaches—because we are saved, but in order to earn salvation; thus flatly contradicting God’s word, which says:
“‘A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.’
“‘By grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.’
“‘The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’”
Again he opened his Bible and read: “‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him; when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar and the father of it.’
“‘He that is of God heareth God’s words; ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.’
“Are not those words of the Master peculiarly applicable to all those teaching doctrines so diametrically opposed to his?” he asked.
“They certainly are applicable to any who teach false doctrine,” she replied.
“And can you call the Mormon doctrine of ‘blood atonement,’ by any softer name?”
“No, for I believe God’s word, ‘the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin’; and its teaching that he is the one sacrifice for sin.”
“And yet you call yourself one of them?”
“I have done so. I stood out against it for a time—in the old home in Scotland—but the man—a Mormon missionary—was very plausible and seemed very devout, quoted Scripture, won Willie, my husband, over first, and they both kept at me till I grew fairly bewildered and half crazed, and at last, when Willie told me he was bound to come over to America and join the Latter-day Saints, I gave up and agreed to do the same; for how could I part from him? and no word at all had been breathed to either of us about polygamy; we had not thought it was one of their doctrines.”
A spasm of pain convulsed her features, and for a moment she seemed unable to go on.
“Does that speak well for their honesty?” he asked, in stern indignation.
She shook her head. “No,” she said chokingly; “and the thought of that has sometimes made me grow weak in the faith till my heart would almost stand still with fright.”
The last words were spoken in a suppressed tone, little louder than a whisper, and with a half-terrified glance from side to side, as if she feared they might be overheard.
“And no wonder, considering their fiendish practice of ‘blood atonement,’” he responded, regarding the poor, trembling woman with deep commiseration. “I presume you had not been long a dweller in Mormondom before you were more fully instructed in regard to those two important doctrines?”
“No, sir, not long,” she replied, “as to polygamy at least; and when my husband declared his intention of carrying that into practice, I was heart-broken and entreated him to forbear, remembering his solemn marriage vow to cleave to me only so long as we both should live.
“He tried argument with me at first, coaxing and persuasion, but finding I was not to be moved by those, he grew very angry and abusive, and hinted darkly at the danger of the blood atonement doctrine being carried out in my case if I continued obstinate in refusing my consent.”
“And so you gave it?”
“Yes. Oh, sir, it was like consenting to have my heart torn from my bosom!” she exclaimed in a low tone tremulous with pain. “But to withhold it would do no good, and would endanger my life—my life, no longer valuable save for the sake of my dear children: but for their sake I did desire to live. Ah, sir, I could not but ask myself, ‘Is this what it is to live in free America?’”
“I blush for my country, in view of the outrages she has allowed in the name of religion!” he exclaimed, his fine, manly countenance flushing with shame and indignation as he spoke. “And yet,” he continued interrogatively, “you came to believe it right for a man thus to break his marriage vow?”
“I grew bewildered with misery,” she said. “I had no choice but to submit, and felt that I should go mad with the thought of my husband’s wickedness if I held fast to the teachings of my childhood. I could not answer their arguments (ah, I see now that more prayer and searching of the Scriptures might have enabled me to do so; yet the result would have been a violent death; probably by Willie’s own hand, making him a murderer as well as—a breaker of the seventh commandment), so I resigned myself to my fate—so far as I could—and have ever since been fighting with the anguish and rebellion in my broken heart.”
She was silent for a moment, struggling with her emotion, then with a grateful look at him, “I don’t know how it is, sir, that you have so quickly won my confidence,” she said. “I have never before breathed a word of all this into any mortal ear. Even Marian knows no more than that I suffer because—other women share the affection that in former, happier days was all my own.”
“It is sometimes a relief to unburden our hearts to a fellow-creature,” he replied; “there is healing and comfort in human sympathy, and I assure you, dear madam, that you have mine in no slight measure. The man who can so wound the heart of a loving wife must be worse than a brute.
“But the government has at last come to the rescue of these oppressed wives. I trust the Edmunds Bill will prove the complete destruction of polygamy, and efface this bar sinister from my country’s scutcheon.”
“I cannot but desire it, if only for my daughter’s sake,” she returned. “Marian will soon be a woman, and, if your government does not help, may be forced into a polygamous marriage. She would never go into it of her own free will; she is no Mormon, but, young as she is, has always declared intense hatred and abhorrence of both polygamy and the blood atonement doctrine—and practice,” she added, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Oh, sir, no small part of my suffering is occasioned by the change in my child’s feelings toward her father; from loving him with an ardent affection, she has turned to hating him with a bitter hatred, as the destroyer of her mother’s peace and happiness.”
She ended with a burst of uncontrollable weeping.
Captain Raymond’s kind heart was sorely pained by the sight of her distress. He felt himself powerless to give relief, but spoke gently to her of the love and sympathy of Jesus, the “Friend that sticketh closer than a brother,” and to whom “all power is given in heaven and in earth.”
“Carry all your griefs, your fears, and anxieties to Him,” he said. “There is no trouble too great for his power to remove, too small for his loving attention. His love to his people is infinite, and he never regards their sorrows with indifference.
“In all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the Angel of his presence saved them.”
“It is true,” she said tremulously; “I have found it true in my own experience. ‘In his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.’ And so he has done with me—his most unworthy and doubting servant. Ah, sir, you, I am sure, are one of God’s own people, whatever may be your views with regard to the Mormon creed, and I beseech you to pray for me that my faith in God, in Jesus, and his gospel may be strengthened and increased.”