Читать книгу My Wayward Pardner; or, My Trials with Josiah, America, the Widow Bump, and Etcetery онлайн

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Why, everybody says they never did see such a time as it is now for arguin’ and fightin’ back and forth on that subject. Why, the papers are full of it. “Is there a Hell?” And “How deep is it?” And “How many are a goin’ there?” And “How long are they a goin’ to stay?” Books are wrote on it, and lectures are lectured, and sermons are preached on both sides of the Atlantic; and Kellup and his father are by no means the only ones who get mad as hornets if anybody disputes ’em in their views of the Judgment.

But I am glad enough that I don’t feel that way, for it would make me crazy as a loon if I thought I was sot to judge one soul, let alone the universe.

Why, how under the sun would I go to work to judge that one soul, and do it right? I could see some of the outward acts, ketch glimpses of the outside self. But how could I unlock that secret door that shuts in the real person,—how could I get inside that door that the nearest and the dearest never peeked through, that God only holds the key to—the secret recesses of the immortal soul—and behold the unspeakable, the soarin’ desires, and yearnin’s, and divine aspirations—the good and true intentions—the dreams and visions of immortal beauty, and purity, and goodness—and the secret thoughts that are sin—the unfolded scarlet buds of wrong, and the white folded buds of purity and holynesses, each waiting for the breath of circumstance, of change, and what we call chance, to unfold and blossom into beauty or hejusness? How could my eyes see if I should put on ’em the very strongest spectacles earthly wisdom could make—how could they behold all the passion and the glory, the despair and the rapture, the wingéd hopes and faiths, the groveling, petty fears and cares, the human and the divine, the eternal wonder and mystery of a soul?