THE QUEER ONE

"Sartin sure! By the big dipper, it's sartin shame!" Bob McCartney stood at my door all excitement as he delivered himself of these explosives.

Bob is a short man and middle-wide, and he is on the increase. This particular morning he stood on my stoop, the very personification of heat. He took off his hat and mopped his head and his red face and without waiting went on with his message.

"The Missus Jim is took sudden and terrible sick. Doc Withers is there and don't know what ails her. Think of anything she could take? Anything you know of she could do? Everybody is suggestin'! Neighbors comin' an' goin' all the while, tryin' to do something for the Missus Jim. Didn't seem to be anything more I could do. You can't try everything to onct, so think's I, I'll go and see him. He comes from New York an' mebbe he'll have a new idea."

"It might be a good thing to let one or two ideas have a chance," I replied. "I've noticed that ideas that get rushed and crowded don't do as well."

Bob brightened and pulling on his cap, backed down the stairs. "I'll tell 'em to go slow and let the first ideas have a chance."

I wisely concluded that Jim would have all the help and more than he needed and I did not call for three days. When I did Mrs. Jim herself answered my knock and from just behind Jim shouted:

"She's all right again. Didn't prove so bad as we thought. Something got inside of her that didn't belong there and soon's it got out, she come along all right."

"Was it the doctor or you, Jim, that cured her?" I asked, as I sat down.

"I've been thinking o' that a good deal, this day," he answered.

"Everything traces back to the Almighty, when you let your thought travel far enough, and I'd like to thank Him, first. I prayed a good deal and though I don't need no thanks, I believe those prayers helped. Then the neighbors helped. They loaned hot water bags and fetched pillows, an' done all manner o' things, 'till thinks I, nobody ever had such neighbors as us. Then there was Doc Withers. Now some folks give all the credit to the docs, but I don't; neither do I take all the praise from 'em. Their His servants, too, and I callate dividing up the responsibility and the thanks for a cure is a mighty difficult task. I know I ain't worthy to do it myself."

A knock, a quick, nervous knock came just then and Jim answered it, throwing wide the door, as he always did, with his cheery, "Come right in."

A thin, tall man with a long rain-coat and big, black-rimmed glasses stepped in. Snatching off his gray Alpine hat, he introduced himself.

"I'm Clarence O. Jewett, of Boston. Am visiting in Newfoundland, spending two and a half days here. Came in on the steamer 'Rosalind' from Halifax, yesterday, going back tomorrow. In St. John's I was told of Harbor Jim and that his wife was very ill, and I hired a car and came out here and I am ready to give your wife a treatment. I have been thinking that perhaps the Lord is using me to bring the only, real, true religion to Newfoundland. When your wife has seen the light and comes to know the truth that sin and everything material is a delusion, deception and a snare, she will understand that being perfect she cannot really suffer from an illusion. This earth and all things upon which we look are but shadows. When your wife is whole again and understands the non-reality of matter, she will testify and others may hear and heed, until many on this island will come to praise the Lord and to remember Clarence O. Jewett, of Boston, who brought the only, real, true religion—"

At this moment, Mrs. Jim, who had stepped out at the knock, re-entered the room and Jim had his first chance to speak.

"This is the Missus. The news you received is a little late, for she has recovered. Since you are a mound-tripper and doin' the country, probably we ought not to keep you. The road across is about five hundred miles, and if you're goin' to see any more'n St. John's, you'll have to hurry afore your ship sails. There was a man down here last year who staid two days in St. John's and then wrote a book about Newfoundland, but he skipped a few things."

The man was keenly disappointed. He changed his weight from one foot to the other, for he had not yet taken the seat that Jim had offered him. He took off his glasses and wiped them and then seating himself and clearing his throat, resumed.

"The cure is but temporary. Your wife will not be well until she has learned that there is but one thing to know and that is the truth and the truth about the truth. And though you cannot expect to understand it, I will start you on the way toward the one, only, real, true religion."

"Am I supposed just to listen?" asked Jim, "or do you think I might know enough to ask a question now and then?"

"Certainly, certainly," the queer man replied. "I have an answer for every question that is absolutely logical. Take the question of the existence of evil; that is the most puzzling question in all the world. I have an answer to it that is entirely satisfactory. Nobody can contradict it. Evil is matter. Matter does not exist. Therefore evil does not exist and since it does not exist, it never could have been created. Evil and matter are just wrong statements of mind. Do you see? Is it perfectly clear to you?"

Jim gulped, as though he was in swimming and had accidentally swallowed some salt water. I had come to have a profound admiration for Jim and was coming more and more to appreciate his wholesome philosophy, and now I was waiting to see what Jim would do with this man's statements.

"You have doused me beyond my depth, I guess," was the somewhat puzzled reply of Jim. "It isn't plain to me. But heave ahead a little and mebbe I'll get some idea of what port you're sailin' to. The only thing you have said so far that has any familiar sound to me is what you said about the one, only, real, true religion. I've heard that several times before. Seems though most every kind o' religion and every different church feels that it's got the one, only, real, true religion. Strikes me, every blessed one on'em has got some of the real religion and also some foolishness and smallness and no one on'em has got the pure, undiluted article that Jesus Christ brought to the world. I think He come the nearest to livin' the real religion. But how'd you discover that your's was the only religion?"

The queer man evidently thought the question irrelevant, for he was off again.

"It is now proved that all is mental or mind. Your thoughts are the opposites of mind. They do not exist. They are even as all other things, non-existent, non-real. God is the only reality. There is no thing outside of God. You are not separated from Him."

"Then," interrupted Jim, "how about the Prodigal Son? Didn't he get separated from his Father?"

"That is speaking in terms of no-mind. You have not yet grasped the thought. Nothing can exist but good. God never saw the Prodigal Son until he came back, because he never has or can see anything evil."

"Your God may not see or know evil, sickness or suffering or anything that makes a man miserable. I say, your God mayn't, but mine does. It's his knowledge that makes Him compassionate. If He didn't know what was happening to His own children, that He had created and planned for, then I'd rather pray to Bob McCartney. Think, sir, what kind of a mother would your mother a-been, if she hadn't known when you cried, and you hadn't a-been able to climb up and lay in her arms and be comforted and forgiven? She wouldn't a-been a mother and God wouldn't be a God unless He knew what was a-happening to His own children! Why man alive didn't He make the world; aren't they His, the cattle on a thousand hills, the lightenin' and the thunder, the sweet grass and the flowers and all things in and on and under the earth? If He has gone off and forgotten it all and don't know good and evil, if He don't know when we're tired and failin' and tryin' again, why what would be the use o' prayer or, for that matter, for livin' at all?"

The queer man, at this point, removed his rubbers, but made no comment upon Jim's questions. Perhaps his feet were so warm it was hard for him to keep his head cool.

"You are utterly deceived," he continued. "You are confusing the real and the non-real. You are following after shadows that do not exist at all. You do not know the truth. You are bound. You are looking at the mist of matter that will disappear as the knowledge of truth develops within you. If you will begin to deny the existence of evil, you will begin to banish disease and ultimately you will understand that all things are but illusions."

"Pears to me," Jim said, as the queer man paused for breath, before launching more sentences about the truth. "Pears to me, you're sailin' round in a circle, and havin' a hard time dodging the winds o' logic. Call the flower, the mountain, and the man, shadows and illusions; if you will. I don't object to that, only I want you to agree with me that they are beautiful. The only thing I am afeared of is that you'll make some folks think this is not His world at all; and I want them to know that this is His world and that He planned these things you have re-named shadows and illusions. I callate there's danger in your statements when you come to follow them out. Then, too, these shadows have been actin' about uniform for as long ago as the book o' Genesis and afore that, and I don't propose to try to get much farther back, for it makes my eyes ache to see back o' that.

"When you tell me this body o' mine is an illusion, it kinder riles me, for I believe the Good Father planned this body as much as He planned a soul for me. It's a house for my soul as long as I'm in this earth and I callate it's to be treated holy while it houses my soul. I know it will get kinder old and dingy bye and bye and I'll be quitting it, but that ain't no good reason for neglectin' it now.

"Of course if what you say was true and there was no material and it was all in thinking, then we wouldn't have to wear clothes, nor eat food and you wouldn't have to wear your specs, nor your goloshes, because it's a little damp under feet this morning. You may be different, Mr. Jewett, with your one, only, real, true religion, but we Landers up here all get a little older as days go by; we all like to be cheered by food and fuel, and we all feel the difference between winter and summer, and we all travel sooner or later to the better land. Seems to be His plan."

The queer man was gathering words for new statements; but while he was listening to the last of Jim's replies, he was looking intently at his hands. If it may be permitted to speak in ordinary fashion of a man of his philosophy, his hands were dirty and he had become painfully aware of it. Jim noticed his concern and remarked with a certain acerbity of tone:

"You don't clean your hands with soap and water, do you?"

The queer man in turn showed some increase of warmth as he replied:

"I certainly do when I need to, that's only common sense."

"Well," mused Jim, this time very slowly, "do you know, I don't believe in using too much soap, it's caustic and it's harmful sometimes to the skin, but do you know, once in a while I get a bit riled and dirty inside o' me and I decide that it's only common sense to clean that just as I would my hands."

The queer man sniffed and asked for a Bible. "Have you a Bible?"

He won't get ahead very fast, if he thinks Jim doesn't own a Bible and know its contents, I thought; but I kept my thoughts to myself, for the man had utterly ignored me, thus far, for Jim was keeping him as busy as he cared to be. Before Jim could answer he saw his Bible on the little table and it opened easily and he saw at once the markings and said:

"Glad you read your Bible, but it needs another book beside it else you can't understand it and it's a closed book. You need a key to the Scriptures."

"I callate," replied Jim, "that a man ought to be able to read his own Bible and interpret it for himself. The Lord has given every man a key in his own mind and heart. The fathers that have lived and died didn't have your key, but they got comfort out of this Book. Ever since the words were uttered they have been helping and some on 'em is so simple and beautiful that little fellows can read and be blessed in the reading."

The queer man read now from Jim's Bible:

"And Jesus went about preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of diseases."

"Do you believe that? There it is plain, too plain to be contradicted."

"Yes, I believe," answered Jim.

The queer man was surprised and it gave Jim time to add:

"Jesus also said: 'According to your faith be it unto thee. All things are possible to Him that believeth!

"There's an old Indian lives down the road a piece, who was all tied up with rheumatiz. He got back the other day from New Mexico, all cured. He'd never heard of you or your key to the Scriptures. He'd been to a place called Chimayo. Went to a little clay church down there and scraped up some of the clay from the floor and mixed it with water and drank it and has come back well. Every year or two somebody goes from St. John's away to Quebec and out to a place called St. Ann's, where they got a wrist-bone of hers, so they tell, and some of 'em come back well again.

"There's an old lady in Quidi Vidi nigh on to eighty-five. She got sick when she was eighty, grew feeble and pindling. She took to readin' this Book and praying all by herself and she got her strength back and she is as chipper as any woman of sixty in the Dominion.

"What was it cured her; what is it that cures lots of folks for a time, though we mustn't forget that we all go hence according to His plan. He's evidently got a good many rooms in His big house and He doesn't intend for us to stay too long in any one.

"Did these folks that drank mud, prayed in front of a wrist-bone, or just prayed, believe that they was living in the shadows; did they build up an airy, fairy world and re-name things; not a bit of it; they was cured just as you and I might be, can be cured. Mr. Jewett, they had faith!

"I believe it's the measure of faith we have that counts. The Lord speaks about our doing things He did and greater also, and we shall just as our faith grows. I believe in praying because it makes that faith grow; I believe in reading the Book for the same reason. If I had faith enough, I could, like Him, remove mountains or walk upon the sea; but it don't grieve me because I can't in a moment do the things the Divine Son did. Faith always seems to me to be a bigger thing than love. I guess faith is love that has learned how to bring things to pass.

"Let's not expect too much. Let's remember we and the world have yet to do a good deal of growing. I don't measure God's greatness nor His goodness by the number of times He cures my stomach-ache. It may be I'm pretty careless and a certain amount of pain is about the only handy Teacher He can find for me. It may be that in this first room some of us will have to be somewhat ailing, but let's not forget He gives us grace to bear as well as strength to heal. I only ask to be able to do my work and not grunt.

"I callate that if your one, only, real, true religion is devoting its chief thought and its most time to simply curing aches and pains, it ain't the religion of our Lord for He went about doin' all kinds of good."

The queer man was fidgeting and from his looks I concluded he was about to seek new pastures. Jim, noticing this, continued:

"I appreciate your coming, sir, proves there's good in your religion. You've got the missionary zeal and that deserves to be kept. After all we ain't so far apart, as it might seem, some ways; but we're starting from different points. I believe this is a real world, an intended world, with real folks and real facts and that it is a good world, His World, and it's a goin' to be better; only not all to onct, by re-naming the old and beautiful things He planned and sent."

Mr. Jewett was wise in withdrawing, for Jim was gaining in power and facility of expression. Now, as the man edged toward the door, Jim extended his hand and said:

"Don't lose your logic, 'cause there's no harm in mixin' logic and religion. If religion is any good it'll stand logic. Remember the Lord knowed what He was a-doin' and He ain't abandoned His children."

When he was well outside, Mrs. Jim spoke:

"Jim, do you think he has a screw loose in his loft?"

But the queer man was back in a moment, with a less confident air, but this time he had but one brief sentence:

"Please, I left my rubbers."

Printed in the United States of America.