Two in one: the story of two blended lives exemplifying and illustrating the meaning and final perfected state of human existence

Front matter

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Foreword

In the year 1891, I made the acquaintance of the authors of this work. Being for some months guests at the same hotel, our acquaintance ripened into a very warm friendship. At this time, their faces were seamed with marks of age and care, but were lighted up with a radiance of peace and joy which rumor attributed to their recent nuptials. They were quite reticent in regard to their past lives and I learned only that they had known each other in early j^outh and that after a half century of vicissitudes their life-currents had lately merged into one. On sejDaration from them they, henceforth, dropped out of my life except as enshrined in friendship's memory, until 1906, when I received the following brief communication :

Beulah Place.

Dear Friend and Bro. :

Have you kept in remembrance a pair of oldish people named Morven who, years ago, were sojourners with you for a time in an Oakland hotel? With us, the intervening time has but served to strengthen the bond of friendship then formed. We long to meet you again and renew our afore-

Foreword.

time face-to-face communings. Can you not make us a visit ? At present, we are living retired from the world. Our place is accessible, to within a few miles, by railway, on the U. P. line of road. The nearest station is Colfax. We assume that you will come. Write us when, and we will meet you with a conveyance.

Yours in love and truth,

ROBERT and MARY MORVEX.

This letter came very opportunely as I was just hesitating as to whence I should flit for a brief summer outing. So, responding at once, in due time I found myself vis-a-vis with my quondam friends in their mountain home.

And here, in their presence, I experienced the greatest surprise of my life, caused by the change in their appearance. Their identity was very manifest in the general lineaments and fundamental features of personal bearing and manner, but somehow they seemed not to be the same persons whom I had formerly known. A wondrous change had passed upon them. What it w r as I could not define. For one thing, all signs of age had vanished and they were the very picture of middle age strength and health. But it was not this of itself, nor mainly, that made the difference. It was not merely that the dial of time had been turned backward in their lives, but that their entire being had become — what shall I say? —

Foreword.

glorified, and that their faces glowed with an indescribable, ethereal beauty. "Whatever has come over you people?" I exclaimed. "Have you found the long sought elixir vitae or the fountain of youth?"

"Whether we have or have not we will leave for you to decide after you have read this brief narrative of our experiences," replied Mr. Morven, handing me a type-written manuscript. "This will probably be more satisfactory than anything we might say."

"Now, my Dear Friend," he continued, "Tell us of yourself. ' '

And so the matter was dismissed and not again referred to until I had read, reread and pondered these remarkable disclosures. What my conclusion was or should have been, I leave the reader to judge.

My stay with my friends was somewhat prolonged and I was privileged to read other writings of the authors of a most marvellous character of which, more, perhaps, hereafter. I suggested the publication of their works. They thought favorably of my suggestion and honored me with the request that I should select such portions as in my judgment might seem, at present, most fitting, and act as their agent in bringing them before the public. The result is the present volume.

J. FOUNT MARTIN.

Contents

Page.

Foreword 5

Chapters I to IV inclusive. Life Sketch of. Mr

Introduction

This book was not made, it grew. It is the growth of a life time, from seed-thought planted in youth — the condensed outcome of a life-long effort to get a satisfactory solution of certain essential problems of existence which from time immemorial, have taxed the world's best thought and which every thinking mind must face in every serious moment of life. By a satisfactory solution is meant such a solution as will harmonize with the idea of God as absolute Love, Wisdom and Power ; with the teachings of the Scriptures ; with reason; with the facts of nature, and the conditions of our present existence.

These questions will not down. In vain, we strive to stifle them by endeavoring to confine our thought within the limits of this short span of life and in the pursuit of mere time and sense interests. In vain, we seek to base ethics or religion upon foundations other than that of a satisfactory explanation of the conditions and outcome of existence — an explanation logically consistent with absolute perfection in Deity and an assured faith in immortality.

We look up at the starry heavens, and every twinkling orb challenges our questioning as to the illimitable power and intelligence that brought them into being and guides them in their courses.

A friend or loved one drops out of view, by what we term death, and our yearning hearts go out in longing to penetrate the secrets of the silent land.

A terrible catastrophe of nature such as the San Francisco earthquake comes overwhelming in disaster multitudes indiscriminately, and we stand aghast, wondering as to how such things can be in a universe under the control of an infinite and beneficent power. The scientist tells us that they happen in accordance with a law of nature. Certainly, but this is no answer to our questioning. Our inquiry relates to the motive of Him who put in operation these second causes called laws and forces of nature, and under whose guidance we have results seemingly so inconsistent with those attributes which we must hold as constituting the character of the Almighty.

The Intelligence and Power that created the worlds and ordained the law of all cosmic forces also created man and placed him here subject to their disastrous activities. Assuming a Principle of Infinite Good of which the universe is the expression, how shall we account for the evil and suffering in its domain? How account for the fact that we are ushered into a world environed by the ' ' pestilence that walketh in darkness ' ' and the "destruction that wasteth at noonday"? We naturally ask: Can there be a heart of love at the center of all things ? Can the evil conditions and consequent suffering in which our lives are set have a beneficent purpose? Are evil and suffering a necessary concomitant of existence? Whence, and what are we? and what is the object and final outcome of this present state of existence? Is birth the beginning of man's being and does death end all ? If there is a life beyond, what is its nature and what our present relation to it ?

The highest point attainable here is the awakening of unrealized and unrealizable aspirations for an ideal manhood of goodness, truth and power such as was exemplified in the Christ. Is there a sphere beyond where these longings shall receive their satisfaction? If not, then what better is existence than a hideous dream — a frightful abortion? Is the race, moved by an all-impelling force, evolving toward a definite, predetermined and assured end, or is human destiny, in whole or in part, dependent on human weakness and caprice ?

If our historic unfoldment has had reference to a fixed, ultimate destiny, what has been the process of unfoldment, at what point have we arrived and what is the present outlook ?

These and cognate questions are pressing for solution. They are the sphinx's riddle of this age. The present mental status is such that not to solve them means decadence of religious faith if not its death.

Can we hope for a satisfactory answer to such questioning? Have we the data from which we can arrive at conclusions in harmony with reason ? — conclusions so relating present conditions to the final outcome as to perfectly satisfy both head and heart?

Assuredly a solution of these problems is within our reach. Existence is not a mockery. The religious instinct or principle, that which chiefly constitutes man a human being as differentiated from the brute — that welling up from within and seeking expression of an innate consciousness of a Divine indwelling — that instinctive faith in and looking forward to a life beyond this brief span, is not a deception. "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, God. When shall I come and appear before God?" is a cry from the depths of the heart of humanity that will be heard.

According to a fixed law of nature, the very fact that this demand for enlightenment on these subjects is inherent and insistent in man is a guarantee that the light will come. But really the light has come. It has ever been here shining out from nature's revelations and through the utterances of seers and prophets whom our Heavenly Father has raised up, in all ages, to voice the truth for the needs of his children. As says the Apostle, the invisible things of God have ever been manifest for man's reading in the visible things of creation. And above all and inclusive of all, we have a written revelation which when properly understood meets all the needs of heart and mind. It is contained in the Divine Word of which Jesus Christ is the fullness and embodiment.

We are just now passing from an era in which all religious faith was based on authority; when all points pertaining to religion were settled by ecclesiastical dicta which the masses dared not question and which, in fact, but few thought of questioning. They rested content with what those whom they accepted as authorized teachers gave them as truth. But the time is dawning when authority will no longer be the bar of judgment, when only that will be accepted as true which carries with it its own credentials by its consistency with all other known truth and by the light outshining from its own rationality. For one thing and chiefly, no blot on the sun of the Divine perfections will, in thought, be entertained. God will be held as the All-in-all in reality, as creating only to bless and as inevitably accomplishing his beneficent purpose. And hence all human experiences whether of this world or the world to come will be seen to have reference to and to be working out the infinite design of good to all. Any theory, conclusion, or system of doctrine, whether the deduction of philosophy or of science, or the interpretation of a written revelation, which contravenes this axiom of intuitional reason will, ipso facto, stamp itself as false. Such is the standard by which this book asks to be judged.

It would be the extreme of presumption to assume that a work embracing so large a scope of thought should in all its details or in the manner of treatment of its various subjects be satisfactory to all readers. But the high encomiums of those who have read the manuscript and who are eminently qualified to judge of its merits, justify the hope that it may be helpful in giving mental anchorage and rest to a large and increasing class of thinking minds, more or less unsettled in this transitional era.

Two In One.

Chapter I

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There's a divinity which shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may," writes the immortal bard of Avon. My life appears to have been an exemplification of the truth of this statement. I seem to have been originally, by both heredity and environment, placed in a current and borne along on its tide, the course of which I have had little to do in directing.

My father having died in my infancy I was left to the care of my mother. She was of Scotch parentage and came of a line of preachers of the extremest Scottish puritanism; while my father, as I learned from my mother, though reverent of Deity, was of a scientific and rationalistic type of mind and so was doctrinally out of harmony with the dogmatic teachings of my mother's church. In myself, the elements were a blending of my parents combined with a strain derived from a remoter ancestry. I inherited both the religious nature of my mother and the mental characteristics of my father ; but unlike either of them was very excitable, painfully self-conscious, egotistic and emotionally intense, on slight provocation quivering with agony or thrilling with ecstacy.

I early developed a love of reading, but had access to little literature other than the religious works of puritanism and the Bible. The former was little to my taste, but the latter I read through and through with great delight, even as a child; and to this early acquaintance with the Scriptures I owe the trend of my entire life.

The death of my father threw upon my shoulders burdens fitted to be borne only by mature years, and thus induced a premature development. Thoughts, fancies, dreams and aspirations abnormal to childhood thronged my brain. The mysteries of life fascinated me. Often in the midst of active engagements would I suddenly stop, startled by questions which the wisest philosophers have vainly essayed to answer, such as, "Who and what am I?"— "What is Man?"— "Who and what is God?" — "Whence are we, and whither do we go?" Such problems, of course in a dim and nebulous form, pressed upon me and demanded an answer. It was my delight to wander over the fields and woods, alone with nature, listening to the soft soughing of the wind through the forest, to the chattering of squirrels and to the song of birds; and lying down on the soft green grass or looking out of my window, it was my custom to gaze into the heavens — by day, at the shifting panorama of sun-lit clouds and by night, at the star-bespangled sky and the serene shining of the moon — my heart swelling with emotions which I could neither understand nor utter. At such times it was as if I were one with the infinite life in which I was immersed.

I had but few playmates, and none in sympathy with me. Thus I came to shrink from expressing my thoughts and feelings, and lapsed into a condition of morbid loneliness. The awakened sense of sex-relations which came in the course of my development toward manhood intensified this unwholesome feeling. I was taught by my religious teachers that men and women after this life become sexless, and that all relations growing out of sex cease with the laying down of the body. My deeper and higher nature revolted against this doctrine. I felt then, what I now know, that the individual of either sex is but one half of the complete man, and that the union as one with the other half is essential to perfectness. My loneliness took on the form of a vague, agonizing longing for that other one, somewhere existent, who would be to me as my other self, entering into and filling out my present partial being.

To my dear mother alone did I ever attempt to confide my thoughts. She, with the fullness of a mother's love, endeavored to sympathize with me, and as best she could to advise and comfort me. But she did not understand my mental state and was alarmed to think whither my strange fancies might tend. She therefore discouraged their indulgence. But this course only threw me back more intensely upon myself.

My mother's religious training, her views of God and of man's relation to Him, tended to disqualify her as guide out of the labyrinth in which I was wandering.

My grandfather's conception of God (which, of course, determined his entire system of doctrine), may be summed up in the following language of Jonathan Edwards: ''Now (in this life alone), God stands ready to pardon you ; this is a day of mercy. But when the day of mercy is past (at death), your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God as to any regard for your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to but to suffer misery. You will be continued in being to no other end."

My poor mother had been taught and had unreservedly accepted this as a true characterization of God, and upon her tender spirit its influence was deadly. It was not that she did not realize the Heavenly Father's love as manifested in the Christ. For herself, she could and did take refuge in the Savior. But alas ! for the mass of mankind, her husband included, who, for any reason, failed to comply with the conditions of the gospel and thus, as she believed, remained exposed to the wrath of Divine Justice. Her life was so vitally at one with that of her husband that she could conceive of no happiness or well being but in sharing his destiny.

She became possessed of the horror of the future thus generated in her mind, her natural joyousness being replaced by a deep-seated melancholy which undermined her physical health. She, for my sake, bore up bravely, but at last passed out of my sight a victim to a false conception of God and of man's essential relations to him. She sought relief for her burdened heart in writing. There lies before me quite a volume of her manuscript, from which as illustrating her character and suffering spirit, I quote the following verses :

"The earth below, the heavens above,

Declare, 'tis said, that God is love,

And that the end of nature's plan

Stands forth revealed complete in man,

In faculties designed to be

An image of Divinity.

He woke to life in Eden fair —

To dress and keep it was his care.

Then God as gift to crown his life

Gave him, for helpmeet, Eve, his wife.

Spontaneous fruits, both sweet and good

Abounded for his daily food;

But in the midst there stood a tree

To eat of which this penalty: —

'The day thou eatest, thou shalt die,

Thou and all thy progeny.'

Man lusting for this fruit denied

Reached forth and plucked and ate and died.

So thus upon his ruined race

Came sorrow, pain and death apace.

Such is the explanation given

Of all our miseries under heaven.

Henceforth a horrid demon spell

Holds man and drags him down to hell,

Save here and there an elect one,

Redeemed by Christ, God's only Son,

Who doth himself to death resign,

Thus shielding such from wrath Divine.

But these alone — The rest passed by

Are doomed the eternal death to die.

Today, our loved ones we embrace —

Tomorrow, banished from God's face,

In horrors evermore they dwell

Beyond the power of tongue to tell.

Such the 'tidings glad' we're told

Proclaimed on Bethlehem's plains of old —

'Good will and peace,' the angels sing,

Alas, to me these tidings fall

On unresponsive ears. A pall

Shrouds heaven and earth in deepest gloom

Where joy and gladness have no room." etc.

Amongst my mother's papers was found the following bequest :

1 ' I leave my entire estate to my son, Robert M. Morven, and I hereby request that Mr. Henry Vincent shall act as his guardian during his minority.

(Signed) "MIRIAM MORVEN."

My guardian was a merchant and lived in a distant town. His family consisted of three persons besides himself, Mrs. Vincent, their daughter Mary, and a younger child, Jamie. In religion, they were disciples of John Wesley, and were ardent devotees of their church. Thus the daughter was reared in an atmosphere redolent with ecclesiastical pietism. Life, to her, was circumscribed by Church relations and Church duties. In her mind, the two great commandments were, "Thou shalt seek religion by attending faithfully upon all the means of grace," and "Thou shalt abstain from dancing and all other forms of worldly amusement."

The immediate end to be attained by these efforts was conversion — that is, the passing through a well-defined religious experience, consisting first of deep contrition for sin ; and second, the sense of pardon, and a joy corresponding. The more intense these emotions, the deeper and more satisfactory "the work of grace." Thenceforward, the object sought by the continued use of the "means of grace," viz., attendance on preaching, prayer meetings, communion, love feasts, class-meetings, together with private prayer and reading of the Bible, was "growth in grace," advancing eventually to perfectness. This perfectness was inaugurated by another mental cataclysm similar to conversion, known as the "Baptism of the Holy Ghost," or "the Second Blessing." Loud singing and praying and shouting were greatly in favor as a means of attaining these emotional states.

After my mother's death, I became a member of Mr. Vincent's household. Having been accustomed to the extreme quietness and awe pervading a puritanical religious meeting, I found it at first somewhat difficult to adapt myself to my new surroundings.

Mary and I were about the same age, she being sixteen, and I, eighteen; and though very different in our physical and mental characteristics, we soon became devoted friends — indeed, we came to love each other dearly, and were confidants even beyond what usually maintains between brother and sister.

She was a girl of unusual mental ability and native strength of character. She was harmonious in her physical and mental makeup, in no way being marked by any striking peculiarities or characteristics. In height, she was about average with blue eyes, fair skin and light hair. She was vivacious and free from self-consciousness ; candid and conscientious ; confiding and self-sacrificing, pious, gentle and loving

To the regret of herself and her parents, she could not as yet point to any marked emotional religious experience such as was esteemed so essential by her people. Hence I soon found that the paramount concern of her parents, and, as far as her overflowing animal spirits would allow, of herself, was her "conversion."

I had from childhood felt that my life's vocation was to be that of a minister of the Gospel. But whilst by both heredity and education the whole trend of my being was toward a religious life, it had never become outwardly manifest in action or profession. In my present status and relation to the church, therefore, I was not prepared to take any step looking toward my contemplated work of preaching; but I could not bring my mind to consent to engage in any other avocation. I confided my perplexity to Mary, and she in surprise cried, "Why, Robert, the trouble with you is that you havn't been converted," and from that moment she apparently forgot her own unconverted state in her deep solicitude for me. She not only herself prayed for me, but enlisted the interest of her parents and friends in my behalf, to such extent that it became somewhat annoying.

Near the time when I was to enter college there was a wave of religious excitement passing over the country and I learned, with no thought of any personal interest, that a celebrated revivalist was soon to commence a series of meetings in our town. He came, and by his incisive, magnetic oratory electrified the entire community. Business was suspended for the time, and nothing was thought of or talked of but religion. From curiosity, I attended, but took no interest in the proceedings. Multitudes, at the call of the minister, from day to day, rushed forward to be prayed for as if panic-stricken; but I felt no inclination to follow their example. Many were ''converted" daily, but the noisy exercises — the shouts of rejoicing of the converts, mingled with the groans of the penitents and the vociferous exhortations of the speaker, only confused me.

Mary had been among the early converts. Knowing her interest in me and not wishing to wound her feelings by my coldness, I avoided any communication with her. But at length her surcharged heart impelling her to throw off all conventional reserve, she pushed her way to my side, in the outskirts of the crowd. With her soul in her face and an expression of unutterable longing in every action and feature, she lifted upon me her tear-suffused eyes, and said only this : ' ' Robert, won't you come?" How shall I describe my feelings at that moment? I was as one pierced with an arrow, and a horror of darkness fell upon me. As the Psalmist hath it, "The sorrows of hell gat hold of me." I know not how I got to the place of prayer nor how long I remained there. The first I remember was the gentle touch of Mary's hand upon my head, and the sound of her earnest, entreating voice, "Lord, save Robert or I cannot live." In a moment it was as if the heavens had been cleft, whence supernal light descended upon me, whilst wave after wave of ineffable peace and joy rolled over me. I was a new man in a new world. My first thought was, ' ' Now my way is clear to preach the Gospel."

There was one peculiarity of my experience at this time at which I was surprised and perplexed. It was that all my new-found joy seemed in some inexplicable way to be connected with Mary. At the very center of my internal self in God was enthroned the sense of a feminine presence, and all my new life seemed to flow from that center. With all my religious emotions a sense of oneness with this feminine presence was inextricably intertwined. The thought of God always brought before me the thought of — Mary.

It may be said, "The solution of that problem is easy. You were unconsciously in love with the girl. ' ' But no, I did not love Mary in the sense in which that term is ordinarily used. With the subsidence of my intense religious emotions and the reasserting of the external self, the sense of her pervading presence passed away, and all attraction for her different in quality from that towards other women ceased.

The explanation of this experience (I felt then and I now know) is not to be found in any outer sense attraction but in a real conscious union of spirit with spirit in God.

Chapter II

The next few years we pass over briefly. My time was spent over my college and theological studies. The prescribed course in the classics and in mathematics was duly completed, together with the small modicum of natural science then deemed requisite in order to graduation.

Follodwin this, a cut-and-dried theological pabulum prepared for aspirants to the ministry being bolted down undigested and unassimilated, I was authorized by my ecclesiastical teachers to preach the Gospel.

The next thing in order was to secure a church location. And just here a practical discrepancy arose between the theological theory of my teachers and the actual facts. The teaching had been that we students should stand ready to go wherever God might call us by pointing out a need that we could supply; and, looking to Him to provide for all our wants, we should not in the least be governed by earthly reward in settling upon the place for our labors. But I found that the young ecclesiastics took this teaching in a modified sense, and as a matter of fact were as full of schemes in hunting good places as politicians are in seeking office.

I fortunately commanded some influence in high places, and consequently soon found myself duly installed pastor of a wealthy, fashionable city congregation, and so entered upon my work with bright prospects. I labored to please, as I then persuaded myself, for the good of others, but as I now know really for the gaining of man's applause. My natural egotism was inflamed by my success, and thus the world gradually threw a glamour over my spiritual vision. I rapidly degenerated from the position to which I had aspired, of being a fearless and independent preacher of righteousness, to that of being merely the mouthpiece of a selfish, worldly ecclesiasticism veneered over by a thin coating of sanctity. Standing at the center of the thought-sphere of a band of religious worldlings, I as their psychological subject became merely an echo of the thought with which they inspired me.

Under the hot-house stimulus of constant and fulsome flattery, especially by the women of my congregation, it was only natural that my hereditary pride should have taken on a rank growth ; that the odor of priestly dignity and sanctity should have invested me, and that I should have blossomed out a full-fledged Pharisee.

Surrounded by flattery and scheming women, the question of marriage was pressed upon me for settlement. The time seemed to have arrived when, if ever, I should enter upon that relation. There was no lack of eligible young ladies of my acquaintance from whom to choose, and my selfconceit persuaded me that I had only to make my selection.

But I had exalted ideas as to the qualities of the lady who should bear the honored title, Mrs. Morven. Little less than perfection would be at all satisfactory. One after another of my lady friends was weighed in my critical mental scales and found wanting. So persistently did I turn aside, avoiding the feminine nets spread in my way, that I came to be voted a confirmed bachelor.