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- 4626
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
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- 4553
- text
- "Should the legitimate child shun the illegitimate, when one father is
father to both?" rejoined Pierre, bending his head still further over
his plate.
The clergyman looked a little down again, and was silent; but still
turned his head slightly sideways toward his hostess, as if awaiting
some reply to Pierre from her.
"Ask the world, Pierre"--said Mrs. Glendinning warmly--"and ask your own
heart."
"My own heart? I will, Madam"--said Pierre, now looking up steadfastly;
"but what do _you_ think, Mr. Falsgrave?" letting his glance drop
again--"should the one shun the other; should the one refuse his highest
sympathy and perfect love for the other, especially if that other be
deserted by all the rest of the world? What think you would have been
our blessed Savior's thoughts on such a matter? And what was that he so
mildly said to the adulteress?"
A swift color passed over the clergyman's countenance, suffusing even
his expanded brow; he slightly moved in his chair, and looked
uncertainly from Pierre to his mother. He seemed as a shrewd,
benevolent-minded man, placed between opposite opinions--merely
opinions--who, with a full, and doubly-differing persuasion in himself,
still refrains from uttering it, because of an irresistible dislike to
manifesting an absolute dissent from the honest convictions of any
person, whom he both socially and morally esteems.
"Well, what do you reply to my son?"--said Mrs. Glendinning at last.
"Madam and sir"--said the clergyman, now regaining his entire
self-possession. "It is one of the social disadvantages which we of the
pulpit labor under, that we are supposed to know more of the moral
obligations of humanity than other people. And it is a still more
serious disadvantage to the world, that our unconsidered, conversational
opinions on the most complex problems of ethics, are too apt to be
considered authoritative, as indirectly proceeding from the church
itself. Now, nothing can be more erroneous than such notions; and
nothing so embarrasses me, and deprives me of that entire serenity,
which is indispensable to the delivery of a careful opinion on moral
subjects, than when sudden questions of this sort are put to me in
company. Pardon this long preamble, for I have little more to say. It is
not every question, however direct, Mr. Glendinning, which can be
conscientiously answered with a yes or no. Millions of circumstances
modify all moral questions; so that though conscience may possibly
dictate freely in any known special case; yet, by one universal maxim,
to embrace all moral contingencies,--this is not only impossible, but
the attempt, to me, seems foolish."
At this instant, the surplice-like napkin dropped from the clergyman's
bosom, showing a minute but exquisitely cut cameo brooch, representing
the allegorical union of the serpent and dove. It had been the gift of
an appreciative friend, and was sometimes worn on secular occasions like
the present.
"I agree with you, sir"--said Pierre, bowing. "I fully agree with you.
And now, madam, let us talk of something else."
"You madam me very punctiliously this morning, Mr. Glendinning"--said
his mother, half-bitterly smiling, and half-openly offended, but still
more surprised at Pierre's frigid demeanor.
"'Honor thy father and mother;'" said Pierre--"_both_ father and
mother," he unconsciously added. "And now that it strikes me, Mr.
Falsgrave, and now that we have become so strangely polemical this
morning, let me say, that as that command is justly said to be the only
one with a promise, so it seems to be without any contingency in the
application. It would seem--would it not, sir?--that the most deceitful
and hypocritical of fathers should be equally honored by the son, as the
purest."
"So it would certainly seem, according to the strict letter of the
Decalogue--certainly."
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