FullReads

‘the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador,’

looked beautiful and inviting; for he saw it softened and irradiated in an atmosphere of love. Its bare hills, bleak rocks, and misty sky were but the setting and background of the sweetest picture in the gallery of life. Apart from this, however, in Labrador, as in every conceivable locality, the evils of soil and climate have their compensations and alleviations. The long nights of winter are brilliant with moonlight, and the changing colors of the northern lights are reflected on the snow. The summer of Labrador has a beauty of its own, far unlike that of more genial climates, but which its inhabitants would not forego for the warm life and lavish luxuriance of tropical landscapes. The dwarf fir-trees throw from the ends of their branches yellow tufts of stamina, like small lamps decorating green pyramids for the festival of spring; and if green grass is in a great measure wanting, its place is supplied by delicate mosses of the most brilliant colors. The truth is, every season and climate has its peculiar beauties and comforts; the footprints of the good and merciful God are found everywhere; and we should be willing thankfully to own that ‘He has made all things beautiful in their time’ if we were not a race of envious, selfish, ungrateful grumblers.”

“Doctor! Doctor!” cried a ragged, dirty-faced boy, running breathless into the yard.

“What’s the matter, my lad?” said the Doctor.

“Mother wants you to come right over to our house. Father’s tumbled off the hay-cart; and when they got him up he didn’t know nothing; but they gin him some rum, and that kinder brought him to.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said the Doctor, rising to go. “Similia similibus curantur. Nothing like hair of the dog that bites you.”

“The Doctor talks well,” said the Skipper, who had listened rather dubiously to his friend’s commentaries on his story; “but he carries too much sail for me sometimes, and I can’t exactly keep alongside of him. I told Elder. Staples once that I did n’t see but that the Doctor could beat him at preaching. ‘Very likely,’ says the Elder, says he; ‘for you know, Skipper, I must stick to my text; but the Doctor’s Bible is all creation.'”

“Yes,” said the Elder, who had joined us a few moments before, “the Doctor takes a wide range, or, as the farmers say, carries a wide swath, and has some notions of things which in my view have as little foundation in true philosophy as they have warrant in Scripture; but, if he sometimes speculates falsely, he lives truly, which is by far the most important matter. The mere dead letter of a creed, however carefully preserved and reverently cherished, may be of no more spiritual or moral efficacy than an African fetish or an Indian medicine-bag. What we want is, orthodoxy in practice,–the dry bones clothed with warm, generous, holy life. It is one thing to hold fast the robust faith of our fathers,–the creed of the freedom-loving Puritan and Huguenot,–and quite another to set up the five points of Calvinism, like so many thunder-rods, over a bad life, in the insane hope of averting the Divine displeasure from sin.”