Uncle Tom's Cabin, Chapter XXXVIII The Victory
Reading at the Unitarian Universalist Church Pittsfield, Maine on January 31, 1999
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory.”
Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how
far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds
in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of
suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, - to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing
servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, - this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding
away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour,- this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.
When Tom stood face to face with his persecutor, and heard his threats,
and thought in his very soul that his hour was come, his heart swelled bravely in him, and he thought he could bear torture and fire bear anything with
the vision of Jesus and heaven but just a step beyond; but, when he was gone, and the present excitement passed off, came back the pain of his bruised
and weary limbs, - came back the sense of his utterly degraded, hopeless forlorn estate; and the day passed wearily enough.
Tom no longer wondered at the habitual surliness of his associates; nay,
he found the placid, sunny, temper, which had been the habitude of his life, broken in on, and sorely strained, by the inroads of the same thing. He
flattered himself on leisure to read his Bible; but there was no such thing as leisure there. In the height of the season, Legree did not hesitate
to press all his hands through, Sundays and week-days alike. Why shouldn’t he?- he made more cotton by it, and gained his wager; and if
it wore out a few more hands, he could buy better ones.
It was weeks and months that Tom wrestled, in his own soul, in darkness
and in sorrow. He would watch, day after day, and in the vague hope of seeing somebody sent to redeem him; and, when nobody came, he would crush
back to his soul bitter thoughts,-that it was vain to serve God, that God had forgotten him.
When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance
is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often
precedes a return tide of joy and courage. So was it now with Tom. The atheistic taunts of his cruel master sunk his before dejected soul to the lowest
ebb; and, though the hand of faith still held to the eternal rock, it was with a numb, despairing gasp. Tom sat, like one stunned, at the fire.
Suddenly everything around him seemed to fade, and a vision rose before him of one crowned with thorns, buffeted and bleeding. Tom gazed, in awe and
wonder, at the majestic patience of the face; the deep, pathetic eyes thrilled him to his inmost heart; his soul woke, as, with floods of emotion, he stretched
out his hands and fell upon his knees,- when, gradually, the vision changed; the sharp thorns became rays of glory; and, in splendor inconceivable,
he saw that same face bending compassionately towards him, and a voice said, “He that overcometh shall sit down with me on my throne, even as
I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne.”
How long Tom lay there he knew not. When he came to himself, the
fire was gone out, his clothes were wet with the chill and drenching dews; but the dread soul-crisis was past, and, in the joy that filled him, he
no longer felt hunger, cold, degradation, disappointment, wretchedness. From his deepest soul, he that hour loosed and parted from every hope in
the life that now is, and offered his own will an unquestioning sacrifice to the Infinite. Tom looked up to the silent, ever-living stars,
-- types of the angelic hosts who ever look down on man; and the solitude of the night rung with the triumphant words of a hymn, which he had sung
often in happier days, but never with such feeling as now.
“The earth shall be dissolved like snow,
The sun shall cease to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Shall be forever mine.
“And when this mortal life shall fail,
And flesh and sense shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil
A life of joy and peace.
“When we’ve been there then thousand years,
Bright shining like the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise,
Than when we first begun.”
Back to Home Page
|
