Mr. World and Miss Church-Member: A Twentieth Century AllegoryHarris, W. S. (William Shuler)
Religion
Mr. World and Miss Church-Member: A Twentieth Century Allegory
Harris, W. S. (William Shuler)
Christian fiction
The expert accordingly tested her sight. First he held up, at a
distance, the “Delusion of the New Jerusalem,” but she was totally
blind to it. Then he submitted the “Deceptions of the Holy Bible” of
which she could again see nothing.
“Look through these windows to the Broad Highway, far out into the
distance over rolling stretches of country. Can you see the gates of
Heaven, at the end of the way?”
Miss Church-Member looked carefully, but declared that she could not
see anything that appeared like Heaven or the gates thereof.
“Can you see that place called ‘Perfect Peace’ along the Broad Highway,”
continued the oculist as he pointed to a far-off region.
“I can see nothing that looks like it,” she honestly confessed, quite
surprised to discover the existence of these apparent defects of her
vision.
“A very sad and extreme case,” murmured the examiner as he requested
her to open her Bible.
“Can you see, in that book, that all people shall be saved, and none
perish?”
“I am surely blind to that and always have been,” she readily admitted
with a little more boldness.
“Perhaps you can see the justice of God in punishing the sinner?” he
continued with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.
“Plainly visible.”
“So I expected.”
He then proceeded to a more minute examination, after which he wrote
a brief diagnosis and commended her to a specialist in the next
building.
She hesitated somewhat, but Mr. World, handing her, confidentially,
a handsome sum of yellow coin from his bag of gold, brought words of
deep thankfulness from her lips, and gave decision to her steps in the
direction he desired.
From the great dome they were taken in a closed car over the high
suspension bridge to the adjoining building which was of still greater
magnitude.
The room into which they entered, at such a dizzy height, surpassed,
in its unique arrangement, anything of the kind that they had thus far
seen. In long and high glass cases lay all the modern appliances used
by the most skillful hands. The furnishings blended harmoniously with
the general environments. All this won the utter confidence of the new
and unsuspecting visitor. “With pleasure,” politely began Mr. World,
“I present my friend, Miss Church-Member, who comes hither with
defective eyes and a duly subscribed diagnosis from the chief of the
oculists.”
The specialist whom he thus addressed made an additional examination,
plying his craft with all the ingenuity he had learned from his master.
At the conclusion he delivered himself in this wise:
“I find, Miss Church-Member, that your eyes are very much out of order.
A complex case, indeed. I have discovered ametropia in the particular
form of irregular astigmatism. The pupil, covered by the unabsorbed
remains of the pupillary membrane, is occluded by a deposition of
inflammatory substance, occasioned by inflammation of the ciliary body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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