Weekend Reading: Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn Wrestles with the American Christian Church for His Soul, and Wins and Saves It

Mark Twain: From Huckleberry Finn https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2019/11/30/all-right-then-go-the-whole-hog/: 'I about made up my mind to pray; and see if I couldn���t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn���t come. Why wouldn���t they? It warn���t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn���t come. It was because my heart warn���t right; it was because I warn���t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that n���r���s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie���and He knowed it. You can���t pray a lie���I found that out. So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn���t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I���ll go and write the letter���and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote: "Miss Watson your runaway n���r Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send. HUCK FINN". I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn���t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking���thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell...

...And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn���t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I���d see him standing my watch on top of his���n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he���s got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I���d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

���All right, then, I���ll go to hell������and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn���t. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog...

#books #moralresponsibility #weekendreading #2019-12-01