Read Online Remember the Morning by Thomas Fleming - Free Book Online

from the pulpit. In your heart believe what you please.”
    I decided I did not believe in Jesus. I was not even sure I accepted a Manitou who permitted my parents to be murdered so brutally in front of my eyes. Clara, on the other hand, admired Jesus deeply, the more she read about him. She decided he was one of those rare spirits through whom the Master of Life spoke profound truths. She was especially moved by the passage in Luke where Jesus proclaimed the heart of his teaching.

    But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you. To him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other; and from him that taketh away thy cloke, withhold not thy coat also. Give to everyone that asketh thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also them likewise.

    I could not begin to comprehend such advice. Jesus was telling us to forgive hatred and forgo revenge, to let people steal from you—and if they merely asked, to give them your property! Clara saw the beauty and power of it instantly. We did not have time to argue about it because neither she nor I could understand Schoolmaster Bogardus’s attempts to explain his next topic—the war between the Protestant and Catholic religions.
    Both faiths believed in Jesus, but Catholics thought their leader, the pope, who lived in Italy, was the only person able to speak in Jesus’s name, while Protestants believed Jesus spoke directly to each person who professed faith in him. If that was not confusing enough, there was also a political side to the quarrel.
    â€œThe king of England does more than keep order in his empire,” Bogardus said. “He’s the great defender of the Protestant religion against the pope of Rome.”
    â€œAs Senecas, we shall be neutral in this quarrel,” Clara said, with a smile.
    â€œNo one can be neutral. You’ll be hated by both sides,” Bogardus said.
    We ignored this prophetic remark and groaned in protest when he made us study the history of the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, in which English Protestants had hurled the Catholic king, James II, off the throne and replaced him with a Protestant. The Stuarts, father and son, had fled to France, where they began plotting to regain their power. France and
Spain recognized James’s son, James Edward Stuart, as the true King of England.
    â€œAs long as the Jacobites 4 wait in France, the Protestant King of England sits uneasily on his throne,” my grandfather said.
    â€œIt’s all so complicated!” I complained. Already I was more interested in talking about business and a merchant’s life than history and politics.
    â€œHistory is always complicated. That’s why it’s important to understand it,” Grandfather said. “Otherwise it explodes in your face with no warning.”
    To make his point, he invited two of his closest friends, Nathan Franks and William Laurens, to dinner to tell us how history had changed their lives. Franks was a small, lean man with the shrewd eyes of a sachem. He was Jewish. He told us his family had lived in Spain for many centuries, where they had prospered as merchants. But some Spaniards began preaching hatred against the Jews because they were not Christians. In 1492, the King of Spain expelled all the Jews from the kingdom. They became men and women without a country, wandering the world in search of refuge.
    â€œFor us, New York is an earthly paradise,” Franks told us. “No one preaches hatred here.”
    â€œOnly against Catholics. But that’s politics,” my grandfather said, gazing fondly at his old friend.
    William Laurens was a French Protestant. A swarthy man with a gold tooth, he told us about another explosion of religious hatred which drove his family from France. In 1572, on St.