Thomas Wingfold, Curate Part 61

"A word you dropped the other day," said the curate, "set me thinking of the note-worthy fact that belief in G.o.d and belief in immortality cease together. But I do not see the logic of it. If we are here without G.o.d, why may we not go on there without G.o.d? I marvel that I have heard of no one taking up and advocating the view. What a grand discovery it would be for some people--that not only was there no G.o.d to interfere with them, and insist on their becoming something worth being, but that they were immortal notwithstanding! that death was only the pa.s.sage of another birth into a condition of enlarged capacity for such bliss as they enjoyed here, but more exalted in degree, perhaps in kind, and altogether preferable."

"I know one to whom the thought would not have been a new one," said Polwarth. "Have you not come upon a pa.s.sage in my brother's ma.n.u.script involving the very idea?"

"Not yet. I read very slowly and pick up all the crumbs. I wish we had had the book here. I should have so much liked to hear you read from it again."

The gate-keeper rose and went to his cabinet.

"The wish is easily gratified," he said. "I made a copy of it,--partly for security, partly that I might thoroughly enter into my brother's thoughts."

"I wonder almost you lend the original then," said Wingfold.

"I certainly could not lend the copy to any man I could not trust with the original," answered Polwarth. "But I never lent either before."--He was turning over the leaves as he spoke.--"The pa.s.sage," he went on, "besides for its own worth, is precious to me as showing how, through all his madness, his thoughts haunted the gates of wisdom.--Ah! here it is!

"'About this time I had another strange vision, whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell. I thought, as oftener than once before, that at length I was dying. And it seemed to me that I did die, and awake to the consciousness of a blessed freedom from the coa.r.s.er and more ponderous outer dress I had hitherto worn, being now clad only in what had been up to this time an inner garment, and was a far more closely fitting one. The first delight of which I was aware was coolness--a coolness that hurt me not--the coolness as of a dewy summer eve, in which a soft friendly wind is blowing; and the coolness was that of perfect well-being, of the health that cometh after fever, when a sound sleep hath divided it away and built a rampart between; the coolness of undoubted truth, and of love that has surmounted pa.s.sion and is tenfold love.'

"He goes on to give further and fuller account of his sensations,--ventures even on the antic.i.p.ated futility of an attempt to convey a notion of one of his new senses. I leave all that for your own reading, Mr. Wingfold.

"'But where was I? That I could not tell. I am here was all I could say; but then what more could I ever have said?--Gradually my sight came to me, or the light of the country arose, I could not tell which, and behold, I was in the midst of a paradise, gorgeous yet gracious, to describe which I find no words in the halting tongues of earth, and I know something of them all, most of them well. If I say a purple sea was breaking in light on an emerald sh.o.r.e, the moment the words are written, I see them coa.r.s.e and crude as a boy's first attempt at landscape; yet are there no better wherewith to tell what first filled my eyes with heavenly delight.

"'The inhabitants were many, but nowhere were they crowded. There was room in abundance, and wild places seemed to be held sacred for solitude.'

"I am only picking up a sentence here and there, as I hasten to the particular point," said Polwarth, looking down the page.

"'But the flowers! and the birds! and above all the beauty of the people! And they dwelt in harmony. Yet on their foreheads lay as it seemed a faint mist, or as it were the first of a cloud of coming disquiet.

"'And I prayed him, Tell me, sir, whither shall I go to find G.o.d and say unto him, Lo, here I am! And he answered and said to me, Sir, I but dimly know what thou meanest. Say further. And I stood for an hour, even as one astonied. Then said I, All my long life on the world whence I came, I did look to find G.o.d when death should take me. But lo, now--And with that my heart smote me, for in my former life I had oftentimes fallen into unbelief and denied G.o.d: was this now my punishment--that I should never find him? And my heart grew cold in my body, and the blood curdled therein. Then the man answered and said, It is true that in generations past, for so I read in our ancient books, men did believe in one above them and in them, who had wrought them to that they were, and was working them to better still; but whether it be that we have now gained that better, and there is nothing higher unto which we may look, therefore no need of the high one, I know not, but truly we have long ceased so to believe, and have learned that, as things are, so they have been, and so they shall be. Then fell as it were a cold stone into the core of my heart, and I questioned him no farther, for I bore death in my heart, even as a woman carrieth her unborn child. No G.o.d! I cried, and sped away into a solitude and shrieked aloud, No G.o.d! Nay, but ere I believe it, I will search through all creation, and cry aloud as I go.

I will search until I find him, and if I find him not,--. With that my soul would have fainted in me, had I not spread forth my wings and rushed aloft to find him.

"'For the more lovely anything I saw, the more gracious in colour or form, or the more marvellous in the law of its working, ever a fresh pang shot to my heart: if that which I had heard should prove true, then was there no Love such as seemed to me to dwell therein, the soul of its beauty, and all the excellence thereof was but a delusion of my own heart, greedy after a phantom perfection. No G.o.d! no Love! no loveliness, save a ghastly semblance thereof! and the more ghastly that it was so like loveliness, and yet was not to be loved upon peril of prost.i.tution of spirit. Then in truth was heaven a fable, and h.e.l.l an all-embracing fact! for my very being knew in itself that if it would dwell in peace, the very atmosphere in which it lived and moved and breathed must be love, living love, a one divine presence, truth to itself, and love to me, and to all them that needed love, down to the poorest that can but need it, and knoweth it not when it cometh. I knew that if love was not all in all, in fact as well as in imagination, my life was but a dreary hollow made in the shape of a life, and therefore for ever hungry and never to be satisfied. And again I spread wings--no longer as it seemed of hope, but wings of despair, yet mighty, and flew.

And I learned thereafter that despair is but the hidden side of hope.'

"Here follow pages of his wanderings in quest of G.o.d. He tells how and where he inquired and sought, searching into the near and minute as earnestly as into the far and vast, watching at the very pores of being, and sitting in the gates of the mighty halls of a.s.sembly--but all in vain. No G.o.d was to be found.

"'And it seemed to me,' he says at last, 'that, as I had been the wanderer of earth, so was I now doomed to be the wanderer of heaven. On earth I wandered to find death, and men called me the everlasting Jew; in heaven I wandered to find G.o.d, and what name would they give me now?

"'At last my heart sank within me wholly, and I folded my wings, and through years I also sank and sank, and alighted at length upon the place appointed for my habitation--that namely wherein I found myself first after death. And alighting there, I fell down weary and slept.

"'And when I awoke I turned upon my side in the despair of a life that was neither in my own power nor in that of one who was the Father of me, which life therefore was an evil thing and a tyrant unto me. And lo! there by my side I beheld a lily of the field such as grew on the wayside in the old times betwixt Jerusalem and Bethany. Never since my death had I seen such, and my heart awoke within me, and I wept bitter tears that nothing should be true, nothing be that which it had seemed in the times of old. And as I wept I heard a sound as of the falling of many tears, and I looked, and lo a shower as from a watering-pot falling upon the lily! And I looked yet again, and I saw the watering-pot, and the hand that held it; and he whose hand held the pot stood by me and looked at me as he watered the lily. He was a man like the men of the world where such lilies grow, and was poorly dressed, and seemed like a gardener. And I looked up in his face, and lo--the eyes of the Lord Jesus! and my heart swelled until it filled my whole body and my head, and I gave a great cry, and for joy that turned into agony I could not rise, neither could I speak, but I crept on my hands and my knees to his feet, and there I fell down upon my face, and with my hands I lifted one of his feet and did place it upon my head, and then I found voice to cry, O master! and therewith the life departed from me. And when I came to myself the master sat under the tree, and I lay by his side, and he had lifted my head upon his knees. And behold, the world was jubilant around me, for Love was Love and Lord of all. The sea roared, and the fulness thereof was love; and the purple and the gold and the blue and the green came straight from the hidden red heart of the Lord Jesus. And I closed my eyes for very bliss; nor had I yet bethought me of the time when first those eyes looked upon me, for I seemed to have known them since first I began to be. But now when for very bliss I closed my eyes, my sin came back to me, and I remembered. And I rose up, and kneeled down before him, and said, O Lord, I am Ahasuerus the Jew, the man who would not let thee rest thy cross upon the stone before my workshop, but drave thee from it.--Say no more of that, answered my Lord, for truly I have myself rested in thy heart, cross and all, until the thing thou didest in thy ignorance is better than forgotten, for it is remembered in love. Only see thou also make right excuse for my brethren who, like thee then, know not now what they do. Come and I will bring thee to the woman who died for thee in the burning fire. And I said, O Lord, leave me not, for although I would now in my turn right gladly die for her, yet would I not look upon that woman again if the love of her would make me love thee one hair the less--thou knowest. And the Lord smiled upon me and said, Fear not, Ahasuerus; my love infolds and is the nest of all love. I fear not; fear thou not either. And I arose and followed him.

And every tree and flower, yea every stone and cloud, with the whole earth and sea and air, were full of G.o.d, even the living G.o.d--so that now I could have died of pure content. And I followed my Lord.'"

The gate-keeper was silent, and so were they all. At length Rachel rose softly, wiping the tears from her eyes, and left the room. But she found no one in the closet. Helen was already hastening across the park, weeping as she went.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE CURATE'S RESOLVE.

The next day was Sunday.

Twelve months had not yet elapsed since the small events with which my narrative opened. The change which had pa.s.sed, not merely upon the opinions, but in the heart and mind and very being of the curate, had not then begun to appear even to himself, although its roots were not only deep in him but deep beyond him, even in the source of him; and now he was in a state of mind, a state of being, rather, of whose nature at that time he had not, and could not have had, the faintest fore-feeling, the most shadowy conception. It had been a season of great trouble, but the gain had been infinitely greater; for now were the bonds of the finite broken, he had burst the sh.e.l.l of the mortal, and was of those over whom the second death hath no power. The agony of the second birth was past, and he was a child again--only a child, he knew, but a child of the kingdom; and the world, and all that G.o.d cared about in it, was his, as no miser's gold could ever belong to its h.o.a.rder, while the created universe, yea and the uncreated also whence it sprang, lay open to him in the boundless free-giving of the original Thought. "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is G.o.d's:" he understood the words even as he who said them understood them, and as the wise of this world never will understand them until first they become fools that they may be wise.

At the same time a great sorrow threatened him from the no less mysterious region of his relations to humanity; but if that region and its most inexplicable cares were beyond the rule of the Life that dwelt in him, then was that Life no true G.o.d, and the whole thing was false; for he loved Helen with a love that was no invention or creation of his own, and if not his, then whose? Certainly not of one who, when it threatened to overwhelm him, was unable to uphold him under it! This thing also belonged to the G.o.d of his being. A poor G.o.d must he be for men or women who did not care about the awful things involved in the relation between them! Therefore even in his worst anxieties about Helen,--I do not mean in his worst seasons of despair at the thought of never gaining her love--he had never yet indeed consciously regarded the winning of her as a possibility--but at those times when he most plainly saw her the submissive disciple of George Bas...o...b.., and the two seemed to his fancy to be straying away together "into a wide field, full of dark mountains;" when he saw her, so capable of the n.o.blest, submitting her mind to the entrance of the poorest, meanest, shabbiest theories of life, and taking for her guide one who could lead her to no conscious well-being, or make provision for sustainment when the time of suffering and anxiety should come, or the time of health and strength be over when yet she must live on; when he saw her adopting a system of things whose influence would shrivel up instead of developing her faculties, crush her imagination with such a mountain-weight as was never piled above t.i.tan, and dwarf the whole divine woman within her to the size and condition of an Aztec--even then was he able to reason with himself: "She belongs to G.o.d, not to me; and G.o.d loves her better than ever I could love her. If she should set out with her blind guide, it will be but a first day's journey she will go--through marshy places and dry sands, across the far breadth of which, lo! the blue mountains that shelter the high vales of sweetness and peace." And with this he not only tried to comfort himself, but succeeded--I do not say to contentment, but to quiet. Contentment, which, whatever its immediate shape, to be contentment at all, must be the will of G.o.d, lay beyond.

Alas that men cannot believe there is such a thing as "that good and acceptable and perfect will of G.o.d!" To those that do believe it, it is the rejoicing of a conscious deliverance.

And now this Sunday, Wingfold entered the pulpit prepared at last to utter his resolve. Happily nothing had been done to introduce the confusing element of another will. The bishop had heard nothing of the matter, and if anything had reached the rector, he had not spoken. Not one of the congregation, not even Mrs. Ramshorn, had hinted to him that he ought to resign. It had been left altogether with himself. And now he would tell them the decision to which the thought he had taken had conducted him. I will give a portion of his sermon--enough to show us how he showed the congregation the state of his mind in reference to the grand question, and the position he took in relation to his hearers.

"It is time, my hearers," he said, "because it is now possible, to bring to a close that uncertainty with regard to the continuance of our relation to each other, which I was, in the spring-time of the year, compelled by mental circ.u.mstance to occasion. I then forced myself, for very dread of the honesty of an all-knowing G.o.d, to break through every convention of the church and the pulpit, and speak to you of my most private affairs. I told you that I was sure of not one of those things concerning which it is taken for granted that a clergyman must be satisfied; but that I would not at once yield my office, lest in that act I should seem to declare unbelief of many a thing which even then I desired to find true. In leaving me undisturbed either by complaint, expostulation, or proffered instruction, you, my hearers, have granted me the leisure of which I stood in need. Meantime I have endeavoured to show you the best I saw, while yet I dared not say I was sure of anything. I have thus kept you, those at least who cared to follow my path, acquainted with my mental history. And now I come to tell you the practical result at which I have arrived.

"But when I say that I will not forsake my curacy, still less my right and duty to teach whatever I seem to know, I must not therein convey the impression that I have attained that conviction and a.s.surance the discovery of the absence of which was the cause of the whole uncertain proceeding. All I now say is, that in the story of Jesus I have beheld such grandeur--to me apparently altogether beyond the reach of human invention, such a radiation of divine loveliness and truth, such hope for man, soaring miles above every possible pitfall of Fate; and have at the same time, from the endeavour to obey the word recorded as his, experienced such a conscious enlargement of mental faculty, such a deepening of moral strength, such an enhancement of ideal, such an increase of faith, hope, and charity towards all men, that I now declare with the consent of my whole man--I cast in my lot with the servants of the Crucified; I am content even to share their delusion, if delusion it be, for it is the truth of the G.o.d of men to me; I will stand or fall with the story of my Lord; I will take my chance--I speak not in irreverence but in honesty--my chance of failure or success in regard to whatever may follow in this life or the life to come, if there be a life to come--on the words and will of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom if, impressed as I am with the truth of his nature, the absolute devotion of his life, and the essential might of his being, I yet obey not, I shall not only deserve to perish, but in that very refusal draw ruin upon my head. Before G.o.d I say it--I would rather be crucified with that man, so it might be as a disciple and not as a thief that creeps, intrudes, or climbs into the fold, than I would reign with him over such a kingdom of grandeur as would have satisfied the imagination and love-ambition of his mother. On such grounds as these I hope I am justified in declaring myself a disciple of the Son of Man, and in devoting my life and the renewed energy and enlarged, yea infinite hope which he has given me, to his brothers and sisters of my race, that if possible I may gain some to be partakers of the blessedness of my hope. Henceforth I am, not IN HOLY ORDERS, I reject the phrase, but UNDER holy orders, even the orders of Christ Jesus, which is the law of liberty, the law whose obedience alone can set a man free from in-burrowing slavery.

"And if any man yet say that, because of my lack of absolute a.s.surance, I have no right to the sacred post,--Let him, I answer, who has been a.s.sailed by such doubts as mine, and from the citadel of his faith sees no more one lingering shadow of a foe--let him cast at me the first stone! Vain challenge! for such a one will never cast a stone at man or woman. But let not him whose belief is but the absence of doubt, who has never loved enough that which he thinks he believes to have felt a single fear lest it should not be true--let not that man, I say, cast at me pebble from the brook, or cloven rock from the mount of the law, for either will fall hurtless at my feet. Friends, I have for the last time spoken of myself in this place. Ye have borne with me in my trials, and I thank you. Those who have not only borne but suffered, and do now rejoice with me, I thank tenfold. I have done--

"Save for one word to the Christians of this congregation:

"The waves of infidelity are coming in with a strong wind and a flowing tide. Who is to blame? G.o.d it cannot be, and for unbelievers, they are as they were. It is the Christians who are to blame. I do not mean those who are called Christians, but those who call and count themselves Christians. I tell you, and I speak to each one of whom it is true, that you hold and present such a withered, starved, miserable, death's-head idea of Christianity; that you are yourselves such poverty-stricken believers, if believers you are at all; that the notion you present to the world as your ideal, is so commonplace, so false to the grand, gracious, mighty-hearted Jesus--that YOU are the cause why the truth hangs its head in patience, and rides not forth on the white horse, conquering and to conquer. You dull its l.u.s.tre in the eyes of men; you deform its fair proportions; you represent not that which it is, but that which it is not, yet call yourselves by its name; you are not the salt of the earth, but a salt that has lost its savour, for ye seek all things else first, and to that seeking the kingdom of G.o.d and his righteousness shall never be added. Until you repent and believe afresh, believe in a n.o.bler Christ, namely the Christ revealed by himself, and not the m.u.f.fled form of something vaguely human and certainly not all divine, which the false interpretations of men have subst.i.tuted for him, you will be, as, I repeat, you are, the main reason why faith is so scanty in the earth, and the enemy comes in like a flood. For the sake of the progress of the truth, and that into n.o.bler minds than yours, it were better you joined the ranks of the enemy, and declared what I fear with many of you is the fact, that you believe not at all. But whether in some sense you believe or not, the fact remains, that, while you are not of those Christians who obey the word of the master, DOING the things he says to them, you are of those Christians, if you WILL be called by the name, to whom he will say, I never knew you: go forth into the outer darkness. Then at least will the church be rid of you, and the honest doubter will have room to breathe the divine air of the presence of Jesus.

"But oh what unspeakable bliss of heart and soul and mind and sense remains for him who like St. Paul is crucified with Christ, who lives no more from his own self, but is inspired and informed and possessed with the same faith towards the Father in which Jesus lived and wrought the will of the Father! If the words attributed to Jesus are indeed the words of him whom Jesus declared himself, then truly is the fate of mankind a glorious one,--and that, first and last, because men have a G.o.d supremely grand, all-perfect in G.o.d-head; for that is, and that alone can be, the absolute bliss of the created."

CHAPTER x.x.x.

HELEN AWAKE.

That Sunday-dinner was a very quiet meal. An old friend of Mrs.

Ramshorn, a lady-ecclesiastic like herself, dined with them; what the two may have said to each other in secret conclave, I cannot tell, but not a word of remark upon Mr. Wingfold or his sermon was heard at table.

As she was leaving the room, Bas...o...b.. whispered Helen to put on something and come to him in the garden. Helen glanced at the window as if doubtful. It was cold, but the sun was s.h.i.+ning; the weather had nothing to do with it; she had but taken a moment to think. She pressed her lips together--and consented. George saw she would rather not go, but he set it down to a sisterly unwillingness to enjoy herself when her brother could no longer behold the sun, and such mere sentiment must not be encouraged.

When the cypresses and box-trees had come betwixt them and the house, he offered his arm, but Helen preferred being free. She did not refuse to go into the summer-house with him; but she took her place on the opposite side of the little table. George however spied no hint of approaching doom.

"I am sorry to have to alter my opinion of that curate," he said as he seated himself. "There was so much in him that I took to promise well.

But old habit, the necessities of existence, and the fear of society have been too much for him--as they will always be for most men. He has succ.u.mbed at last, and I am sorry! I did think he was going to turn out an honest man!"