CHAPTER XXIII
ON THE MOOR.
Alexa had a strong shaggy pony, which she rode the oftener that George
came so often; taking care to be well gone before he arrived on his
beautiful horse.
One lovely summer evening she had been across the moor a long way, and
was returning as the sun went down. A glory of red molten gold was
shining in her face, so that she could see nothing in front of her, and
was a little startled by a voice greeting her with a respectful
good-evening. The same moment she was alongside of the speaker in the
blinding veil of the sun. It was Andrew walking home from a village on
the other side of the moor. She drew rein, and they went together.
"What has come to you, Mr. Ingram?" she said; "I hear you were at church
last Sunday evening!"
"Why should I not be, ma'am?" asked Andrew.
"For the reason that you are not in the way of going."
"There might be good reason for going once, or for going many times, and
yet not for going always!"
"We won't begin with quarreling! There are things we shall not agree
about!"
"Yes; one or two--for a time, I believe!" returned Andrew.
"What did you think of Mr. Rackstraw's sermon? I suppose you went to
hear _him_.'"
"Yes, ma'am--at least partly."
"Well?"
"Will you tell me first whether you were satisfied with Mr. Rackstraw's
teaching? I know you were there."
"I was quite satisfied."
"Then I don't see reason for saying anything about it."
"If I am wrong, you ought to try to set me right!"
"The prophet Elisha would have done no good by throwing his salt into
the running stream. He cast it, you will remember, into the spring!"
"I do not understand you."
"There is no use in persuading a person to change an opinion."
"Why not?"
"Because the man is neither the better nor the worse for it. If you had
told me you were distressed to hear a man in authority speak as Mr.
Rackstraw spoke concerning a being you loved, I would have tried to
comfort you by pointing out how false it was. But if you are content to
hear God so represented, why should I seek to convince you of what is
valueless to you? Why offer you to drink what your heart is not
thirsting after? Would you love God more because you found He was not
what you were quite satisfied He should be?"
"Do tell me more plainly what you mean?"
"You must excuse me. I have said all I will. I can not reason in defense
of God. It seems blasphemy to argue that His nature is not such as no
honorable man could love in another man."
"But if the Bible says so?"
"If the Bible said so, the Bible would be false. But the Bible does not
say so."
"How is it then that it seems to say so?"
"Because you were taught falsely about Him before you desired to know
Him."
"But I am capable of judging now!"
Andrew was silent.
"Am I not?" insisted Alexa.
"Do you desire to know God?" said Andrew.
"I think I do know Him."
"And you think those things true?"
"Yes."
"Then we are where we were, and I say no more."
"You are not polite."
"I can not help it. I must let you alone to believe about God what you
can. You will not be blamed for not believing what you can not."
"Do you mean that God never punishes any one for what He can not help?"
"Assuredly."
"How do you prove that?"
"I will not attempt to prove it. If you are content to think He does, if
it do not trouble you that your God should be unjust, go on thinking so
until you are made miserable by it, then I will pour out my heart to
deliver you."
She was struck, not with any truth in what he said, but with the evident
truthfulness of the man himself. Right or wrong, there was that about
him--a certain radiance of conviction--which certainly was not about Mr.
Rackstraw.
"The things that can be shaken," said Andrew, as if thinking with
himself, "may last for a time, but they will at length be shaken to
pieces, that the things which can not be shaken may show what they are.
Whatever we call religion will vanish when we see God face to face."
For awhile they went brushing through the heather in silence.
"May I ask you one question, Mr. Ingram?" said Alexa.
"Surely, ma'am! Ask me anything you like."
"And you will answer me?"
"If I am at liberty to answer you I will."
"What do you mean by being at liberty? Are you under any vow?"
"I am under the law of love. I am bound to do nothing to hurt. An answer
that would do you no good I will not give."
"How do you know what will or will not do me good?"
"I must use what judgment I have."
"Is it true, then, that you believe God gives you whatever you ask?"
"I have never asked anything of Him that He did not give me."
"Would you mind telling me anything you have asked of Him?"
"I have never yet required to ask anything not included in the prayer,
'Thy will be done.'"
"That will be done without your praying for it."
"Pardon me; I do not believe it will be done, to all eternity, without
my praying for it. Where first am I accountable that His will should be
done? Is it not in myself? How is His will to be done in me without my
willing it? Does He not want me to love what He loves?--to be like
Himself?--to do His will with the glad effort of my will?--in a word, to
will what He wills? And when I find I can not, what am I to do but pray
for help? I pray, and He helps me."
"There is nothing strange in that!"
"Surely not It seems to me the simplest common sense. It is my business,
the business of every man, that God's will be done by his obedience to
that will, the moment he knows it."
"I fancy you are not so different from other people as you think
yourself. But they say you want to die."
"I want nothing but what God wants. I desire righteousness."
"Then you accept the righteousness of Christ?"
"Accept it! I long for it."
"You know that it is not what I mean!"
"I seek first the kingdom of God and God's righteousness."
"You avoid my question. Do you accept the righteousness of Christ
instead of your own?"
"I have no righteousness of my own to put it instead of. The only
righteousness there is is God's, and He will make me righteous like
Himself. He is not content that His one Son only should be righteous; He
wants all His children to be righteous as He is righteous. The thing is
plain; I will not argue about it."
"You do not believe in the atonement."
"I believe in Jesus Christ. He is the atonement. What strength God has
given me I will spend in knowing Him and doing what He tells me. To
interpret His plans before we know Himself is to mistake both Him and
His plans. I know this, that he has given His life for what multitudes
who call themselves by His name would not rise from their seats to share
in."
"You think me incapable of understanding the gospel?"
"I think if you did understand the gospel of Christ you would be
incapable of believing the things about His Father that you say you do
believe. But I will not say a word more. When you are able to see the
truth, you will see it; and when you desire the truth you will be able."
Alexa touched her pony with her whip. But by and by she pulled him up,
and made him walk till Andrew overtook her.
The sun was by this time far out of sight, the glow of the west was
over, and twilight lay upon the world. Its ethereal dimness had sunk
into her soul.
"Does the gloaming make you sad, Mr. Ingram?" she asked.
"It makes me very quiet," he answered--"as if all my people were asleep,
and waiting for me."
"Do you mean as if they were all dead? How can you talk of it so
quietly?"
"Because I do not believe in death."
"What _do_ you mean?"
"I am a Christian!"
"I hope you are, Mr. Ingram, though, to be honest with you, some things
make me doubt it Perhaps you would say I am not a Christian."
"It is enough that God knows whether you are a Christian or not. Why
should I say you are or you are not?"
"But I want to know what you meant when you said you were a Christian.
How should that make you indifferent to the death of your friends? Death
is a dreadful thing, look at it how you like."
"The Lord says, 'He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.' If
my friends are not dead, but living and waiting for me, why should I
wait for them in a fierce, stormy night, or a black frost, instead of
the calm of such a sleeping day as this--a day with the son hid,
Shakespeare calls it"
"How you do mix up things! Shakespeare and Jesus Christ!"
"God mixed them first, and will mix them a good deal more yet," said
Andrew.
But for the smile which would hover like a heavenly Psyche about his
mouth, his way of answering would sometimes have seemed curt to those
who did not understand him. Instead of holding aloof in his superiority,
however, as some thought he did when he would not answer, or answered
abruptly, Andrew's soul would be hovering, watching and hoping for a
chance of lighting, and giving of the best he had. He was like a great
bird changing parts with a child--the child afraid of the bird, and the
bird enticing the child to be friends. He had learned that if he poured
out his treasure recklessly it might be received with dishonor, and but
choke the way of the chariot of approaching truth.
"Perhaps you will say next there is no such thing as suffering," resumed
Alexa.
"No; the Lord said that in the world His friends should have
tribulation."
"What tribulation have you, who are so specially His friend?"
"Not much yet It is a little, however, sometimes, to know such strong,
and beautiful, and happy-making things, and all the time my people, my
beloved humans, born of my Father in heaven, with the same heart for joy
and sorrow, will not listen and be comforted, I think that was what made
our Lord sorriest of all"
"Mr. Ingram, I have no patience with you. How dare you liken your
trouble to that of our Lord--making yourself equal with Him!"
"Is it making myself equal with Him to say that I understand a little
how He felt toward His fellow-men? I am always trying to understand Him;
would it be a wonder if I did sometimes a little? How is a man to do as
He did, without understanding Him?"
"Are you going to work miracles next?"
"Jesus was always doing what God wanted Him to do. That was what He came
for, not to work miracles. He could have worked a great many more if He
had pleased, but He did no more than God wanted of Him. Am I not to try
to do the will of God, because He who died that I might, always
succeeded however hard it was, and I am always failing and having to try
again?"
"And you think you will come to it in this life?"
"I never think about that; I only think about doing His will now--not
about doing it then--that is, to-morrow or next day or next world. I
know only one life--the life that is hid with Christ in God; and that is
the life by which I live here and now. I do not make schemes of life; I
live. Life will teach me God's plans; I will take no trouble about them;
I will only obey, and receive the bliss He sends me. And of all things I
will not make theories of God's plans for other people to accept. I will
only do my best to destroy such theories as I find coming between some
poor glooming heart, and the sun shining in his strength. Those who love
the shade of lies, let them walk in it until the shiver of the eternal
cold drive them to seek the face of Jesus Christ. To appeal to their
intellect would be but to drive them the deeper into the shade to
justify their being in it. And if by argument you did persuade them out
of it, they would but run into a deeper and worse darkness."
"How could that be?"
"They would at once think that, by an intellectual stride they had
advanced in the spiritual life, whereas they would be neither the better
nor the worse. I know a man, once among the foremost in denouncing the
old theology, who is now no better than a swindler."
"You mean--"
"No one you know, ma'am. His intellectual freedom seems only to have
served his spiritual subjugation. Right opinion, except it spring from
obedience to the truth, is but so much rubbish on the golden floor of
the temple."
The peace of the night and its luminous earnestness were gleaming on
Andrew's face, and Alexa, glancing up as he ceased, felt again the
inroad of a sense of something in the man that was not in the other men
she knew--the spiritual shadow of a dweller in regions beyond her ken.
The man was before her, yet out of her sight!
The whole thing was too simple for her, only a child could understand it
Instead of listening to the elders and priests to learn how to save his
soul, he cast away all care of himself, left that to God, and gave
himself to do the will of Him from whose heart he came, even as the
eternal Life, the Son of God, required of him; in the mighty hope of
becoming one mind, heart, soul, one eternal being, with Him, with the
Father, with every good man, with the universe which was his
inheritance--walking in the world as Enoch walked with God, held by his
hand. This is what man was and is meant to be, what man must become;
thither the wheels of time are roaring; thither work all the silent
potencies of the eternal world; and they that will not awake and arise
from the dead must be flung from their graves by the throes of a
shivering world.
When he had done speaking Andrew stood and looked up. A few stars were
looking down through the limpid air. Alexa rode on. Andrew let her go,
and walked after her alone, sure that her mind must one day open to the
eternal fact that God is all in all, the perfect friend of His children;
yea, that He would cease to be God sooner than fail His child in his
battle with death.
