CHAPTER XXXV.
_THE PARSON'S COUNSEL_.
It was a happy thing for both Richard and Barbara, that Barbara was now
under another influence besides Richard's. The more she saw of Mr. and
Mrs. Wingfold, the more she felt that she had come into a region of
reality and life. Both of them understood what a rare creature she was,
and spoke as freely before her as if she had been a sister of their own
age and standing. Barbara on her side knew no restraint with them, but
spoke in like freedom, both of her past life, and the present state of
things at home--which was indeed no secret, being manifest to the
servants, and therefore known to all the county, in forms more or less
correct, as it had been to all the colony before they left it. She talked
almost as freely of Richard, and of the great desire she had to get him
to believe in God.
"It was a dangerous relation between two such young people!" some
of my readers will remark.--Yes, I answer--dangerous, as every true
thing is dangerous to him or her who is not true; as every good thing
is dangerous to him or her who is not good. Nothing is so dangerous
as religious sentiment without truth in the inward parts. Certain
attempts at what is called conversion, are but writhings of the passion
of self-recommendation; gapings of the greed of power over others;
swellings of the ambition to propagate one's own creed, and proselytize
victoriously; hungerings to see self reflected in another convinced. In
such efforts lie dangers as vulgar as the minds that make them, and love
the excitement of them. But genuine love is far beyond such grovelling
delights; and the peril of such a relation is in inverse proportion to
the reality of those concerned.
Barbara was one who, so far as human eyes could see, had never required
conversion. She had but to go on, recognize, and do. She turned to the
light by a holy will as well as holy instinct. She needed much
instruction, and might yet have fierce battles to fight, but to convert
such as Barbara must be to turn them the wrong way; for the whole energy
of her being was in the direction of what is right--that is,
righteousness. She needed but to be told a good thing--I do not say _told
that a thing was good_--and at once she received it--that is, obeyed it,
the _only_ way of receiving a truth. She did the thing immediately
demanded upon every reception of light, every expansion of true
knowledge. She was essentially _of_ the truth; and therefore, when she
came into relation with a soul such as Wingfold, a soul so much more
developed than herself, so much farther advanced in the knowledge of
realities as having come through difficulties unknown and indeed at
present unknowable to Barbara, she met one of her own house, and her life
was fed from his, and began to grow faster. For he taught her to know the
eternal man who bore witness to his father in the face of his perverse
children, to know that his heart was the heart of a child in truth and
love, and the heart of a God in courage and patience; and Barbara became
his slave for very love, his blessed child, the inheritor of his
universe. Happily her life had not been loaded to the ground with the
degrading doctrines of those that cower before a God whose justice may
well be satisfied with the blood of the innocent, seeing it consists but
in the punishing of the guilty. She had indeed heard nothing of that
brood of lies until the unbelieving Richard--ah, not far from believing
he who but rejected such a God!--gave her to know that such things were
believed. From the whole swarm she was protected--shame that it should
have to be said!--by pure lack of what is generally regarded as _a
religious education_, such being the mother of more tears and madness in
humble souls, and more presumption in the proud and selfish, than perhaps
any other influence out of whose darkness God brings light. Neither
ascetic nor mystic nor doctrinist of any sort, caring nothing for church
or chapel, of observance of any kind as observance, she believed in God,
and was now ready to die for Jesus Christ, in the eternal gladness that
there was such a person as God and such a person as Jesus Christ. Their
being was to her the full and only pledge of every bliss, every childlike
delight. She believed in the God of the whole earth, not in a puritanical
God. She never imagined it could be wrong to dance: merry almost in her
very nature, she now held it a duty to be glad. Fond of sweets, she would
have thought it wrong to refuse what God meant her to like; but she had
far more pleasure in giving than in receiving them. She got into a little
habit of thanking God for Miss Brown every time she felt herself on her
back. She saw, the moment she heard it, that whatever was not of faith
was sin: "The idea," she said, "of taking a thing from God without
thinking love back to him for it!" She shuddered at the thought of
unnecessarily hurting, yet would punish sharply. She would whip her dog
when he deserved it, but sat up all night with him once when he was ill.
She understood something of the ways of God with men.
Wingfold never sought to moderate her ardour for the good of her
workman-friend; he only sought to strengthen her in the truth.
One day, when they were all three sitting together in the twilight before
the lamp was lit--for Helen Wingfold was one of those happy women able to
let their hands lie in their laps--he said to his pupil,
"Now, pray, Miss Wylder, don't try by argument to convince the young man
of anything. That were no good, even if you succeeded. Opinion is all
that can result from argument, and his opinion concerning God, even if
you got it set right, would not be knowledge of God, and would be worth
nothing; while, if a man knows God, his opinion is either right, or on
the nearest way to be right. The notion in Richard's brain of the God he
denies, is but another form of the Moloch of the Ammonites. There never
was, and never could be such a God. He in whom I believe is the God that
says, 'This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.' It is as if he
said--'Look at that man: I am just such! No other likeness of me is a
true likeness. Heed my son: heed nobody else. Know him and you know me,
and then we are one for ever.' Talk to Richard of the God you love, the
beautiful, the strong, the true, the patient, the forgiving, the loving;
the one childlike, eternal power and Godhead, who would die himself and
kill you rather than have you false and mean and selfish. Let him feel
God through your enthusiasm for him. You can't prove to him that there is
any God. A God that could be proved, would not be worth proving. Make his
thoughts dwell on such a God as he must feel would be worth having. Wake
the notion of a God such as will draw him to wish there were such a God.
There are many religious people who will tell you there is no such God as
I mean; but God will love you for believing that he is as good and true
as you can think. Throw the notions of any who tell you otherwise to the
winds of hell, 'God is just!' said a carping theologian to me the other
day. 'Yes,' I answered, 'and he cannot be pleased that you should call
that justice which is injustice, and attribute it to him!' There are many
who must die in ignorance of their Father in heaven, because they will
not of their own selves judge what is right. Such never get beyond the
weak and beggarly elements. Set in Richard's eye a God worth believing
in, a God like the son of God, and he will go and look if haply such a
God may be found; he will call upon him, and the God who is will hear and
answer him. What good would it be, what could it bring but the more
condemnation, that a man should be sure there was a God, if he did not
cry to him? But although a man may never doubt and never cry, I cannot
imagine any man sure there is a God without his first having cried to
him. God is God to us not that we may say _he is_, but _that we may know
him_; and when we know him, then we are with him, at home, at the heart
of the universe, the heirs of all things. All this is foolishness, I
know, to the dull soul that cares only for the things that admit of being
proved. The unprovable mystery out of which come the things provable, has
for them no interest, they say, because it is unprovable: they take for
granted that therefore it is unknowable. Would they be content it should
be unknowable if things were all as they should be within them? When the
eyes of those who have made themselves at home in the world of the senses
and care for no other are opened, I imagine them saying--'Yes, He was
after all; but none the less were you fools to believe in him, for you
had no proof!' Then I seem to hear the children laugh and say, 'We had
himself, and did not want it.' That the unprovable is necessarily the
unknowable, a thousand beliefs deny. 'You cannot prove to me that you
have a father!' says the blind sage, reasoning with the little child.
'Why should I prove it?' answers the child. 'I am sitting on his knee! If
I could prove it, that would not make you see him; that would not make
you happy like me! You do not care about my father, or you would not
stand there disputing; you would feel about until you found him!' If a
thing be true in itself, it is not capable of proof; and that man is in
the higher condition who is able to believe it. In proportion as a man is
a fool he is unable to believe what in itself is true. If intellect be
the highest power, then the men of proof are the wisest; if there be
something deeper than intellect, causing and including it, if there be a
creative power of which our intellect is but a faint reflex, then the
child of that power, the one who acknowledges and loves and obeys that
power, will be the one to understand it. If a man say, 'I cannot believe;
I was not made to believe what I could not prove;' I reply, Do you really
say, 'It is not true,' because you have no proof? Ask yourself whether
you do not turn from the idea because you prefer it should not be true.
You accept a thousand things without proof, and a thousand things may be
perfectly true, and have no proof. But if you cannot be sure, why
therefore do you turn away? Is the thing assuredly false? Then you ought
of course to turn away. Can you prove it false? You cannot. Again, why do
you turn away? That a thing is not assuredly true, cannot be reason for
turning from it, else farewell to all theory and all scientific research!
Is the thing less good, less desirable, less worth believing, in itself,
that you cannot thus satisfy yourself concerning it? The very chance that
_such_ a thing may be true, the very fact that it cannot be disproved, is
large reason for an honest, and continuous, and unending search. Do you
hold any door in your nature open for the possibility of a God having a
claim on you? The truth is, as I hinted before, that you are not drawn to
the idea, do not like it; and it is therefore you turn away, and not
because you have no proof.--If the man then shifted his ground and said,
'He seemed to me not a good being, and I said therefore, he _cannot_
exist;' I should reply, There you were right. But a thing that cannot be,
cannot render impossible a thing that can be--a thing against whose
existence there are no such arguments as have rightly shown that the
other cannot be. In right logical balance you must admit that a creative
being who is good _may_ exist. But the final question is always this:
Have you acted, or rather, are you acting according to the conscience
which is the one guide to truth, to all that is!"
"But," said Barbara, "perhaps the man would say that we see such
suffering in the world, that the being who made it, if there be one,
cannot possibly be both strong and good, otherwise he would not allow
it."
"Say then, that he might be both strong and good, and have some reason
for allowing, or even causing it, which those who suffer will themselves
one day justify, ready for the sake of it to go through all the suffering
again. Less than that would not satisfy me. If he say, 'What reason could
justify the infliction of such suffering?' then tell him what I am now
going to tell you.
"A year ago," continued Wingfold, "my little boy displeased me horribly.
I will not tell you what he did: when the boy grows up, he will find it
as impossible to understand how he could have done the thing, as I find
it now. People say, 'Children will be children!' but I see little
consolation in that. Children must be children, and ought to be good
children. They are made to be good children, just as much as men are made
to be good men. All I will say is, that he did a mean thing. You see his
mother can hardly keep from crying now at the thought of it. Thank God,
she was of one mind with me. I took him, and, bent on making him feel, if
not how horrid the thing was in itself--for what imperfect being can ever
know the full horror of evil!--at least how horrid I thought it, broke
out in strong language. I told him I must whip him; that I could not bear
doing it, but rather than he should be a damned, mean, contemptible
little rascal, I would kill him and be hanged for it. I dare say it
sounds very improper, but--"
"Not in the least!" cried Barbara. "_I_ like a man to curse what is bad,
and go down on his knees to what is good."
"Well, what do you think the little fellow said?--'Don't kill me, papa,'
he cried. 'I will be good. Don't, please, be hanged for my naughtiness!
Whip me, and that will make me good.'"
"And then you couldn't do it?" asked Barbara anxiously.
"I cried," said Wingfold, and almost cried again as he said it. "I'm not
much in the habit of crying--I don't look like it, do I?--but I couldn't
help it. The child took out his little pocket-handkerchief and dried my
eyes, and then prepared himself for the whipping. And I whipped him as I
never did before, and I hope in God shall never have to do again. The
moment it was over, while my heart was like to burst, he flung his arms
round my neck and began kissing me. 'I will never make you cry again,
papa!' he said.--He has kept his word, and since then I have never
wondered at the suffering in the world. I have puzzled my metaphysical
brains to the last gasp about the origin of evil--I don't do that now,
for I seem to understand it--but, since then, I have never troubled
myself about the origin of suffering. I don't like pain a whit better
than another, and I don't bear it nearly so well as Helen, but I vex
neither my brain nor my heart as to God's sending it. I knew after
whipping my boy, that the tears the Lord wept over Jerusalem were not
wept by him only, but by the Father as well. Whoever says God cannot
suffer, I say he does not understand. God _can_ weep, and weeps more
painful tears than ours; for he is God, and we are his little ones. That
boy's trouble was over with the punishment, but my heart is sore yet.
"It comes to this, that the suffering you see around you, hurts God more
than it hurts you, or the man upon whom it falls; but he hates things
that most men think little of, and will send any suffering upon them
rather than have them continue indifferent to them. Men may say, 'We
don't want suffering! we don't want to be good!' but God says, 'I know my
own obligations! and you shall not be contemptible wretches, if there be
any resource in the Godhead.' I know well that almost all the mothers in
my congregation would, hearing what I have just told you, call me a cruel
father. They would rather have me a weak one, loving my child less. They
would rather their child should be foul in the soul than be made clean
through suffering! I know they would! But I know also that they do not
see how ugly is evil. And that again is because they are not clean enough
themselves to value rightness above rubies! Tell the tale your own way to
your workman-friend, and may God help him to understand it! The God who
strikes, is the God whose son wept over Jerusalem."
"I am so glad you whipt the darling!" said Barbara, scarcely able to
speak. "I shall love him more than ever."
"You should see how he loves his father!" said Helen. "His father is all
his talk when we are alone together. He sees more of me than of him now,
but by and by his father will take him about with him."
"And then," said Barbara, "all his talk will be of you!"
"Yes; it is the way of the child!"
"And of the whole family in heaven and earth," rejoined the parson.
Barbara rose.
"You'll be on the watch," said Wingfold, "for any chance for me of
serving your mother?"
"I will," replied Barbara.
The next morning she got on Miss Brown, and rode to the forge, where
Simon made her always welcome. It was sunshine to his heart to see her,
he said. She knew that Richard was to be there. They left Miss Brown in
the smithy, and went for a walk together, during which Barbara was
careful to follow the parson's advice. Their talk was mostly about her
life in New Zealand. Now that she knew God more, and believed more in
him, she was more able to set forth her history. Feelings long vague had
begun to put on shapes definite and communicable. She understood herself
better, and was better able to make Richard understand her. And in
Richard, by degrees, through the sympathy of affection, was growing the
notion of a God in whom it would not be hard to believe. He ought not to
believe, and he had not believed in the supposed being hitherto presented
to him as God; now he saw the shape of a God in whom, if he existed, he
ought to believe. But he had not yet come to long that he should exist,
to desire him, or to cry out in the hope that he would hear him. His hour
was not yet come. But when the day of darkness arrived, when he knew
himself helpless, there would be in his mind a picture of the God to whom
he must cry in his trouble--a God whose existence would then be his only
need, the one desire of his soul. To wake the sense of this eternal need,
present though unrecognized under every joy, was the final cause of every
sorrow and pain against which Richard rebelled--most naturally rebelled,
knowing neither the plague of a heart that would but could not be lord
over itself, nor of a nature hatefully imperfect and spotted, yea capable
of what itself could not but detest.
Naturally, his manners were growing more refined from his intercourse
with the gracious, brave, sympathetic, unconventional creature, so strong
yet so gentle, so capable of indignation, so full of love. He was
gradually developing the pure humanity that lay beneath the rough
artisan. He was, in a word, becoming what in the kingdom of heaven every
man must be--a gentleman, because more than a gentleman.
All this time Barbara was pulled two ways: for Richard's sake she would
have him heir to the baronetcy; for her own she would be rid of the
shadow of having sought the baronet in the bookbinder. But more and more
the asseveration of lady Ann gained force with her--that Richard was not
the heir. She had greatly doubted her, but now she said to herself: "She
could hardly be mistaken, and she _cannot_ have lied." The consequence
was that she grew yet more free, more at home with Richard. She listened
to all he had to tell her, learning of him with an _abandon_ of
willingness that put him upon his honour to learn of her again. And he
did learn, as I have said, a good deal--went farther than he knew in the
way of true learning.
They strolled together in the field behind the smithy, within sight of
the cottage, for an hour or so; then hearing from the smithy the
impatient stamping of Miss Brown, and fearing she might give the old man
trouble, hastened back. Richard brought out the mare. Barbara sprang on a
big stone by the door, and mounted without his help. She went straight
for Wylder Hall.
As they were walking up and down the field, Arthur Lestrange passed on
foot, saw them, and went home indignant.
