Part 43 (2/2)
”Can't you trust the Lord?” he said.
”I see trouble before me, whatever I do,” I said with some difficulty.
”Very well,” he said; ”even so, trust the Lord. The trouble will do you no harm.”
I sat down for a moment and covered my face. It might do me no harm; it might at the same time separate me from what I loved best in the world.
”Cannot you trust?” he repeated. ” 'He that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat.' ”
”You know,” I said, getting up, ”one cannot help being weak.”
”Will you excuse me? - That is precisely what we _can_ help. We cannot help being ignorant sometimes, - foolish sometimes, - short-sighted. But weak we need not be; for 'in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength;' and 'he giveth power to the faint.' ”
”But there is no perfection, Mr. Dinwiddie.”
”Not if by perfection you mean, standing alone. But if the power that holds us up is perfect, - what should hinder our having a fulness of that? 'If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it.' Isn't that promise good for all we want to ask?”
I sat down again to think. Mr. Dinwiddie quietly took his place by my side; and we were still for a good while. The plains of Jericho and the Jordan and the Moab mountains and the Quarantania, all seemed to have new voices for me now; voices full of balm; messages of soft-healing. I do think the messages G.o.d sends to us by natural things are some of the sweetest and mightiest and best understood of all. They come home.
”Do you think,” I asked, after a long silence, ”that this mountain was really the scene of the Temptation?”
”Why should we think so? No, I do not think it.”
”But the road from Jericho to Jerusalem - there is no doubt of that?”
”No doubt at all. We are often sure of the roads here, when we are sure of little else.”
There was a pause; and then Mr. Dinwiddie broke it.
”You left things in confusion at home. How do you feel about that?”
”At home in America?” I said. ”I do not feel about it as my parents do.”
”You side with the North!”
”I have lived there so much. I know the view taken there; and it seems to me the right one. And I have lived at the South too; and I do not like the view held there, - nor the practice followed.”
”There are some things I can fancy you would not like,” he said musingly. ”I have not known what to think. It seems to me they have made a false move. But it seems to me they must succeed.”
”I don't know,” I said. ”Perhaps.”
He looked at me a little hard, and then we left the hermits'
caves and went down the plain to our encampment.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FORLORN HOPE
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