Part 22 (1/2)
”The lantern is not the light. Perhaps you can not change your horn for gla.s.s, but what if you could better the light? Suppose the boy's father knew all about the country, but you never thought it worth while to send the lad to him for instructions?”
”Suppose I didn't believe he had a father? Suppose he told me he hadn't?”
”Some men would call out to know if there was any body in the house to give the boy a useful hint.”
”Oh bother! I'm quite content with my fellow.”
”Well, for my part I should count my conscience, were it ten times better than it is, poor company on any journey. Nothing less than the living Truth ever with me can make existence a peace to me,--that's the joy of the Holy Ghost, Miss Meredith.--What if you should find one day, Faber, that, of all facts, the thing you have been so coolly refusing was the most precious and awful?”
Faber had had more than enough of it. There was but one thing precious to him; Juliet was the perfect flower of nature, the apex of law, the last presentment of evolution, the final reason of things! The very soul of the world stood there in the dusk, and there also stood the foolish curate, whirling his little vortex of dust and ashes between him and her!
”It comes to this,” said Faber; ”what you say moves nothing in me. I am aware of no need, no want of that Being of whom you speak. Surely if in Him I did live and move and have my being, as some old heathen taught your Saul of Tarsus, I should in one mode or another be aware of Him!”
While he spoke, Mr. Drake and Dorothy had come into the room. They stood silent.
”That is a weighty word,” said Wingfold. ”But what if you feel His presence every moment, only do not recognize it as such?”
”Where would be the good of it to me then?”
”The good of it to you might lie in the blinding. What if any further revelation to one who did not seek it would but obstruct the knowledge of Him? Truly revealed, the word would be read untruly--even as The Word has been read by many in all ages. Only the pure in heart, we are told, shall see Him. The man who, made by Him, does not desire Him--how should he know Him?”
”Why don't I desire Him then?--I don't.”
”That is for you to find out.”
”I do what I know to be right; even on your theory I ought to get on,”
said Faber, turning from him with a laugh.
”I think so too,” replied Wingfold. ”Go on, and prosper. Only, if there be untruth in you alongside of the truth--? It might be, and you are not awake to it. It is marvelous what things can co-exist in a human mind.”
”In that case, why should not your G.o.d help me?”
”Why not? I think he will. But it may _have_ to be in a way you will not like.”
”Well, well! good night. Talk is but talk, whatever be the subject of it.--I beg your pardon,” he added, shaking hands with the minister and his daughter; ”I did not see you come in. Good night.”
”I won't allow that talk is only talk, Faber,” Wingfold called after him with a friendly laugh. Then turning to Mr. Drake, ”Pardon me,” he said, ”for treating you with so much confidence. I saw you come in, but believed you would rather have us end our talk than break it off.”
”Certainly. But I can't help thinking you grant him too much, Mr.
Wingfold,” said the minister seriously.
”I never find I lose by giving, even in argument,” said the curate.
”Faber rides his hobby well, but the brute is a sorry jade. He will find one day she has not a sound joint in her whole body.”
The man who is anxious to hold every point, will speedily bring a question to a mere dispute about trifles, leaving the real matter, whose elements may appeal to the G.o.dlike in every man, out in the cold. Such a man, having gained his paltry point, will crow like the bantam he is, while the other, who may be the greater, perhaps the better man, although in the wrong, is embittered by his smallness, and turns away with increased prejudice. Human nature can hardly be blamed for its readiness to impute to the case the shallowness of its pleader. Few men do more harm than those who, taking the right side, dispute for personal victory, and argue, as they are sure then to do, ungenerously. But even genuine argument for the truth is not preaching the gospel, neither is he whose unbelief is thus a.s.sailed, likely to be brought thereby into any mood but one unfit for receiving it. Argument should be kept to books; preachers ought to have nothing to do with it--at all events in the pulpit. There let them hold forth light, and let him who will, receive it, and him who will not, forbear. G.o.d alone can convince, and till the full time is come for the birth of the truth in a soul, the words of even the Lord Himself are not there potent.
”The man irritates me, I confess,” said Mr. Drake. ”I do not say he is self-satisfied, but he is very self-sufficient.”