Part 33 (1/2)
”You mean you would kill yourself but for your belief in G.o.d?”
”By life, I meant being, my lady. If there were no G.o.d, I dared not kill myself, lest worse should be waiting me in the awful voids beyond. If there be a G.o.d, living or dying is all one--so it be what he pleases.”
”I have read of saints,” said Clementina, with cool dissatisfaction in her tone, ”uttering such sentiments--”
”Sentiments!” said Malcolm to himself
”--and I do not doubt such were felt or at least imagined by them; but I fail to understand how, even supposing these things true, a young man like yourself should, in the midst of a busy world, and with an occupation which, to say the least,--”
Here she paused. After a moment Malcolm ventured to help her.
”Is so far from an ideal one--would you say, my lady?”
”Something like that,” answered Clementina, and concluded ”I wonder how you can have arrived at such ideas.”
”There is nothing wonderful in it, my lady,” returned Malcolm.
”Why should not a youth, a boy, a child, for as a child I thought about what the kingdom of heaven could mean, desire with all his might that his heart and mind should be clean, his will strong, his thoughts just, his head clear, his soul dwelling in the place of life? Why should I not desire that my life should be a complete thing, and an outgoing of life to my neighbour? Some people are content not to do mean actions: I want to become incapable of a mean thought or feeling; and so I shall be before all is done.”
”Still, how did you come to begin so much earlier than others?”
”All I know as to that, my lady, is that I had the best man in the world to teach me.”
”And why did not I have such a man to teach me? I could have learned of such a man too.”
”If you are able now, my lady, it does not follow that it would have been the best thing for you sooner. Some children learn far better for not being begun early, and will get before others who have been at it for years. As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you--in a book, or a friend, or, best of all in your own thoughts--the eternal thought speaking in your thought.”
It flashed through her mind, ”Can it be that I have found it now --on the lips of a groom?”
Was it her own spirit or another that laughed strangely within her?
”Well, as you seem to know so much better than other people,” she said, ”I want you to explain to me how the G.o.d in whom you profess to believe can make use of such cruelties. It seems to me more like the revelling of a demon.”
”My lady!” remonstrated Malcolm, ”I never pretended to explain. All I say is, that, if I had reason for hoping there was a G.o.d, and if I found, from my own experience and the testimony of others, that suffering led to valued good, I should think, hope, expect to find that he caused suffering for reasons of the highest, purest and kindest import, such as when understood must be absolutely satisfactory to the sufferers themselves. If a man cannot believe that, and if he thinks the pain the worst evil of all, then of course he cannot believe there is a good G.o.d. Still, even then, if he would lay claim to being a lover of truth, he ought to give the idea--the mere idea of G.o.d fair play, lest there should be a good G.o.d after all, and he all his life doing him the injustice of refusing him his trust and obedience.”
”And. how are we to give the mere idea of him fair play?” asked Clementina, rather contemptuously. But I think she was fighting emotion, confused and troublesome.
”By looking to the heart of whatever claims to be a revelation of him.”
”It would take a lifetime to read the half of such.”
”I will correct myself, and say--whatever of the sort has best claims on your regard--whatever any person you look upon as good, believes and would have you believe--at the same time doing diligently what you know to be right; for, if there be a G.o.d, that must be his will, and, if there be not, it remains our duty.”
All this time, Florimel was working away at her embroidery, a little smile of satisfaction flickering on her face. She was pleased to hear her clever friend talking so with her strange va.s.sal. As to what they were saying, she had no doubt it was all right, but to her it was not interesting. She was mildly debating with herself whether she should tell her friend about Lenorme.
Clementina's work now lay on her lap and her hands on her work, while her eyes at one time gazed on the gra.s.s at her feet, at another searched Malcolm's face with a troubled look. The light of Malcolm's candle was beginning to penetrate into her dusky room, the power of his faith to tell upon the weakness of her unbelief.
There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth s.h.i.+ning from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve. But into the house where the refusal of the bad is followed by no embracing of the good-- the house empty and swept and garnished--the bad will return, bringing with it seven evils that are worse.
If something of that sacred mystery, holy in the heart of the Father, which draws together the souls of man and woman, was at work between them, let those scoff at the mingling of love and religion who know nothing of either; but man or woman who, loving woman or man, has never in that love lifted the heart to the Father, and everyone whose divine love has not yet cast at least an arm round the human love, must take heed what they think of themselves, for they are yet but paddlers in the tide of the eternal ocean. Love is a lifting no less than a swelling of the heart, What changes, what metamorphoses, transformations, purifications, glorifications, this or that love must undergo ere it take its eternal place in the kingdom of heaven, through all its changes yet remaining, in its one essential root, the same, let the coming redemption reveal.