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The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2

G >> George MacDonald >> The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2



Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




THE SEABOARD PARISH

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.

VOL. II.






CONTENTS OF VOL. II.





I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
II. NICEBOOTS
III. THE BLACKSMITH
IV. THE LIFE-BOAT
V. MR. PERCIVALE
VI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH
VII. AT THE FARM
VIII. THE KEEVE
IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH
X. THE OLD CASTLE
XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE
XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE
XIII. THE HARVEST






CHAPTER I.

ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.





In the evening we met in Connie's room, as usual, to have our talk. And
this is what came out of it.

The window was open. The sun was in the west. We sat a little aside out
of the course of his radiance, and let him look full into the room. Only
Wynnie sat back in a dark corner, as if she would get out of his way. Below
him the sea lay bluer than you could believe even when you saw it--blue
with a delicate yet deep silky blue, the exquisiteness of which was thrown
up by the brilliant white lines of its lapping on the high coast, to the
northward. We had just sat down, when Dora broke out with--

"I saw Niceboots at church. He did stare at you, papa, as if he had never
heard a sermon before."

"I daresay he never heard such a sermon before!" said Connie, with the
perfect confidence of inexperience and partiality--not to say ignorance,
seeing she had not heard the sermon herself.

Here Wynnie spoke from her dark corner, apparently forcing herself to
speak, and thereby giving what seemed an unpleasant tone to what she said.

"Well, papa, I don't know what to think. You are always telling us to trust
in Him; but how can we, if we are not good?"

"The first good thing you can do is to look up to him. That is the
beginning of trust in him, and the most sensible thing that it is possible
for us to do. That is faith."

"But it's no use sometimes."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you--I mean I--can't feel good, or care about it at all."

"But is that any ground for saying that it is no use--that he does not heed
you? that he disregards the look cast up to him? that, till the heart goes
with the will, he who made himself strong to be the helper of the weak, who
pities most those who are most destitute--and who so destitute as those who
do not love what they want to love--except, indeed, those who don't want to
love?--that, till you are well on towards all right by earnestly
seeking it, he won't help you? You are to judge him from yourself, are
you?--forgetting that all the misery in you is just because you have not
got his grand presence with you?"

I spoke so earnestly as to be somewhat incoherent in words. But my reader
will understand. Wynnie was silent. Connie, as if partly to help her
sister, followed on the same side.

"I don't know exactly how to say what I mean, papa, but I wish I could get
this lovely afternoon, all full of sunshine and blue, into unity with all
that you teach us about Jesus Christ. I wish this beautiful day came in
with my thought of him, like the frame--gold and red and blue--that you
have to that picture of him at home. Why doesn't it?"

"Just because you have not enough of faith in him, my dear. You do not know
him well enough yet. You do not yet believe that he means you all gladness,
heartily, honestly, thoroughly."

"And no suffering, papa?"

"I did not say that, my dear. There you are on your couch and can't move.
But he does mean you such gladness, such a full sunny air and blue sea of
blessedness that this suffering shall count for little in it; nay more,
shall be taken in for part, and, like the rocks that interfere with the
roll of the sea, flash out the white that glorifies and intensifies the
whole--to pass away by and by, I trust, none the less. What a chance you
have, my Connie, of believing in him, of offering upon his altar!"

"But," said my wife, "are not these feelings in a great measure dependent
upon the state of one's health? I find it so different when the sunshine is
inside me as well as outside me."

"Not a doubt of it, my dear. But that is only the more reason for rising
above all that. From the way some people speak of physical difficulties--I
don't mean you, wife--you would think that they were not merely the
inevitable which they are, but the insurmountable which they are not. That
they are physical and not spiritual is not only a great consolation, but a
strong argument for overcoming them. For all that is physical is put, or
is in the process of being put, under the feet of the spiritual. Do not
mistake me. I do not say you can make yourself feel merry or happy when you
are in a physical condition which is contrary to such mental condition. But
you can withdraw from it--not all at once; but by practice and effort you
can learn to withdraw from it, refusing to allow your judgments and actions
to be ruled by it. You can climb up out of the fogs, and sit quiet in the
sunlight on the hillside of faith. You cannot be merry down below in the
fog, for there is the fog; but you can every now and then fly with the
dove-wings of the soul up into the clear, to remind yourself that all this
passes away, is but an accident, and that the sun shines always, although
it may not at any given moment be shining on you. 'What does that matter?'
you will learn to say. 'It is enough for me to know that the sun does
shine, and that this is only a weary fog that is round about me for
the moment. I shall come out into the light beyond presently.' This is
faith--faith in God, who is the light, and is all in all. I believe that
the most glorious instances of calmness in suffering are thus achieved;
that the sufferers really do not suffer what one of us would if thrown into
their physical condition without the refuge of their spiritual condition as
well; for they have taken refuge in the inner chamber. Out of the spring of
their life a power goes forth that quenches the flames of the furnace of
their suffering, so far at least that it does not touch the deep life,
cannot make them miserable, does not drive them from the possession of
their soul in patience, which is the divine citadel of the suffering. Do
you understand me, Connie?"

"I do, papa. I think perfectly."

"Still less, then, is the fact that the difficulty is physical to be used
as an excuse for giving way to ill-temper, and, in fact, leaving ourselves
to be tossed and shaken by every tremble of our nerves. That is as if a
man should give himself into the hands and will and caprice of an
organ-grinder, to work upon him, not with the music of the spheres, but
with the wretched growling of the streets."

"But," said Wynnie, "I have heard you yourself, papa, make excuse for
people's ill-temper on this very ground, that they were out of health.
Indeed," she went on, half-crying, "I have heard you do so for myself, when
you did not know that I was within hearing."

"Yes, my dear, most assuredly. It is no fiction, but a real difference that
lies between excusing ourselves and excusing other people. No doubt the
same excuse is just for ourselves that is just for other people. But we can
do something to put ourselves right upon a higher principle, and therefore
we should not waste our time in excusing, or even in condemning ourselves,
but make haste up the hill. Where we cannot work--that is, in the life of
another--we have time to make all the excuse we can. Nay more; it is only
justice there. We are not bound to insist on our own rights, even of
excuse; the wisest thing often is to forego them. But we are bound by
heaven, earth, and hell to give them to other people. And, besides, what
a comfort to ourselves to be able to say, 'It is true So-and-so was cross
to-day. But it wasn't in the least that he wasn't friendly, or didn't like
me; it was only that he had eaten something that hadn't agreed with him.
I could see it in his eye. He had one of his headaches.' Thus, you see,
justice to our neighbour, and comfort to ourselves, is one and the same
thing. But it would be a sad thing to have to think that when we found
ourselves in the same ungracious condition, from whatever cause, we had
only to submit to it, saying, 'It is a law of nature,' as even those who
talk most about laws will not do, when those laws come between them and
their own comfort. They are ready enough then to call in the aid of higher
laws, which, so far from being contradictory, overrule the lower to get
things into something like habitable, endurable condition. It may be a law
of nature; but what has the Law of the Spirit of Life to _propound anent_
it? as the Scotch lawyers would say."

A little pause followed, during which I hope some of us were thinking. That
Wynnie, at least, was, her next question made evident.

"What you say about a law of nature and a law of the Spirit makes me think
again how that walking on the water has always been a puzzle to me."

"It could hardly be other, seeing that we cannot possibly understand it," I
answered.

"But I find it so hard to believe. Can't you say something, papa, to help
me to believe it?"

"I think if you admit what goes before, you will find there is nothing
against reason in the story."

"Tell me, please, what you mean."

"If all things were made by Jesus, the Word of God, would it be reasonable
that the water that he had created should be able to drown him?"

"It might drown his body."

"It would if he had not the power over it still, to prevent it from laying
hold of him. But just think for a moment. God is a Spirit. Spirit is
greater than matter. Spirit makes matter. Think what it was for a human
body to have such a divine creative power dwelling in it as that which
dwelt in the human form of Jesus! What power, and influence, and utter rule
that spirit must have over the body in which it dwells! We cannot imagine
how much; but if we have so much power over our bodies, how much more must
the pure, divine Jesus, have had over his! I suspect this miracle was
wrought, not through anything done to the water, but through the power of
the spirit over the body of Jesus, which was all obedient thereto. I am not
explaining the miracle, for that I cannot do. One day I think it will be
plain common sense to us. But now I am only showing you what seems to me to
bring us a step nearer to the essential region of the miracle, and so far
make it easier to believe. If we look at the history of our Lord, we shall
find that, true real human body as his was, it was yet used by his spirit
after a fashion in which we cannot yet use our bodies. And this is only
reasonable. Let me give you an instance. You remember how, on the Mount of
Transfiguration, that body shone so that the light of it illuminated
all his garments. You do not surely suppose that this shine was
external--physical light, as we say, _merely?_ No doubt it was physical
light, for how else would their eyes have seen it? But where did it come
from? What was its source? I think it was a natural outburst of glory from
the mind of Jesus, filled with the perfect life of communion with his
Father--the light of his divine blessedness taking form in physical
radiance that permeated and glorified all that surrounded him. As the
body is the expression of the soul, as the face of Jesus himself was the
expression of the being, the thought, the love of Jesus in like manner this
radiance was the natural expression of his gladness, even in the face of
that of which they had been talking--Moses, Elias, and he--namely,
the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. Again, after his
resurrection, he convinced the hands, as well as eyes, of doubting Thomas,
that he was indeed there in the body; and yet that body could appear and
disappear as the Lord willed. All this is full of marvel, I grant you; but
probably far more intelligible to us in a further state of existence than
some of the most simple facts with regard to our own bodies are to us now,
only that we are so used to them that we never think how unintelligible
they really are."

"But then about Peter, papa? What you have been saying will not apply to
Peter's body, you know."

"I confess there is more difficulty there. But if you can suppose that such
power were indwelling in Jesus, you cannot limit the sphere of its action.
As he is the head of the body, his church, in all spiritual things, so I
firmly believe, however little we can understand about it, is he in all
natural things as well. Peter's faith in him brought even Peter's body
within the sphere of the outgoing power of the Master. Do you suppose that
because Peter ceased to be brave and trusting, therefore Jesus withdrew
from him some sustaining power, and allowed him to sink? I do not believe
it. I believe Peter's sinking followed naturally upon his loss of
confidence. Thus he fell away from the life of the Master; was no longer,
in that way I mean, connected with the Head, was instantly under the
dominion of the natural law of gravitation, as we call it, and began to
sink. Therefore the Lord must take other means to save him. He must draw
nigh to him in a bodily manner. The pride of Peter had withdrawn him from
the immediate spiritual influence of Christ, conquering his matter; and
therefore the Lord must come over the stormy space between, come nearer to
him in the body, and from his own height of safety above the sphere of the
natural law, stretch out to him the arm of physical aid, lift him up, lead
him to the boat. The whole salvation of the human race is figured in this
story. It is all Christ, my love.--Does this help you to believe at all?"

"I think it does, papa. But it wants thinking over a good deal. I always
find as I think, that lighter bits shine out here and there in a thing I
have no hope of understanding altogether. That always helps me to believe
that the rest might be understood too, if I were only clever enough."

"Simple enough, not clever enough, my dear."

"But there's one thing," said my wife, "that is more interesting to me than
what you have been talking about. It is the other instances in the life of
St. Peter in which you said he failed in a similar manner from pride or
self-satisfaction."

"One, at least, seems to me very clear. You have often remarked to me,
Ethel, how little praise servants can stand; how almost invariably after
you have commended the diligence or skill of any of your household, as you
felt bound to do, one of the first visible results was either a falling
away in the performance by which she had gained the praise, or a more
or less violent access, according to the nature of the individual, of
self-conceit, soon breaking out in bad temper or impertinence. Now you will
see precisely the same kind of thing in Peter."

Here I opened my New Testament, and read fragmentarily, "'But whom say ye
that I am?... Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.... Blessed
art thou, Simon.... My Father hath revealed that unto thee. I will give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.... I must suffer many things,
and be killed, and be raised again the third day.... Be it far from thee,
Lord. This shall not be unto thee.... Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art
an offence unto me.' Just contemplate the change here in the words of our
Lord. 'Blessed art thou.' 'Thou art an offence unto me.' Think what change
has passed on Peter's mood before the second of these words could be
addressed to him to whom the first had just been spoken. The Lord had
praised him. Peter grew self-sufficient, even to the rebuking of him whose
praise had so uplifted him. But it is ever so. A man will gain a great
moral victory: glad first, then uplifted, he will fall before a paltry
temptation. I have sometimes wondered, too, whether his denial of our Lord
had anything to do with his satisfaction with himself for making that
onslaught upon the high priest's servant. It was a brave thing and a
faithful to draw a single sword against a multitude. In his fiery eagerness
and inexperience, the blow, well meant to cleave Malchus's head, missed,
and only cut off his ear; but Peter had herein justified his confident
saying that he would not deny him. He was not one to deny his Lord who had
been the first to confess him! Yet ere the cock had crowed, ere the morning
had dawned, the vulgar grandeur of the palace of the high priest (for let
it be art itself, it was vulgar grandeur beside that grandeur which it
caused Peter to deny), and the accusing tone of a maid-servant, were enough
to make him quail whom the crowd with lanterns, and torches, and weapons,
had only roused to fight. True, he was excited then, and now he was cold in
the middle of the night, with Jesus gone from his sight a prisoner, and for
the faces of friends that had there surrounded him and strengthened him
with their sympathy, now only the faces of those who were, or whom at least
Peter thought to be on the other side, looking at him curiously, as a
strange intruder into their domains. Alas, that the courage which led him
to follow the Lord should have thus led him, not to deny him, but into the
denial of him! Yet why should I say _alas?_ If the denial of our Lord
lay in his heart a possible thing, only prevented by his being kept in
favourable circumstances for confessing him, it was a thousand times better
that he should deny him, and thus know what a poor weak thing that heart of
his was, trust it no more, and give it up to the Master to make it strong,
and pure, and grand. For such an end the Lord was willing to bear all the
pain of Peter's denial. O, the love of that Son of Man, who in the midst of
all the wretched weaknesses of those who surrounded him, loved the best in
them, and looked forward to his own victory for them that they might become
all that they were meant to be--like him; that the lovely glimmerings of
truth and love that were in them now--the breakings forth of the light that
lighteneth every man--might grow into the perfect human day; loving them
even the more that they were so helpless, so oppressed, so far from that
ideal which was their life, and which all their dim desires were reaching
after!"

Here I ceased, and a little overcome with the great picture in my soul
to which I had been able only to give the poorest expression, rose, and
retired to my own room. There I could only fall on my knees and pray that
the Lord Christ, who had died for me, might have his own way with me--that
it might be worth his while to have done what he did and what he was doing
now for me. To my Elder Brother, my Lord, and my God, I gave myself yet
again, confidently, because he cared to have me, and my very breath was
his. I _would_ be what he wanted, who knew all about it, and had done
everything that I might be a son of God--a living glory of gladness.






CHAPTER II.

NICEBOOTS.





The next morning the captain of the lost vessel called upon me early to
thank me for himself and his men. He was a fine honest-looking burly
fellow, dressed in blue from head to heel. He might have sat for a portrait
of Chaucer's shipman, as far as his hue and the first look of him went. It
was clear that "in many a tempest had his beard be shake," and certainly
"the hote somer had made his hew all broun;" but farther the likeness would
hardly go, for the "good fellow" which Chaucer applies with such irony to
the shipman of his time, who would filch wine, and drown all the captives
he made in a sea-fight, was clearly applicable in good earnest to this
shipman. Still, I thought I had something to bring against him, and
therefore before we parted I said to him--

"They tell me, captain, that your vessel was not seaworthy, and that you
could not but have known that."

"She was my own craft, sir, and I judged her fit for several voyages more.
If she had been A 1 she couldn't have been mine; and a man must do what he
can for his family."

"But you were risking your life, you know."

"A few chances more or less don't much signify to a sailor, sir. There
ain't nothing to be done without risk. You'll find an old tub go voyage
after voyage, and she beyond bail, and a clipper fresh off the stocks go
down in the harbour. It's all in the luck, sir, I assure you."

"Well, if it were your own life I should have nothing to say, seeing you
have a family to look after; but what about the poor fellows who made the
voyage with you? Did they know what kind of a vessel they were embarking
in?"

"Wherever the captain's ready to go he'll always find men ready to follow
him. Bless you, sir, they never asks no questions. If a sailor was always
to be thinking of the chances, he'd never set his foot off shore."

"Still, I don't think it's right they shouldn't know."

"I daresay they knowed all about the old brig as well as I did myself. You
gets to know all about a craft just as you do about her captain. She's got
a character of her own, and she can't hide it long, any more than you can
hide yours, sir, begging your pardon."

"I daresay that's all correct, but still I shouldn't like anyone to say to
me, 'You ought to have told me, captain.' Therefore, you see, I'm telling
you, captain, and now I'm clear.--Have a glass of wine before you go," I
concluded, ringing the bell.

"Thank you, sir. I'll turn over what you've been saying, and anyhow I take
it kind of you."

So we parted. I have never seen him since, and shall not, most likely,
in this world. But he looked like a man that could understand why and
wherefore I spoke as I did. And I had the advantage of having had a chance
of doing something for him first of all. Let no man who wants to do
anything for the soul of a man lose a chance of doing something for his
body. He ought to be willing, and ready, which is more than willing, to do
that whether or not; but there are those who need this reminder. Of many a
soul Jesus laid hold by healing the suffering the body brought upon it. No
one but himself can tell how much the nucleus of the church was composed of
and by those who had received health from his hands, loving-kindness from
the word of his mouth. My own opinion is that herein lay the very germ of
the kernel of what is now the ancient, was then the infant church; that
from them, next to the disciples themselves, went forth the chief power of
life in love, for they too had seen the Lord, and in their own humble way
could preach and teach concerning him. What memories of him theirs must
have been!

Things went on very quietly, that is, as I mean now, from the view-point of
a historian, without much to record bearing notably upon after events,
for the greater part of the next week. I wandered about my parish, making
acquaintance with different people in an outside sort of way, only now
and then finding an opportunity of seeing into their souls except by
conclusion. But I enjoyed endlessly the aspects of the country. It was not
picturesque except in parts. There was little wood and there were no
hills, only undulations, though many of them were steep enough even from a
pedestrian's point of view. Neither, however, were there any plains except
high moorland tracts. But the impression of the whole country was large,
airy, sunshiny, and it was clasped in the arms of the infinite, awful, yet
how bountiful sea--if one will look at the ocean in its world-wide, not to
say its eternal aspects, and not out of the fears of a hidebound love of
life! The sea and the sky, I must confess, dwarfed the earth, made it of
small account beside them; but who could complain of such an influence? At
least, not I.

My children bathed in this sea every day, and gathered strength and
knowledge from it. It was, as I have indicated, a dangerous coast to bathe
upon. The sweep of the tides varied with the varying sands that were cast
up. There was now in one place, now in another, a strong _undertow_, as
they called it--a reflux, that is, of the inflowing waters, which was quite
sufficient to carry those who could not swim out into the great deep, and
rendered much exertion necessary, even in those who could, to regain the
shore. But there was a fine strong Cornish woman to take charge of the
ladies and the little boys, and she, watching the ways of the wild monster,
knew the when and the where, and all about it.

Connie got out upon the downs every day. She improved in health certainly,
and we thought a little even in her powers of motion. The weather continued
superb. What rain there was fell at night, just enough for Nature to wash
her face with and so look quite fresh in the morning. We contrived a dinner
on the sands on the other side of the bay, for the Friday of this same
week.

The morning rose gloriously. Harry and Charlie were turning the house
upside down, to judge by their noise, long before I was in the humour to
get up, for I had been reading late the night before. I never made much
objection to mere noise, knowing that I could stop it the moment I pleased,
and knowing, which was of more consequence, that so far from there being
anything wrong in making a noise, the sea would make noise enough in our
ears before we left Kilkhaven. The moment, however, that I heard a
thread of whining or a burst of anger in the noise, I would interfere at
once--treating these just as things that must be dismissed at once. Harry
and Charlie were, I say, to use their own form of speech, making such a row
that morning, however, that I was afraid of some injury to the house or
furniture, which were not our own. So I opened my door and called out--

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