The Seaboard Parish Volume 1
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George MacDonald >> The Seaboard Parish Volume 1
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"It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn't it, papa?"
"Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with _such_ blindness as
Milton's?"
"Those that do not care about his poetry, papa," answered Constance, with a
deprecatory smile.
"Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can't love one
you know nothing about."
"I have tried to read him a little."
"Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you had
never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But you
and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of what we
had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?"
"Not the least, papa. You don't mind what I said about Milton?"
"Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much if
you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him was
more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him."
"O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him."
"There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of appreciating
him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen. You think of him
as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry things. Now he is not
dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry things. You have a figure
before you in your fancy, which is dry, and which you call Milton. But it
is no more Milton than your dull-faced Dutch doll, which you called after
her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But here comes your mamma; and I haven't
said what I wanted to say yet."
"But surely, husband, you can say it all the same," said my wife. "I will
go away if you can't."
"I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me. I
was trying to show Connie--"
"You did show me, papa."
"Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right."
Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.
"And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too much
revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long enough.
They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as soon as he
said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that he had not
come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over again after their
own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own worldly notions of
grandeur and command, that they could not receive into their souls the gift
of God present before their eyes. Therefore he was taken away, that his
Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily presence, might come into
them--that they might receive the gift of God into their innermost being.
After he had gone out of their sight, and they might look all around and
down in the grave and up in the air, and not see him anywhere--when they
thought they had lost him, he began to come to them again from the other
side--from the inside. They found that the image of him which his presence
with them had printed in light upon their souls, began to revive in the
dark of his absence; and not that only, but that in looking at it without
the overwhelming of his bodily presence, lines and forms and meanings began
to dawn out of it which they had never seen before. And his words came back
to them, no longer as they had received them, but as he meant them. The
spirit of Christ filling their hearts and giving them new power, made them
remember, by making them able to understand, all that he had said to them.
They were then always saying to each other, 'You remember how;' whereas
before, they had been always staring at each other with astonishment and
something very near incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after he
had gone away, he was really nearer to them than he had been before. The
meaning of anything is more than its visible presence. There is a soul in
everything, and that soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the world
and all its beauty has come nearer to you, my dear, just because you are
separated from it for a time."
"Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself now
and then. That is another good of being ill."
"You don't mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?" said my
wife, smiling at her daughter's pleasure.
"O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say by this
time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to yourself."
"Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful of
sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I should be
sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say by this time
next year."
"Well, papa, I wish I could he sure of knowing more next year."
"Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of learning
is very different in the two cases."
"But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should not
know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him--as he came to
the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long ago."
"As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer that if
he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I believe we
should be further off it."
"Do you think, then," said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if I
were the prophet of great evil, "that we shall never, never, never see
him?"
"That is _quite_ another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my hopes by
day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to me the one
thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for; but I think
it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as ever we are
capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I think, what is meant
by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a consequence of his spirit
in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us. The pure in heart shall see
God. The seeing of him will be the sign that we are like him, for only by
being like him can we see him as he is. All the time that he was with them,
the disciples never saw him as he was. You must understand a man before you
can see and read his face aright; and as the disciples did not understand
our Lord's heart, they could neither see nor read his face aright. But when
we shall be fit to look that man in the face, God only knows."
"Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know him
better than the disciples? I don't mean, of course, better than they knew
him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew him while
he was still with them?"
"Certainly I do, my dear."
"O, papa! Is it possible? Why don't we all, then?"
"Because we won't take the trouble; that is the reason."
"O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living--worth being
ill for. But how? how? Can't you help me? Mayn't one human being help
another?"
"It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever wants
to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey--that is simply, do
what Jesus says."
There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing. And the
tears stood in; my wife's eyes--tears of gladness to hear her daughter's
sobs.
"I will try, papa," Constance said at last. "But you _will_ help me?"
"That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying to
tell you what I have heard and learned about him--heard and learned of the
Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time when he was born;--
but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to bear to-night."
"No, no, papa. Do go on."
"No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday--you have
plenty to think about till then--I will talk to you about the baby Jesus;
and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that time, besides
what I have got to say now."
"But," said my wife, "don't you think, Connie, this is too good to keep all
to ourselves? Don't you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?"
"Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too."
"I fear they are rather young yet," I said. "Perhaps it might do them
harm."
"It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow," said Ethelwyn,
smiling.
"How do you mean, my dear?"
"Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you. Besides,
you always say such things to children as delight grown people, though they
could never get them out of you."
It was a wife's speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.
"Well," I said, "I don't mind them coming in, but I don't promise to say
anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
wish it."
"Certainly," answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.
CHAPTER IV.
A SUNDAY EVENING.
When I went in to see Constance the next Sunday morning before going to
church, I knew by her face that she was expecting the evening. I took care
to get into no conversation with her during the day, that she might be
quite fresh. In the evening, when I went into her room again with my Bible
in my hand, I found all our little company assembled. There was a glorious
fire, for it was very cold, and the little ones were seated on the rug
before it, one on each side of their mother; Wynnie sat by the further side
of the bed, for she always avoided any place or thing she thought another
might like; and Dora sat by the further chimney-corner, leaving the space
between the fire and my chair open that I might see and share the glow.
"The wind is very high, papa," said Constance, as I seated myself beside
her.
"Yes, my dear. It has been blowing all day, and since sundown it has blown
harder. Do you like the wind, Connie?"
"I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and
shakes the windows with a great rush as if it _would_ get into the house
and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and
grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us with
fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very jaws of
danger."
"Why, you are quite poetic, Connie," said Wynnie.
"Don't laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I'm an invalid, and I can't bear to be
laughed at," returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more than
a quarter crying.
Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her laugh
outright, and then sat down again.
"But tell me, Connie," I said, "why you are _afraid_ you enjoy hearing the
wind about the house."
"Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it."
"Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has
forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out in
the wind."
"But if we thought like that, papa," said Wynnie, "shouldn't we come to
feel that their sufferings were none of our business?"
"If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we, it
will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie."
"Of course, I could not think that," she returned.
"Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God's name, think
hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing in his
kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God intended that
there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If he did not
intend it--for similar reasons to those for which he allows all sorts of
evils--then there is nothing between but that we should sell everything
that we have and give it away to the poor."
"Then why don't we?" said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face.
"Because that is not God's way, and we should do no end of harm by so
doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves
who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We are
not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object--not to
save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more danger
than God meant for them."
"It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa," said Wynnie.
"Many things will look hard in so many words, which yet will be found
kindness itself when they are interpreted by a higher theory. If the one
thing is to let people have everything they want, then of course everyone
ought to be rich. I have no doubt such a man as we were reading of in the
papers the other day, who saw his servant girl drown without making the
least effort to save her, and then bemoaned the loss of her labour for the
coming harvest, thinking himself ill-used in her death, would hug his own
selfishness on hearing my words, and say, 'All right, parson! Every man for
himself! I made my own money, and they may make theirs!' _You_ know that is
not exactly the way I should think or act with regard to my neighbour. But
if it were only that I have seen such noble characters cast in the mould of
poverty, I should be compelled to regard poverty as one of God's powers in
the world for raising the children of the kingdom, and to believe that it
was not because it could not be helped that our Lord said, 'The poor ye
have always with you.' But what I wanted to say was, that there can be no
reason why Connie should not enjoy what God has given her, although he has
not thought fit to give as much to everybody; and above all, that we shall
not help those right whom God gives us to help, if we do not believe that
God is caring for every one of them as much as he is caring for every one
of us. There was once a baby born in a stable, because his poor mother
could get no room in a decent house. Where she lay I can hardly think. They
must have made a bed of hay and straw for her in the stall, for we know the
baby's cradle was the manger. Had God forsaken them? or would they not have
been more _comfortable_, if that was the main thing, somewhere else? Ah! if
the disciples, who were being born about the same time of fisher-fathers
and cottage-mothers, to get ready for him to call and teach by the time he
should be thirty years of age--if they had only been old enough, and had
known that he was coming--would they not have got everything ready for him?
They would have clubbed their little savings together, and worked day and
night, and some rich women would have helped them, and they would have
dressed the baby in fine linen, and got him the richest room their money
would get, and they would have made the gold that the wise men brought into
a crown for his little head, and would have burnt the frankincense before
him. And so our little manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No
more the stable-born Saviour--no more the poor Son of God born for us all,
as strong, as noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor!
And we should not have learned that God does not care for money; that if he
does not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or that he
is unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent his own
son to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of a little
village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need not suppose
because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison for it next day,
that God does not care for him."
"But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?"
"That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished
by this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
mother's love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie not
in these external things at all--that the poorest little one, born in the
meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God's own and God's care
as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all about him. Had
Jesus come amongst the rich, riches would have been more worshipped
than ever. See how so many that count themselves good Christians honour
possession and family and social rank, and I doubt hardly get rid of them
when they are all swept away from them. The furthest most of such reach is
to count Jesus an exception, and therefore not despise him. See how, even
in the services of the church, as they call them, they will accumulate
gorgeousness and cost. Had I my way, though I will never seek to rouse
men's thoughts about such external things, I would never have any vessel
used in the eucharist but wooden platters and wooden cups."
"But are we not to serve him with our best?" said my wife.
"Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute
being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of his
revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth in homely
fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that enforces and
commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on the other side
from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent houses for God's
poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of silver and gold and
precious stones--stealing from the significance of the _content_ by the
meretricious grandeur of the _continent_. I would send all the church-plate
to fight the devil with his own weapons in our overcrowded cities, and in
our villages where the husbandmen are housed like swine, by giving them
room to be clean and decent air from heaven to breathe. When the people
find the clergy thus in earnest, they will follow them fast enough, and the
money will come in like salt and oil upon the sacrifice. I would there were
a few of our dignitaries that could think grandly about things, even as
Jesus thought--even as God thought when he sent him. There are many of
them willing to stand any amount of persecution about trifles: the same
enthusiasm directed by high thoughts about the kingdom of heaven as within
men and not around them, would redeem a vast region from that indifference
which comes of judging the gospel of God by the church of Christ with its
phylacteries and hems."
"There is one thing," said Wynnie, after a pause, "that I have often
thought about--why it was necessary for Jesus to come as a baby: he could
not do anything for so long."
"First, I would answer, Wynnie, that if you would tell me why it is
necessary for all of us to come as babies, it would be less necessary for
me to tell you why he came so: whatever was human must be his. But I would
say next, Are you sure that he could not do anything for so long? Does a
baby do nothing? Ask mamma there. Is it for nothing that the mother lifts
up such heartfuls of thanks to God for the baby on her knee? Is it nothing
that the baby opens such fountains of love in almost all the hearts around?
Ah! you do not think how much every baby has to do with the saving of the
world--the saving of it from selfishness, and folly, and greed. And for
Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign of love in the earth? How
could he do better than begin from babyhood? He had to lay hold of
the heart of the world. How could he do better than begin with his
mother's--the best one in it. Through his mother's love first, he grew into
the world. It was first by the door of all the holy relations of the family
that he entered the human world, laying hold of mother, father, brothers,
sisters, all his friends; then by the door of labour, for he took his share
of his father's work; then, when he was thirty years of age, by the door of
teaching; by kind deeds, and sufferings, and through all by obedience unto
the death. You must not think little of the grand thirty years wherein he
got ready for the chief work to follow. You must not think that while he
was thus preparing for his public ministrations, he was not all the time
saving the world even by that which he was in the midst of it, ever laying
hold of it more and more. These were things not so easy to tell. And you
must remember that our records are very scanty. It is a small biography we
have of a man who became--to say nothing more--the Man of the world--the
Son of Man. No doubt it is enough, or God would have told us more; but
surely we are not to suppose that there was nothing significant, nothing
of saving power in that which we are not told.--Charlie, wouldn't you have
liked to see the little baby Jesus?"
"Yes, that I would. I would have given him my white rabbit with the pink
eyes."
"That is what the great painter Titian must have thought, Charlie; for he
has painted him playing with a white rabbit,--not such a pretty one as
yours."
"I would have carried him about all day," said Dora, "as little Henny
Parsons does her baby-brother."
"Did he have any brother or sister to carry him about, papa?" asked Harry.
"No, my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he carried
about his brothers and sisters that came after him."
"Wouldn't he take care of them, just!" said Charlie.
"I wish I had been one of them," said Constance.
"You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that he
can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom."
Then we sung a child's hymn in praise of the God of little children, and
the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her with
Wynnie. We too went early to bed.
About midnight my wife and I awoke together--at least neither knew which
waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with lulls
between its charges.
"There's a child crying!" said my wife, starting up.
I sat up too, and listened.
"There is some creature," I granted.
"It is an infant," insisted my wife. "It can't be either of the boys."
I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried on
some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so. We
seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in the
lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night was
pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house till I
came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it, but not so
clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the direction of
the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only a few yards around
me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through every chink, and
threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my side before I knew
she was coming.
"My dear!" I said, "it is not fit for you to be out."
"It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow," she said. "Do listen."
It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in
Ethelwyn's bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though she
was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.
Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner of
the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much nearer
to it. Searching and searching we went.
"There it is!" Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the lantern
fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at it. It gave
another pitiful wail--the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up in a dirty,
ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it had been a
parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house, and I followed,
much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and fall. I could hardly
get up with her, so eager was she to save the child. She darted up to her
own room, where the fire was not yet out.
"Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs
there--you can empty them in the sink: you won't know where to find
anything. There will be plenty in the boiler."
By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child's
covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before the fire.
The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and motionless. We
had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as if I had been a
nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.
"Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child."
"You made me throw away the cold water," I said, laughing.
"There's some in the bottles," she returned. "Make haste."
I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy
Ethelwyn.
"The child will be dead," she cried, "before we get it in the water."
She had its rags off in a moment--there was very little to remove after the
shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully neglected! It was
a girl--not more than a few weeks old, we agreed. Her little heart was
still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made, apparently healthy
infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we were not disappointed.
She began to move her little legs and arms with short, convulsive motions.
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