The Seaboard Parish Volume 1

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"There is one thing first," said Connie, "that I want to understand. You
said the words of Jesus rather indicated surprise. But how could he be
surprised at anything? If he was God, he must have known everything."

"He tells us himself that he did not know everything. He says once that
even _he_ did not know one thing--only the Father knew it."

"But how could that be if he was God?"

"My dear, that is one of the things that it seems to me impossible I should
understand. Certainly I think his trial as a man would not have been
perfect had he known everything. He too had to live by faith in the Father.
And remember that for the Divine Sonship on earth perfect knowledge was not
necessary, only perfect confidence, absolute obedience, utter holiness.
There is a great tendency in our sinful natures to put knowledge and power
on a level with goodness. It was one of the lessons of our Lord's life that
they are not so; that the one grand thing in humanity is faith in God; that
the highest in God is his truth, his goodness, his rightness. But if Jesus
was a real man, and no mere appearance of a man, is it any wonder that,
with a heart full to the brim of the love of God, he should be for a moment
surprised that his mother, whom he loved so dearly, the best human being
he knew, should not have taken it as a matter of course that if he was not
with her, he must be doing something his Father wanted him to do? For this
is just what his answer means. To turn it into the ordinary speech of our
day, it is just this: 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you know that I must
of course be doing something my Father had given me to do?' Just think of
the quiet sweetness of confidence in this. And think what a life his must
have been up to that twelfth year of his, that such an expostulation with
his mother was justified. It must have had reference to a good many things
that had passed before then, which ought to have been sufficient to make
Mary conclude that her missing boy must be about God's business somewhere.
If her heart had been as full of God and God's business as his, she would
not have been in the least uneasy about him. And here is the lesson of his
whole life: it was all his Father's business. The boy's mind and hands
were full of it. The man's mind and hands were full of it. And the risen
conqueror was full of it still. For the Father's business is everything,
and includes all work that is worth doing. We may say in a full grand
sense, that there is nothing but the Father and his business."

"But we have so many things to do that are not his business," said Wynnie,
with a sigh of oppression.

"Not one, my darling. If anything is not his business, you not only have
not to do it, but you ought not to do it. Your words come from the want of
spiritual sight. We cannot see the truth in common things--the will of God
in little everyday affairs, and that is how they become so irksome to us.
Show a beautiful picture, one full of quiet imagination and deep thought,
to a common-minded man; he will pass it by with some slight remark,
thinking it very ordinary and commonplace. That is because he is
commonplace. Because our minds are so commonplace, have so little of the
divine imagination in them, therefore we do not recognise the spiritual
meaning and worth, we do not perceive the beautiful will of God, in the
things required of us, though they are full of it. But if we do them we
shall thus make acquaintance with them, and come to see what is in them.
The roughest kernel amongst them has a tree of life in its heart."

"I wish he would tell me something to do," said Charlie. "Wouldn't I do
it!"

I made no reply, but waited for an opportunity which I was pretty sure was
at hand, while I carried the matter a little further.

"But look here, Wynnie; listen to this," I said, "'And he went down with
them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.' Was that not doing
his Father's business too? Was it not doing the business of his Father in
heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he knew that his days
would not be long in that land? Did not his whole teaching, his whole
doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the Father and surely it was
doing his Father's business then to obey his parents--to serve them, to be
subject to them. It is true that the business God gives a man to do may be
said to be the peculiar walk in life into which he is led, but that is only
as distinguishing it from another man's peculiar business. God gives us
all our business, and the business which is common to humanity is
more peculiarly God's business than that which is one man's and not
another's--because it lies nearer the root, and is essential. It does not
matter whether a man is a farmer or a physician, but it greatly matters
whether he is a good son, a good husband, and so on. O my children!" I
said, "if the world could but be brought to believe--the world did I say?--
if the best men in the world could only see, as God sees it, that service
is in itself the noblest exercise of human powers, if they could see that
God is the hardest worker of all, and that his nobility are those who do
the most service, surely it would alter the whole aspect of the church.
Menial offices, for instance, would soon cease to be talked of with that
contempt which shows that there is no true recognition of the fact that
the same principle runs through the highest duty and the lowest--that the
lowest work which God gives a man to do must be in its nature noble, as
certainly noble as the highest. This would destroy condescension, which
is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the higher, as it would destroy
insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower. He who recognised the
dignity of his own lower office, would thereby recognise the superiority of
the higher office, and would be the last either to envy or degrade it. He
would see in it his own--only higher, only better, and revere it. But I am
afraid I have wearied you, my children."

"O, no, papa!" said the elder ones, while the little ones gaped and said
nothing.

"I know I am in danger of doing so when I come to speak upon this subject:
it has such a hold of my heart and mind!--Now, Charlie, my boy, go to bed."

But Charlie was very comfortable before the fire, on the rug, and did not
want to go. First one shoulder went up, and then the other, and the corners
of his mouth went down, as if to keep the balance true. He did not move to
go. I gave him a few moments to recover himself, but as the black frost
still endured, I thought it was time to hold up a mirror to him. When he
was a very little boy, he was much in the habit of getting out of temper,
and then as now, he made a face that was hideous to behold; and to cure him
of this, I used to make him carry a little mirror about his neck, that the
means might be always at hand of showing himself to him: it was a sort of
artificial conscience which, by enabling him to see the picture of his own
condition, which the face always is, was not unfrequently operative in
rousing his real conscience, and making him ashamed of himself. But now the
mirror I wanted to hold up to him was a past mood, in the light of which
the present would show what it was.

"Charlie," I said, "a little while ago you were wishing that God would give
you something to do. And now when he does, you refuse at once, without even
thinking about it."

"How do you know that God wants me to go to bed?" said Charlie, with
something of surly impertinence, which I did not meet with reproof at once
because there was some sense along with the impudence.

"I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it pleasantly.
Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as that--I wish I
had the little mirror to show it to you--when his mother told him it was
time to go to bed?"

And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in him,
because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have compelled
him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law. But now that his
own better self, the self enlightened of the light that lighteneth every
man that cometh into the world, was working, time might well be afforded it
to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the others. In the space of
not more than one minute, he rose and came to me, looking both good and
ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me, saying, "Goodnight, papa." I bade
him good-night, and kissed him more tenderly than usual, that he might know
that it was all right between us. I required no formal apology, no begging
of my pardon, as some parents think right. It seemed enough to me that
his heart was turned. It is a terrible thing to run the risk of changing
humility into humiliation. Humiliation is one of the proudest conditions
in the human world. When he felt that it would be a relief to say more
explicitly, "Father, I have sinned," then let him say it; but not till
then. To compel manifestation is one surest way to check feeling.

My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy's unwillingness to go to
bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them are
guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important than
this, only those things happen to be _their_ wish at the moment, and not
Charlie's, and so gain their superiority.

CHAPTER VIII.

THEODORA'S DOOM.

Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise you
more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be allowed
to take very much his own way--go his own pace, I should have said. I am
afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this chapter.

On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last severe
frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth. The sun
was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up in the air
hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field close by a
hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass. A short distance
from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost. There alone was there
any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of the loveliest tenderest
green. I will not say the figure was such an exact resemblance as a
photograph would have been; still it was an indubitable likeness. It
appeared to the hasty glance that not a branch not a knot of the upper
side of the tree at least was left unrepresented in shining and glittering
whiteness upon the green grass. It was very pretty, and, I confess, at
first, very puzzling. I walked on, meditating on the phenomenon, till at
length I found out its cause. The hoar-frost had been all over the field in
the morning. The sun had been shining for a time, and had melted the frost
away, except where he could only cast a shadow. As he rose and rose,
the shadow of the tree had shortened and come nearer and nearer to its
original, growing more and more like as it came nearer, while the frost
kept disappearing as the shadow withdrew its protection. When the shadow
extended only to a little way from the tree, the clouds came and covered
the sun, and there were no more shadows, only one great one of the clouds.
Then the frost shone out in the shape of the vanished shadow. It lay at a
little distance from the tree, because the tree having been only partially
lopped, some great stumps of boughs held it up from the ground, and thus,
when the sun was low, his light had shone a little way through beneath, as
well as over the trunk.

My reader needs not be afraid; I am not going to "moralise this spectacle
with a thousand similes." I only tell it him as a very pretty phenomenon.
But I confess I walked on moralising it. Any new thing in nature--I mean
new in regard to my knowledge, of course--always made me happy; and I was
full of the quiet pleasure it had given me and of the thoughts it had
brought me, when, as I was getting over a stile, whom should I see in the
next field, coming along the footpath, but the lady who had made herself so
disagreeable about Theodora. The sight was rather a discord in my feeling
at that moment; perhaps it would have been so at any moment. But I prepared
myself to meet her in the strength of the good humour which nature had just
bestowed upon me. For I fear the failing will go with me to the grave
that I am very ready to be annoyed, even to the loss of my temper, at the
urgings of ignoble prudence.

"Good-morning, Miss Bowdler," I said.

"Good-morning, Mr. Walton," she returned "I am afraid you thought me
impertinent the other week; but you know by this time it is only my way."

"As such I take it," I answered with a smile.

She did not seem quite satisfied that I did not defend her from her own
accusation; but as it was a just one, I could not do so. Therefore she went
on to repeat the offence by way of justification.

"It was all for Mrs. Walton's sake. You ought to consider her, Mr. Walton.
She has quite enough to do with that dear Connie, who is likely to be an
invalid all her days--too much to take the trouble of a beggar's brat as
well."

"Has Mrs. Walton been complaining to you about it, Miss Bowdler?" I asked.

"O dear, no!" she answered. "She is far too good to complain of anything.
That's just why her friends must look after her a bit, Mr. Walton."

"Then I beg you won't speak disrespectfully of my little Theodora."

"O dear me! no. Not at all. I don't speak disrespectfully of her."

"Even amongst the class of which she comes, 'a beggar's brat' would be
regarded as bad language."

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Mr. Walton! If you _will_ take offence--"

"I do take offence. And you know there is One who has given especial
warning against offending the little ones."

Miss Bowdler walked away in high displeasure--let me hope in conviction of
sin as well. She did not appear in church for the next two Sundays. Then
she came again. But she called very seldom at the Hall after this, and I
believe my wife was not sorry.

Now whether it came in any way from what that lady had said as to my wife's
trouble with Constance and Theodora together, I can hardly tell; but,
before I had reached home, I had at last got a glimpse of something like
the right way, as it appeared to me, of bringing up Theodora. When I went
into the house, I looked for my wife to have a talk with her about it; but,
indeed, it always necessary to find her every time I got home. I found her
in Connie's room as I had expected. Now although we were never in the habit
of making mysteries of things in which there was no mystery, and talked
openly before our children, and the more openly the older they grew, yet
there were times when we wanted to have our talks quite alone, especially
when we had not made up our minds about something. So I asked Ethelwyn to
walk out with me.

"I'm afraid I can't just this moment, husband," she answered. She was in
the way of using that form of address, for she said it meant everything
without saying it aloud. "I can't just this moment, for there is no one at
liberty to stay with Connie."

"O, never mind me, mamma," said Connie cheerfully. "Theodora will take care
of me," and she looked fondly at the child, who was lying by her side fast
asleep.

"There!" I said. And both, looked up surprised, for neither knew what I
meant. "I will tell you afterwards," I said, laughing. "Come along, Ethel."

"You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything, or
your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won't want me long, will
you, husband?"

"I'm not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell."

Susan was the old nurse.

Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her across
to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not shone out,
and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it had gladdened
mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his direct rays, had
melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do with other shadows,
without the mind knowing any more than the grass how the shadow departed.
There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about it before you knew what
I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see it only through my eyes and
words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler, and what she had said. Ethel
was very angry at her impertinence in speaking so to me. That was a wife's
feeling, you know, and perhaps excusable in the first impression of the
thing.

"She seems to think," she said, "that she was sent into the world to keep
other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her down, as
the maids say."

"O, I don't think there's much harm in her," I returned, which was easy
generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. "Indeed, I am not sure that
we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I met her
that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with Theodora."

"Still troubling yourself about that, husband?"

"The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it should
be met," I answered. "Our measures must begin sometime, and when, who can
tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never begin at all."

"Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at present--belonging
to humanity rather than the individual, as you would say--consisting
chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe, varied with
lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our measures than our
heads, aren't they?"

"Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there's no fear about your heart. I'm
not quite so sure about your head."

"Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn't matter, does it?"

"I don't know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for no
chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger than
its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head nearly,
though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business. There's
one thing we have both made up our minds about--that there is to be no
concealment with the child. God's fact must be known by her. It would be
cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to come upon her
with a terrible shock some day. She must know from the first, by hearing it
talked of--not by solemn and private communication--that she came out of
the shrubbery. That's settled, is it not?"

"Certainly. I see that to be the right way," responded Ethelwyn.

"Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?"

"We are bound to do as well for her as for our own."

"Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the facts
being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?"

"I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have
done."

"That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that
that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding or
neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it would be
a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good for herself,
knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it not be kinder
to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for her to relieve the
gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our sakes--I hope we are
above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude which will be given for
it, and which is so often far beyond the worth of the thing done--"

"Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning,"

said Ethel.

"Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!"

"Yes, thank you, I do."

"But we must wish for gratitude for others' sake, though we may be willing
to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as painful as
Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes us think how
much more we _might_ have done; how lovely a thing it is to give in return
for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman must be in whom a
trifle awakes so much emotion."

"Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little
doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for
which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they can't
show the difference in their thanks."

"And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet, the
same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But to return
to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be recognisant of
whence she came, and how she had been brought thence, might it not be
better for her? Would it not be building on the truth? Would she not be
happier for it?"

"You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have
something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair to
my place in the conference," said Ethel. "In fact, you think you are trying
to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not say _wheedle_, me
into something. It's a good thing you have the harmlessness of the dove,
Harry, for you've got the other thing."

"Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that what
you call the cunning of the serpent--"

"Wisdom, Harry, not cunning."

"Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But here
it is--bare and defenceless, only--let me warn you--with a whole battery
behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant to Constance."

My wife laughed.

"Well," she said, "for one who says so much about not thinking of the
morrow, you do look rather far forward."

"Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right."

"But just think: the child is about three months old."

"Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her. I
don't say that she is to commence her duties at once."

"But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that."

"The training won't be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my love,
that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it. And Turner
does not give much hope."

"O Harry, Harry, don't say so! I can't bear it. To think of the darling
child lying like that all her life!"

"It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven't
you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child's nature since her
accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying there
such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her bonnets
inside instead of outside her head."

"Yes, but she needn't have been like that. Wynnie never will."

"Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best.
But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid that
had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to toddle
after something to fetch it for her."

"Won't it be like making a slave of her?"

"Won't it be like giving her a divine freedom from the first? The lack of
service is the ruin of humanity."

"But we can't train her then like one of our own."

"Why not"? Could we not give her all the love and all the teaching?"

"Because it would not be fair to give her the education of a lady, and then
make a servant of her."

"You forget that the service would be part of her training from the first;
and she would know no change of position in it. When we tell her that she
was found in the shrubbery, we will add that we think God sent her to
take care of Constance. I do not believe myself that you can have perfect
service except from a lady. Do not forget the true notion of service as the
essence of Christianity, yea, of divinity. It is not education that unfits
for service: it is the want of it."

"Well, I know that the reading girls I have had, have, as a rule, served me
worse than the rest."

"Would you have called one of those girls educated? Or even if they had
been educated, as any of them might well have been, better than nine-tenths
of the girls that go to boarding-schools, you must remember that they had
never been taught service--the highest accomplishment of all. To that
everything aids, when any true feeling of it is there. But for service of
this high sort, the education must begin with the beginning of the dawn of
will. How often have you wished that you had servants who would believe in
you, and serve you with the same truth with which you regarded them! The
servants born in a man's house in the old times were more like his children
than his servants. Here is a chance for you, as it were of a servant born
in your own house. Connie loves the child: the child will love Connie, and
find her delight in serving her like a little cherub. Not one of the maids
to whom you have referred had ever been taught to think service other than
an unavoidable necessity, the end of life being to serve yourself, not to
serve others; and hence most of them would escape from it by any marriage
almost that they had a chance of making. I don't say all servants are like
that; but I do think that most of them are. I know very well that most
mistresses are as much to blame for this result as the servants are; but
we are not talking about them. Servants nowadays despise work, and yet are
forced to do it--a most degrading condition to be in. But they would not be
in any better condition if delivered from the work. The lady who despises
work is in as bad a condition as they are. The only way to set them free
is to get them to regard service not only as their duty, but as therefore
honourable, and besides and beyond this, in its own nature divine. In
America, the very name of servant is repudiated as inconsistent with human
dignity. There is _no_ dignity but of service. How different the whole
notion of training is now from what it was in the middle ages! Service was
honourable then. No doubt we have made progress as a whole, but in some
things we have degenerated sadly. The first thing taught then was how to
serve. No man could rise to the honour of knighthood without service. A
nobleman's son even had to wait on his father, or to go into the family of
another nobleman, and wait upon him as a page, standing behind his chair at
dinner. This was an honour. No notion of degradation was in it. It was a
necessary step to higher honour. And what was the next higher honour? To be
set free from service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field; to
be a squire to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his armour,
to see that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap strong;
to ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one attacked him,
to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable because it was
harder, and was the next step to higher honour yet. And what was this
higher honour? That of knighthood. Wherein did this knighthood consist? The
very word means simply _service_. And for what was the knight thus waited
upon by his squire? That he might be free to do as he pleased? No, but that
he might be free to be the servant of all. By being a squire first, the
servant of one, he learned to rise to the higher rank, that of servant of
all. His horse was tended, this armour observed, his sword and spear and
shield held to his hand, that he might have no trouble looking after
himself, but might be free, strong, unwearied, to shoot like an arrow to
the rescue of any and every one who needed his ready aid. There was a grand
heart of Christianity in that old chivalry, notwithstanding all its abuses
which must be no more laid to its charge than the burning of Jews and
heretics to Christianity. It was the lack of it, not the presence of it
that occasioned the abuses that coexisted with it. Train our Theodora as a
holy child-servant, and there will be no need to restrain any impulse of
wise affection from pouring itself forth upon her. My firm belief is that
we should then love and honour her far more than if we made her just like
one of our own."

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