Thomas Wingfold, Curate V2
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George MacDonald >> Thomas Wingfold, Curate V2
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CHAPTER XII.
INVITATION.
As Wingfold walked back to his lodgings, he found a new element
mingling with the varied matter of his previous inquiry. Human
suffering laid hold upon him--neither as his own nor as that of
humanity, but as that of men and women--known or unknown, it
mattered nothing: there were hearts in the world from whose agony
broke terrible cries, hearts of which sad faces like that of Miss
Lingard were the exponents. Such hearts might be groaning and
writhing in any of the houses he passed, and, even if he knew the
hearts, and what the vampire that sucked their blood, he could do
nothing for their relief.
Little indeed could he have imagined the life of such a
comfort-guarded lady as Miss Lingard, exposed to the intrusion of
any terror-waking monster, from the old ocean of chaos, into the
quiet flow of its meadow-banked river! And what multitudes must
there not be in the world--what multitudes in our island--how many
even in Glaston, whose hearts, lacerated by no remorse, overwhelmed
by no crushing sense of guilt, yet knew their own bitterness, and
had no friend radiant enough to make a sunshine in their shady
places! He fell into mournful mood over the troubles of his race.
Always a kind-hearted fellow, he had not been used to think about
such things; he had had troubles of his own, and had got through at
least some of them; people must have troubles, else would they grow
unendurable for pride and insolence. But now that he had begun to
hope he saw a glimmer somewhere afar at the end of the darksome cave
in which he had all at once discovered that he was buried alive, he
began also to feel how wretched those must be who were groping on
without even a hope in their dark eyes.
If he had never committed any crime, he had yet done wrong enough to
understand the misery of shame and dishonour, and should he not find
a loving human heart the heart of the world, would rejoice--with
what rejoicing might then be possible--to accept George Bascombe's
theory, and drop into the jaws of darkness and cease. How much more
miserable then must those be who had committed some terrible crime,
or dearly loved one who had! What relief, what hope, what lightening
for them! What a breeding nest of vermiculate cares and pains was
this human heart of ours! Oh, surely it needed some refuge! If no
saviour had yet come, the tortured world of human hearts cried aloud
for one with unutterable groaning! What would Bascombe do if he had
committed a murder? Or what could he do for one who had? If fable it
were, it was at least a need--invented one--that of a Saviour to
whom anyone might go, at any moment, without a journey, without
letters or commendations or credentials! And yet no: if it had been
invented, it could hardly be by any one in the need, for such even
now could hardly be brought to believe it. Ill bested were the world
indeed if there were no one beyond whose pardon crime could not go!
Ah! but where was the good of pardon if still the conscious crime
kept stinging? and who would wish one he loved to grow callous to
the crime he had committed? Could one rejoice that his guilty friend
had learned to laugh again, able at length to banish the memory of
the foul thing? Would reviving self-content render him pleasant to
the eyes, and his company precious in the wisdom that springs from
the knowledge of evil? Would not that be the moment when he who had
most assiduously sought to comfort him in his remorse, would first
be tempted to withdraw his foot from his threshold? But if there was
a God--such a God as, according to the Christian story, had sent his
own son into the world--had given him to appear among us, clothed in
the garb of humanity, the armour that can be pierced, to take all
the consequences of being the god of obedience amongst the children
of disobedience, engulfing their wrongs in his infinite forbearance,
and winning them back, by slow and unpromising and tedious renewal,
to the heart of his father, surely such a God would not have created
them, knowing that some of them would sin sins from the horror of
which in themselves all his devotion could not redeem them!--And as
he thought thus, the words arose in his mind--"COME UNTO ME ALL YE
THAT LABOUR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST." His
heart filled. He pondered over them. When he got home he sought and
found them in the book.--Did a man ever really utter them? If a man
did, either he was the most presumptuous of mortals, or HE COULD DO
WHAT HE SAID. If he could, then to have seen and distrusted that
man, Wingfold felt, would have been to destroy in himself the
believing faculty and become incapable of trusting for ever after.
And such a man must, in virtue of his very innocence, know that the
worst weariness and the worst load is evil and crime, and must know
himself able, in full righteousness, with no jugglery of oblivion or
self-esteem, to take off the heavy load and give rest.
"And yet," thought the curate, not without self-reproach, "for one
who will go to him to get the rest, a thousand will ask--HOW CAN HE
THEN DO IT?--As if they should be fit to know!"
CHAPTER XIII.
A SERMON TO HELEN.
All the rest of the week his mind was full of thoughts like these,
amid which ever arose the suffering face of Helen Lingard, bringing
with it the still strengthening suspicion that behind it must lie
some oppressive, perhaps terrible secret. But he made no slightest
movement towards the discovery of it, put not a single question in
any direction for its confirmation or dissolution. He would not look
in at her windows, but what seeds of comfort he could find, he would
scatter wide, and hope that some of them might fall into her garden.
When he raised his head on the Sunday from kneeling, with heart
honest, devout, and neighbourly, in the pulpit before the sermon,
and cast his eyes round his congregation, they rested first, for one
moment and no more, upon the same pallid and troubled countenance
whose reflection had so often of late looked out from the magic
mirror of his memory; the next, they flitted across the satisfied,
healthy, handsome, clever face of her cousin, behind which plainly
sat a conscience well-to-do, in an easy chair; the third, they saw
and fled the peevish autumnal visage of Mrs. Ramshorn; the next,
they roved a little, then rested on the draper's good-humoured disc,
on the white forehead of which brooded a cloud of thoughtfulness.
Last of all they sought the free seats, and found the faces of both
the dwarfs. It was the first time he had seen Rachel's there, and it
struck him that it expressed greater suffering than he had read in
it before. She ought rather to be in bed than in church, he thought.
But the same seemed the case with her uncle's countenance also; and
with that came the conclusion that the pulpit was a wonderful
watch-tower whence to study human nature; that people lay bare more
of their real nature and condition to the man in the pulpit than
they know--even before the sermon. Their faces have fallen into the
shape of their minds, for the church has an isolating as well as
congregating power, and no passing emotion moulds them to an
evanescent show. When Polwarth spoke to a friend, the suffering
melted in issuing radiance; when he sat thus quiescent, patient
endurance was the first thing to be read on his countenance. This
flashed through the curate's mind in the moments ere he began to
speak, and with it came afresh the feeling--one that is, yet ought
not to be sad--that no one of all these hearts could give
summer-weather to another. The tears rose in his eyes as he gazed,
and his heart swelled towards his own flesh and blood, as if his
spirit would break forth in a torrent of ministering tenderness and
comfort. Then he made haste to speak lest he should become unable.
As usual his voice trembled at first, but rose into strength as his
earnestness found way. This is a good deal like what he said:
"The marvellous man who is reported to have appeared in Palestine,
teaching and preaching, seems to have suffered far more from
sympathy with the inward sorrows of his race than from pity for
their bodily pains. These last, could he not have swept from the
earth with a word? and yet it seems to have been mostly, if not
indeed always, only in answer to prayer that he healed them, and
that for the sake of some deeper, some spiritual healing that should
go with the bodily cure. It could not be for the dead man whom he
was about to call from the tomb, that his tears flowed. What source
could they have but compassion and pitiful sympathy for the sorrows
of the dead man's sisters and friends who had not the inward joy
that sustained himself, and the thought of all the pains and
heartaches of those that looked in the face of death--the meanings
of love--torn generations, the blackness of bereavement that had
stormed through the ever changing world of human hearts since first
man had been made in the image of his Father? Yet are there far more
terrible troubles than this death--which I trust can only part, not
keep apart. There is the weight of conscious wrong being and wrong
doing--that is the gravestone that needs to be rolled away ere a man
can rise to life. Call to mind how Jesus used to forgive men's sins,
thus lifting from their hearts the crushing load that paralyzed all
their efforts. Recall the tenderness with which he received those
from whom the religious of his day turned aside--the repentant women
who wept sore-hearted from very love, the publicans who knew they
were despised because they were despicable. With him they sought and
found shelter. He was their saviour from the storm of human judgment
and the biting frost of public opinion, even when that opinion and
that judgment were re-echoed by the justice of their own hearts. He
received them, and the life within them rose up, and the light
shone--the conscious light of light, despite even of shame and
self-reproach. If God be for us who can be against us? In his name
they rose from the hell of their own hearts' condemnation, and went
forth to do the truth in strength and hope. They heard and believed
and obeyed his words. And of all words that ever were spoken, were
ever words gentler, tenderer, humbler, lovelier--if true, or more
arrogant, man-degrading, God-defying--if false, than these,
concerning which, as his, I now desire to speak to you: 'Come unto
me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and
lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke
is easy, and my burden is light'?
"Surely these words, could they but be heartily believed, are such
as every human heart might gladly hear! What man is there who has
not had, has not now, or will not have to class himself amongst the
weary and heavy-laden? Ye who call yourselves Christians profess to
believe such rest is to be had, yet how many of you go bowed to the
very earth, and take no single step towards him who says Come, lift
not an eye to see whether a face of mercy may not be looking down
upon you! Is it that, after all, you do not believe there ever was
such a man as they call Jesus? That can hardly be. There are few so
ignorant, or so wilfully illogical as to be able to disbelieve in
the existence of the man, or that he spoke words to this effect. Is
it then that you are doubtful concerning the whole import of his
appearance? In that case, were it but as a doubtful medicine, would
it not be well to make some trial of the offer made? If the man said
the words, he must have at least believed that he could fulfil them.
Who that knows anything of him at all can for a moment hold that
this man spoke what he did not believe? The best of the Jews who yet
do not believe in him, say of him that he was a good though mistaken
man. Will a man lie for the privilege of being despised and rejected
of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? What but the
confidence of truth could have sustained him when he knew that even
those who loved him would have left him had they believed what he
told them of his coming fate?--But then: believing what he said,
might he not have been mistaken?--A man can hardly be mistaken as to
whether he is at peace or not--whether he has rest in his soul or
not. Neither I think can a man well be mistaken as to whence comes
the peace he possesses,--as to the well whence he draws his comfort.
The miser knows his comfort is his gold. Was Jesus likely to be
mistaken when he supposed himself to know that his comfort came from
his God? Anyhow he believed that his peace came from his
obedience--from his oneness with the will of his Father. Friends, if
I had such peace as was plainly his, should I not know well whence
it came?--But I think I hear some one say: 'Doubtless the good man
derived comfort from the thought of his Father, but might he not be
mistaken in supposing there was any Father?' Hear me, my friends: I
dare not say I know there is a Father. I dare not even say I think,
I can only say with my whole heart I hope we have indeed a Father in
heaven; but this man says HE KNOWS. Am I to say he does not know?
Can I, who know so much I would gladly have otherwise in myself,
imagine him less honest than I am? If he tells me he knows, I am
dumb and listen. One I KNOW: THERE IS--outweighs a whole creation of
voices crying each I KNOW NOT, THEREFORE THERE IS NOT. And observe
it is his own, his own best he wants to give them--no bribe to
obedience to his will, but the assurance of bliss if they will do as
he does. He wants them to have peace--HIS peace--peace from the same
source whence he has it. For what does he mean by TAKE MY YOKE UPON
YOU, AND LEARN OF ME? He does not mean WEAR THE YOKE I LAY UPON
YOU, AND OBEY MY WORDS. I do not say he might not have said so, or
that he does not say what comes to the same thing at other times,
but that is not what he says here--that is not the truth he would
convey in these words. He means TAKE UPON YOU THE YOKE I WEAR;
LEARN TO DO AS I DO, WHO SUBMIT EVERYTHING AND REFER EVERYTHING TO
THE WILL OF MY FATHER, YEA HAVE MY WILL ONLY IN THE CARRYING OUT OF
HIS: BE MEEK AND LOWLY IN HEART, AND YE SHALL FIND REST UNTO YOUR
SOULS. With all the grief of humanity in his heart, in the face of
the death that awaited him, he yet says, FOR MY YOKE, THE YOKE I
WEAR, IS EASY, THE BURDEN I BEAR IS LIGHT. What made that yoke
easy,--that burden light? That it was the will of the Father. If a
man answer: 'Any good man who believed in a God, might say as much,
and I do not see how it can help me;' my reply is, that this man
says, COME UNTO ME, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST--asserting the power
to give perfect help to him that comes.--Does all this look far
away, my friends, and very unlike the things about us? The things
about you do not give you peace; from something different you may
hope to gain it. And do not our souls themselves fall out with their
surroundings, and cry for a nobler, better, more beautiful life?
"But some one will perhaps say: 'It is well; but were I meek and
lowly in heart as he of whom you speak, it could not touch MY
trouble: that springs not from myself, but from one I love.' I
answer, if the peace be the peace of the Son of man, it must reach
to every cause of unrest. And if thou hadst it, would it not then be
next door to thy friend? How shall he whom thou lovest receive it
the most readily--but through thee who lovest him? What if thy
faith should be the next step to his? Anyhow, if this peace be not
an all-reaching as well as a heart-filling peace; if it be not a
righteous and a lovely peace, and that in despite of all surrounding
and opposing troubles, then it is not the peace of God, for that
passeth all understanding:--so at least say they who profess to
know, and I desire to take them at their word. If thy trouble be a
trouble thy God cannot set right, then either thy God is not the
true God, or there is no true God, and the man who professed to
reveal him led the one perfect life in virtue of his faith in a
falsehood. Alas for poor men and women and their aching hearts!--If
it offend any of you that I speak of Jesus as THE MAN who professed
to reveal God, I answer, that the man I see, and he draws me as with
the strength of the adorable Truth; but if in him I should certainly
find the God for the lack of whose peace I and my brethren and
sisters pine, then were heaven itself too narrow to hold my
exultation, for in God himself alone could my joy find room.
"Come then, sore heart, and see whether his heart cannot heal thine.
He knows what sighs and tears are, and if he knew no sin in himself,
the more pitiful must it have been to him to behold the sighs and
tears that guilt wrung from the tortured hearts of his brethren and
sisters. Brothers, sisters, we MUST get rid of this misery of ours.
It is slaying us. It is turning the fair earth into a hell, and our
hearts into its fuel. There stands the man, who says he knows: take
him at his word. Go to him who says in the might of his eternal
tenderness and his human pity--COME UNTO ME, ALL YE THAT LABOUR AND
ARE HEAVY-LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST. TAKE MY YOKE UPON YOU, AND
LEARN OF ME; FOR I AM MEEK AND LOWLY IN HEART: AND YE SHALL FIND
REST UNTO YOUR SOULS. FOR MY YOKE IS EASY AND MY BURDEN IS LIGHT."
CHAPTER XIV.
A SERMON TO HIMSELF.
Long ere he thus came to a close, Wingfold was blind to all and
every individuality before him--felt only the general suffering of
the human soul, and the new-born hope for it that lay in the story
of the ideal man, the human God. He did not see that Helen's head
was down on the book-board. She was sobbing convulsively. In some
way the word had touched her, and had unsealed the fountain of
tears, if not of faith. Neither did he see the curl on the lip of
Bascombe, or the glance of annoyance which, every now and then, he
cast upon the bent head beside him. "What on earth are you crying
about? It is all in the way of his business, you know," said
Bascombe's eyes, but Helen did not hear them. One or two more in the
congregation were weeping, and here and there shone a face in which
the light seemed to prevent the tears. Polwarth shone and Rachel
wept. For the rest, the congregation listened only with varying
degrees of attention and indifference. The larger portion looked as
if neither Wingfold nor any other body ever meant anything--at least
in the pulpit.
The moment Wingfold reached the vestry, he hurried off the garments
of his profession, sped from the Abbey, and all but ran across the
church-yard to his lodging. There he shut himself up in his chamber,
fearful lest he should have said more than he had yet a right to
say, and lest ebbing emotion should uncover the fact that he had
been but "fired by the running of his own wheels," and not inspired
by the guide of "the fiery-wheeled throne, the cherub Contemplation."
There, from the congregation, from the church, from the sermon, from
the past altogether, he turned aside his face and would forget them
quite.
What had he to do with the thing that was done,--done with, and
gone, either into the treasury or the lumber-room, of creation?
Towards the hills of help he turned his face--to the summits over
whose tops he looked for the dayspring from on high to break forth.
If only Christ would come to him!--Do what he might, however, his
thoughts WOULD wander back to the great gothic gulf into which he
had been pouring out his soul, and the greater human gulfs that
opened into the ancient pile, whose mouths were the faces that hid
the floor beneath them--until at length he was altogether vexed with
himself for being interested in what he had done, instead of
absorbed in what he had yet to do. He left therefore his chamber,
and placed himself at a side-table in his sitting-room, while his
landlady prepared the other for his dinner. She too had been at
church that morning, whence it came that she moved about and set the
things on the table with unusual softness, causing him no
interruption while he wrote down a line here and there of what
afterwards grew into the following verses--born in the effort to
forget the things that were behind, and reach forth after the things
that lay before him.
Yes, Master, when thou comest thou shalt find
A little faith on earth, if I am here!
Thou know'st how oft I turn to thee my mind,
How sad I wait until thy face appear!
Hast thou not ploughed my thorny ground full sore,
And from it gathered many stones and sherds?
Plough, plough and harrow till it needs no more--
Then sow thy mustard-seed, and send thy birds.
I love thee, Lord; and if I yield to fears,
Nor trust with triumph that pale doubt defies,
Remember, Lord, 'tis nigh two thousand years,
And I have never seen thee with mine eyes.
And when I lift them from the wondrous tale,
See, all about me has so strange a show!
Is that thy river running down the vale?
Is that thy wind that through the pines doth blow?
Couldst thou right verily appear again,
The same who walked the paths of Palestine,
And here in England teach thy trusting men,
In church and field and house, with word and sign?
Here are but lilies, sparrows, and the rest!--
My hands on some dear proof would light and stay!
But my heart sees John leaning on thy breast,
And sends them forth to do what thou dost say.
CHAPTER XV.
CRITICISM.
"Extraordinary young man!" exclaimed Mrs. Ramshorn as they left the
church, with a sigh that expressed despair. "Is he an infidel or a
fanatic? a Jesuit or a Socinian?"
"If he would pay a little more attention to his composition," said
Bascombe indifferently, "he might in time make of himself a good
speaker. I am not at all sure there are not the elements of an
orator in him, if he would only reflect a little on the fine
relations between speech and passion, and learn of the best models
how to play upon the feelings of a congregation. I declare I don't
know, but he might make a great man of himself. As long as he don't
finish his sentences however, jumbles his figures, and begins and
ends abruptly without either exordium or peroration, he needn't look
to make anything of a preacher--and that seems his object."
"If that be his object, he had better join the Methodists at once.
He would be a treasure to them," said Mrs. Ramshorn.
"That is not his object, George. How can you say so?" remarked Helen
quietly, but with some latent indignation.
George smiled a rather unpleasant smile and held his peace.
Little more was said on the way home. Helen went to take off her
bonnet, but did not re-appear until she was called to their early
Sunday dinner.
Now George had counted upon a turn in the garden with her before
dinner, and was annoyed--more, it is true, because of the emotion
which he rightly judged the cause of her not joining him, than the
necessity laid on him of eating his dinner without having first
unburdened his mind; but the latter fact also had its share in
vexing him.
When she came into the drawing-room it was plain she had been
weeping; but, although they were alone, and would probably have to
wait yet a few minutes before their aunt joined them, he resolved in
his good nature to be considerate, and say nothing till after
dinner, lest he should spoil her appetite. When they rose from the
table, she would have again escaped, but when George left his wine
and followed her, she consented, at his urgent, almost expostulatory
request, to walk once round the garden with him.
As soon as they were out of sight of the windows, he began--in the
tone of one whose love it is that prompts rebuke.
"How COULD you, my dear Helen, have so little care of your health,
already so much shaken with nursing your brother, as to yield your
mind to the maundering of that silly ecclesiastic, and allow his
false eloquence to untune your nerves! Remember your health is the
first thing--positively the FIRST and foremost thing to be
considered, both for your own sake and that of your friends. Without
health, what is anything worth?"
Helen made no answer, but she thought with herself there were two or
three things for the sake of which she would willingly part with a
considerable portion of her health. Her cousin imagined her
conscience-stricken, and resumed with yet greater confidence.
"If you MUST go to church, you ought to prepare yourself beforehand
by firmly impressing on your mind the fact that the whole thing is
but part of a system--part of a false system; that the preacher has
been brought up to the trade of religion, that it is his business,
and that he must lay himself out to persuade people--himself first
of all if he can, but anyhow his congregation, of the truth of
everything contained in that farrago of priestly absurdities--
called the Bible, forsooth! as if there were no other book worthy to
be mentioned beside it. Think for a moment how soon, were it not for
their churches and prayers and music and their tomfoolery of
preaching, the whole precious edifice would topple about their ears,
and the livelihood, the means of contentment and influence, would be
gone from so many restless paltering spirits! So what is left them
but to play upon the hopes and fears and diseased consciences of men
as they best can! The idiot! To tell a man when he is hipped to COME
UNTO ME! Bah! Does the fool really expect any grown man or woman to
believe in his or her brain that the man who spoke those words, if
ever there was a man who spoke them, can at this moment anni
domini"--George liked to be correct--"1870, hear whatever silly
words the Rev. Mr. Wingfold, or any other human biped, may think
proper to address to him with his face buried in his blankets by his
bedside or in his surplice over the pulpit-bible?--not to mention
that they would have you believe, or be damned to all eternity, that
every thought vibrated in the convolutions of your brain is known to
him as well as to yourself! The thing is really too absurd! Ha! ha!
ha! The man died--the death of a malefactor, they say; and his body
was stolen from his grave by his followers, that they might impose
thousands of years of absurdity upon generations to come after them.
And now, when a fellow feels miserable, he is to cry to that dead
man, who said of himself that he was meek and lowly in heart, and
straightway the poor beggar shall find rest to his soul! All I can
say is that, if he find rest so, it will be the rest of an idiot!
Believe me, Helen, a good Havannah and a bottle of claret would be
considerably more to the purpose;--for ladies, perhaps rather a cup
of tea and a little Beethoven!" Here he laughed, for the rush of his
eloquence had swept away his bad humour. "But really," he went on,
"the whole is TOO absurd to talk about. To go whining after an old
Jew fable in these days of progress! Why, what do you think is the
last discovery about light?"
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