Thomas Wingfold, Curate V3
G >>
George MacDonald >> Thomas Wingfold, Curate V3
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12
But amongst the rest, a feeling which had but lately begun to
indicate its far-off presence now threatened to bring with it a
deeper and more permanent sorrow: it became more and more plain to
her that she had taken the evil part against the one she loved best
in the world; that she had been as a Satan to him; had driven him
back, stood almost bodily in the way to turn him from the path of
peace. Whether the path he had sought to follow was the only one or
not, it was the only one he knew; and that it was at least A true
one, was proved by the fact that he had already found in it the
beginnings of the peace he sought; while she, for the avoidance of
shame and pity, for the sake of the family, as she had said to
herself, had pursued a course which if successful, would at best
have resulted in shutting him up, as in a madhouse, with his own
inborn horrors, with vain remorse, and equally vain longing. Her
conscience, now that her mind was quieter, from the greater distance
to which the threatening peril had again withdrawn, had taken the
opportunity of speaking louder. And she listened--but still with
one question ever presented: Why might he not appropriate the
consolations of the gospel without committing the suicide of
surrender? She could not see that confession was the very door of
refuge and safety, towards which he must press.
George's absence was now again a relief, and while she feared and
shrank from the severity of Wingfold, she could not help a certain
indiscribable sense of safety in his presence--at least so long as
Leopold was too ill to talk.
For the curate, he became more and more interested in the woman who
could love so strongly, and yet not entirely, who suffered and must
still suffer so much, and who a faith even no greater than his own
might render comparatively blessed. The desire to help her grew and
grew in him, but he could see no way of reaching her. And then he
began to discover one peculiar advantage belonging to the little
open chamber of the pulpit--open not only or specially to heaven
above, but to so many of the secret chambers of the souls of the
congregation. For what a man dares not, could not if he dared, and
dared not if he could, say to another, even at the time and in the
place fittest of all, he can say thence, open-faced before the whole
congregation; and the person in need thereof may hear it without
umbrage, or the choking husk of individual application, irritating
to the rejection of what truth may lie in it for him. Would that our
pulpits were all in the power of such men as by suffering know the
human, and by obedience the divine heart! Then would the office of
instruction be no more mainly occupied by the press, but the faces
of true men would everywhere be windows for the light of the Spirit
to enter other men's souls, and the voice of their words would
follow with the forms of what truth they saw, and the power of the
Lord would speed from heart to heart. Then would men soon understand
that not the form of even soundest words availeth anything, but a
new creature.
When Wingfold was in the pulpit, then, he could speak as from the
secret to the secret; but elsewhere he felt, in regard to Helen,
like a transport-ship filled with troops, which must go sailing
around the shores of an invaded ally, in frustrate search for a
landing. Oh, to help that woman, that the light of life might go up
in her heart, and her cheek bloom again with the rose of peace! But
not a word could he speak in her presence, for he heard everything
be would have said as he thought it would sound to her, and
therefore he had no utterance. Is it an infirmity of certain kinds
of men, or a wise provision for their protection, that the brightest
forms the truth takes in their private cogitations seem to lose half
their lustre and all their grace when uttered in the presence of an
unreceptive nature, and they hear, as it were, their own voice
reflected in a poor, dull, inharmonious echo, and are disgusted?
But, on the other hand, ever in the pauses of the rushing, ever in
the watery gleams of life that broke through the clouds and drifts
of the fever, Leopold sought his friend, and, finding him, shone
into a brief radiance, or, missing him, gloomed back into the land
of visions. The tenderness of the curate's service, the heart that
showed itself in everything he did, even in the turn and expression
of the ministering hand, was a kind of revelation to Helen. For
while his intellect was hanging about the door, asking questions,
and uneasily shifting hither and thither in its unloved
perplexities, the spirit of the master had gone by it unseen, and
entered into the chamber of his heart.
After preaching the sermon last recorded, there came a reaction of
doubt and depression on the mind of the curate, greater than usual.
Had he not gone farther than his right? Had he not implied more
conviction than was his? Words could not go beyond his satisfaction
with what he found in the gospel, or the hopes for the range of his
conscious life springing therefrom; but was he not now making people
suppose him more certain of the FACT of these things than he was? He
was driven to console himself with the reflection that so long as he
had had no such intention, even if he had been so carried away by
the delight of his heart as to give such an impression, it mattered
little: what was it to other people what he believed or how he
believed? If he had not been untrue to himself, no harm would
follow. Was a man never to talk from the highest in him to the
forgetting of the lower? Was a man never to be carried beyond
himself and the regions of his knowledge? If so, then farewell
poetry and prophecy--yea, all grand discovery!--for things must be
foreseen ere they can be realized--apprehended ere they be
comprehended. This much he could say for himself, and no more, that
he was ready to lay down his life for the mere CHANCE, if he might
so use the word, of these things being true; nor did he argue any
devotion in that, seeing life without them would be to him a waste
of unreality. He could bear witness to no facts--but to the truth,
to the loveliness and harmony and righteousness and safety that he
saw in the idea of the Son of Man--as he read it in the story. He
dared not say what, in a time of persecution, torture might work
upon him, but he felt right hopeful that, even were he base enough
to deny him, any cock might crow him back to repentance. At the same
time he saw plain enough that even if he gave his body to be burned,
it were no sufficing assurance of his Christianity: nothing could
satisfy him of that less than the conscious presence of the perfect
charity. Without that he was still outside the kingdom, wandering in
a dream around its walls.
Difficulties went on presenting themselves; at times he would be
overwhelmed in the tossing waves of contradiction and impossibility;
but still his head would come up into the air and he would get a
breath before he went down again. And with every fresh conflict,
every fresh gleam of doubtful victory, the essential idea of the
master looked more and more lovely. And he began to see the working
of his doubts on the growth of his heart and soul--both widening
and realizing his faith, and preventing it from becoming faith in an
idea of God instead of in the living God--the God beyond as well as
in the heart that thought and willed and imagined.
He had much time for reflection as he sat silent by the bedside of
Leopold. Sometimes Helen would be sitting near, though generally
when he arrived she went out for her walk, but never anything came
to him he could utter to her. And she was one of those who learn
little from other people. A change must pass upon her ere she could
be rightly receptive. Some vapour or other that clouded her being
must be driven to the winds first.
Mrs. Ramshorn had become at least reconciled to the frequent
presence of the curate, partly from the testimony of Helen, partly
from the witness of her own eyes to the quality of his ministrations.
She was by no means one of the loveliest among women, yet she had a
heart, and could appreciate some kinds of goodness which the arrogance
of her relation to the church did not interfere to hide--for nothing
is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides
of holy things--and she became half-friendly and quite courteous when
she met the curate on the stair, and would now and then, when she
thought of it, bring him a glass of wine as he sat by the bedside.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN EXAMINATION.
The acquaintance between the draper and the gate-keeper rapidly
ripened into friendship. Very generally, as soon as he had shut his
shop, Drew would walk to the park-gate to see Polwarth; and three
times a week at least, the curate made one of the party. Much was
then talked, more was thought, and I venture to say, more yet was
understood.
One evening the curate went earlier than usual, and had tea with the
Polwarths.
"Do you remember," he asked of his host, "once putting to me the
question what our Lord came into this world for?"
"I do," answered Polwarth.
"And you remember I answered you wrong: I said it was to save the
world."
"I do. But remember, I said _primarily_, for of course he did come
to save the world."
"Yes, just so you put it. Well, I think I can answer the question
correctly now, and in learning the true answer I have learned much.
Did he not come first of all to do the will of his Father? Was not
his Father first with him always and in everything--his fellow-men
next--for they were his Father's?"
"I need not say it--you know that you are right. Jesus is tenfold a
real person to you--is he not--since you discovered that truth?"
"I think so; I hope so. It does seem as if a grand simple reality
had begun to dawn upon me out of the fog--the form as of a man pure
and simple, _because_ the eternal son of the Father."
"And now, may I not ask--are you able to accept the miracles, things
in themselves so improbable?"
"If we suppose the question settled as to whether the man was what
he said, then all that remains is to ask whether the works reported
of him are consistent with what you can see of the character of the
man."
"And to you they seem--?"
"Some consistent, others not. Concerning the latter I look for more
light."
"Meantime let me ask you a question about them. What was the main
object of miracles?"
"One thing at least I have learned, Mr. Polwarth and that is, not to
answer any question of yours in a hurry," said Wingfold. "I will, if
you please, take this one home with me, and hold the light to it."
"Do," said Polwarth, "and you will find it return you the light
threefold.--One word more, ere Mr. Drew comes: do you still think of
giving up your curacy?"
"I have almost forgotten I ever thought of such a thing. Whatever
energies I may or may not have, I know one thing for certain, that I
could not devote them to anything else I should think entirely worth
doing. Indeed nothing else seems interesting enough--nothing to
repay the labour, but the telling of my fellow-men about the one man
who is the truth, and to know whom is the life. Even if there be no
hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that
ought to be true if it is not. No facts can take the place of
truths, and if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our
nature a waste. Let me hold by the better than the actual, and fall
into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and John and Paul
and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their
death make even the nothingness into which they have passed like the
garden of the Lord. I will go further, Polwarth, and say, I would
rather die for evermore believing as Jesus believed, than live for
evermore believing as those that deny him. If there be no God, I
feel assured that existence is and could be but a chaos of
contradictions, whence can emerge nothing worthy to be called a
truth, nothing worth living for.--No, I will not give up my curacy.
I will teach that which IS good, even if there should be no God to
make a fact of it, and I will spend my life on it, in the growing
hope, which MAY become assurance, that there is indeed a perfect
God, worthy of being the Father of Jesus Christ, and that it was
BECAUSE they are true, that these things were lovely to me and to so
many men and women, of whom some have died for them, and some would
be yet ready to die."
"I thank my God to hear you say so. Nor will you stand still there,"
said Polwarth. "But here comes Mr. Drew!"
CHAPTER IX.
IMMORTALITY.
"How goes business?" said Polwarth, when the new-comer had seated
himself.
"That is hardly a question I look for from you, sir," returned the
draper, smiling all over his round face, which looked more than ever
like a moon of superior intelligence. "For me, I am glad to leave it
behind me in the shop."
"True business can never be left in any shop. It is a care, white or
black, that sits behind every horseman."
"That is fact; and with me it has just taken a new shape," said
Drew, "for I have come with quite a fresh difficulty. Since I saw
you last, Mr. Polwarth, a strange and very uncomfortable doubt has
rushed in upon me, and I find myself altogether unfit to tackle it.
I have no weapons--not a single argument of the least weight. I
wonder if it be a law of nature that no sooner shall a man get into
a muddle with one thing, than a thousand other muddles shall come
pouring in upon him, as if Muddle itself were going to swallow him
up! Here am I just beginning to get a little start in honester ways,
when up comes the ugly head of the said doubt, swelling itself more
and more to look like a fact--namely, that after this world there is
nothing for us--nothing at all to be had anyhow--that as we came so
we go--into life, out of life--that, having been nothing before, we
shall be nothing after! The flowers come back in the spring, and the
corn in the autumn, but they ain't the same flowers or the same
corn. They're just as different as the new generations of men."
"There's no pretence that we come back either. We only think we
don't go into the ground, but away somewhere else."
"You can't prove that."
"No."
"And you don't know anything about it!"
"Not much--but enough, I think."
"Why, even those that profess to believe it, scoff at the idea of an
apparition--a ghost!"
"That's the fault of the ghosts, I suspect--or their reporters. I
don't care about them myself. I prefer the tale of one who, they
say, rose again, and brought his body with him."
"Yes; but he was only one!"
"Except two or three whom, they say, he brought to life."
"Still there are but three or four."
"To tell you the truth, I do not care much to argue the point with
you.--It is by no means a matter of the FIRST importance whether we
live for ever or not."
"Mr. Polwarth!" exclaimed the draper in such astonishment mingled
with horror, as proved he was not in immediate danger of becoming an
advocate of the doctrine of extinction.
The gate-keeper smiled what, but for a peculiar expression of
undefinable good in it, might have been called a knowing smile.
"Suppose a thing were in itself not worth having," he said, "would
it be any great enhancement of it as a gift to add the assurance
that the possession of it was eternal! Most people think it a fine
thing to have a bit of land to call their own and leave to their
children; but suppose a stinking and undrainable swamp, full of foul
springs--what consolation would it be to the proprietor of that to
know, while the world lasted, not a human being would once dispute
its possession with any fortunate descendant holding it?"
The draper only stared, but his stare was a thorough one. The curate
sat waiting, with both amusement and interest, for what would
follow: he saw the direction in which the little man was driving.
"You astonish me!" said Mr. Drew, recovering his mental breath. "How
can you compare God's gift to such a horrible thing! Where should we
be without life?"
Rachel burst out laughing, and the curate could not help joining
her.
"Mr. Drew," said Polwarth, half merrily, "are you going to help me
drag my chain out of its weary length, or are you too much shocked
at the doubtful condition of its links to touch them? I promise you
the last shall be of bright gold."
"I beg your pardon," said the draper; "I might have known you didn't
mean it."
"On the contrary, I mean everything I say and that literally.
Perhaps I don't mean everything you fancy I mean.--Tell me then,
would life be worth having on any and every possible condition?"
"Certainly not."
"You know some, I dare say, who would be glad to be rid of life such
as it is, and such as they suppose it must continue?"
"I don't."
"I do."
"I have already understood that everybody clung to life."
"Most people do; everybody certainly does not: Job, for instance."
"They say that is but a poem."
"BUT a poem! EVEN a poem--a representation true not of this or that
individual, but of the race! There ARE such persons as would gladly
be rid of life, and in their condition all would feel the same.
Somewhat similar is the state of those who profess unbelief in the
existence of God: none of them expect, and few of them seem to wish
to live for ever!--At least, so I am told."
"That is no wonder," said the draper; "--if they don't believe in
God, I mean."
"Then there I have you! There you allow life to be not worth having,
if on certain evil conditions."
"I admit it, then."
"And I repeat that to prove life endless is a matter of the FIRST
importance. And I will go a little farther.--Does it follow that
life is worth having because a man would like to have it for ever?"
"I should say so; who should be a better judge than the man
himself?"
"Let us look at it a moment. Suppose--we will take a strong
case--suppose a man whose whole delight is in cruelty, and who has
such plentiful opportunity of indulging the passion that he finds it
well with him--such a man would of course desire such a life to
endure for ever: is such a life worth having? were it well that man
should be immortally cruel?"
"Not for others."
"Still less, I say, for himself."
"In the judgment of others, doubtless; but to himself he would be
happy."
"Call his horrible satisfaction happiness then, and leave aside the
fact that in its own nature it is a horror, and not a bliss: a time
must come, when, in the exercise of his delight, he shall have
destroyed all life besides, and made himself alone with himself in
an empty world: will he then find life worth having?"
"Then he ought to live for punishment."
"With that we have nothing to do now, but there you have given me an
answer to my question, whether a man's judgment that his life is
worth having, proves immortality a thing to be desired."
"I have. I understand now."
"It follows that there is something of prior importance to the
possession of immortality:--what is that something?"
"I suppose that the immortality itself should be worth possessing."
"Yes; that the life should be such that it were well it should be
endless.--And what then if it be not such?"
"The question then would be whether it could not be made such."
"You are right.--And wherein consists the essential inherent
worthiness of a life as life?--The only perfect idea of life is--a
unit, self-existent, and creative. That is God, the only one. But to
this idea, in its kind, must every life, to be complete as life,
correspond; and the human correspondence to self-existence is, that
the man should round and complete himself by taking into himself
that origin; by going back and in his own will adopting his origin,
rooting therein afresh in the exercise of his own freedom and in all
the energy of his own self-roused will; in other words--that the man
say "I will be after the will of the creating _I_;" that he see and
say with his whole being that to will the will of God in himself and
for himself and concerning himself, is the highest possible
condition of a man. Then has he completed his cycle by turning back
upon his history, laying hold of his cause, and willing his own
being in the will of the only I AM. This is the rounding,
re-creating, unifying of the man. This is religion, and all that
gathers not with this, scatters abroad."
"And then," said Drew, with some eagerness, "lawfully comes the
question, 'Shall I, or shall I not live for ever?'"
"Pardon me; I think not," returned the little prophet. "I think
rather we have done with it for ever. The man with life so in
himself, will not dream of asking whether he shall live. It is only
in the twilight of a half-life, holding in it at once much wherefore
it should desire its own continuance, and much that renders it
unworthy of continuance, that the doubtful desire of immortality can
arise.--Do you remember"--here Polwarth turned to Wingfold--"my
mentioning to you once a certain manuscript of strange interest--to
me at least and Rachel--which a brother of mine left behind him?"
"I remember it perfectly," answered the curate."
"It seems so to mingle with all I ever think on this question, that
I should much like, if you gentlemen would allow me, to read some
extracts from it."
Nothing could have been heartier than the assurance of both the men
that they could but be delighted to listen to anything he chose to
give them.
"I must first tell you, however," said Polwarth, "merely to protect
you from certain disturbing speculations, otherwise sure to present
themselves, that my poor brother was mad, and that what I now read
portions of seemed to him no play of the imagination, but a record
of absolute fact. Some parts are stranger and less intelligible than
others, but through it all there is abundance of intellectual
movement, and what seems to me a wonderful keenness to perceive the
movements and arrest the indications of an imagined consciousness."
As he spoke, the little man was opening a cabinet in which he kept
his precious things. He brought from it a good-sized quarto volume,
neatly bound in morocco, with gilt edges, which he seemed to handle
not merely with respect but with tenderness.
The heading of the next chapter is my own, and does not belong to
the manuscript.
CHAPTER X.
PASSAGES FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE WANDERING JEW.
"'I have at length been ill, very ill, once more, and for many
reasons foreign to the weightiest, which I had forgotten, I had
hoped that I was going to die. But therein I am as usual deceived
and disappointed. That I have been out of my mind I know, by having
returned to the real knowledge of what I am. The conscious present
has again fallen together and made a whole with the past, and that
whole is my personal identity.
"'How I broke loose from the bonds of a madness, which, after so
many and heavy years of uninterrupted sanity, had at length laid
hold upon me, I will now relate.
"'I had, as I have said, been very ill--with some sort of fever that
had found fit rooting in a brain overwearied, from not having been
originally constructed to last so long. Whether it came not of an
indwelling demon, or a legion of demons, I cannot tell--God knows.
Surely I was as one possessed. I was mad, whether for years, or but
for moments--who can tell? I cannot. Verily it seems for many years;
but, knowing well the truth concerning the relations of time in him
that dreameth and waketh from his dream, I place no confidence in
the testimony of the impressions left upon my seeming memory. I can
however trust it sufficiently as to the character of the illusions
that then possessed me. I imagined myself an Englishman called
Polwarth, of an ancient Cornish family. Indeed, I had in my
imagination, as Polwarth, gone through the history, every day of it,
with its sunrise and sunset, of more than half a lifetime. I had a
brother who was deformed and a dwarf, and a daughter who was like
him; and the only thing, throughout the madness, that approached a
consciousness of my real being and history, was the impression that
these things had come upon me because of a certain grievous wrong I
had at one time committed, which wrong, however, I had quite
forgotten--and could ill have imagined in its native hideousness.
"'But one morning, just as I woke, after a restless night filled
with dreams, I was aware of a half-embodied shadow in my mind--
whether thought or memory or imagination, I could not tell: and the
strange thing was, that it darkly radiated from it the conviction
that I must hold and identify it, or be for ever lost to myself.
Therefore, with all the might of my will to retain the shadow, and
all the energy of my recollection to recall that of which it was the
vague shadow, I concentrated the whole power of my spiritual man
upon the phantom thought, to fix and retain it.
"'Everyone knows what it is to hunt such a formless fact. Evanescent
as a rainbow, its whole appearance, from the first, is that of a
thing in the act of vanishing. It is a thing that was known, but,
from the moment consciousness turned its lantern upon it, began to
become invisible. For a time, during the close pursuit that follows,
it seems only to be turning corner after corner to evade the mind's
eye, but behind every corner it leaves a portion of itself; until at
length, although when finally cannot be told, it is gone so utterly
that the mind remains aghast in the perplexity of the doubt whether
ever there was a thought there at all.
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12