“frail thoughts dally with false surmise.”
With him, too, she might well add—
“Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away.”
But God had them in his teaching, and all I could do was to ask them to be my guests till the funeral and the following Sunday were over. To this they kindly consented, and I took them to my wife, who received them like herself, and had in a few minutes made them at home with her, to which no doubt their sorrow tended, for that brings out the relations of humanity and destroys its distinctions.
The next morning a Scotchman of a very decided type, originally from Aberdeen, but resident in Liverpool, appeared, seeking the form of his daughter. I had arranged that whoever came should be brought to me first. I went with him to the church. He was a tall, gaunt, bony man, with long arms and huge hands, a rugged granite-like face, and a slow ponderous utterance, which I had some difficulty in understanding. He treated the object of his visit with a certain hardness, and at the same time lightness, which also I had some difficulty in understanding.
“You want to see the—” I said, and hesitated.
“Ow ay—the boadies,” he answered. “She winna be there, I daursay, but I wad jist like to see; for I wadna like her to be beeried gin sae be ‘at she was there, wi’oot biddin’ her good-bye like.”
When we reached the church, I opened the door and entered. An awe fell upon me fresh and new. The beautiful church had become a tomb: solemn, grand, ancient, it rose as a memorial of the dead who lay in peace before her altar-rail, as if they had fled thither for sanctuary from a sea of troubles. And I thought with myself, Will the time ever come when the churches shall stand as the tombs of holy things that have passed away, when Christ shall have rendered up the kingdom to his Father, and no man shall need to teach his neighbour or his brother, saying, “Know the Lord”? The thought passed through my mind and vanished, as I led my companion up to the dead. He glanced at one and another, and passed on. He had looked at ten or twelve ere he stopped, gazing on the face of the beautiful form which had first come ashore. He stooped and stroked the white cheeks, taking the head in his great rough hands, and smoothed the brown hair tenderly, saying, as if he had quite forgotten that she was dead—
“Eh, Maggie! hoo camyehere, lass?”
Then, as if for the first time the reality had grown comprehensible, he put his hands before his face, and burst into tears. His huge frame was shaken with sobs for one long minute, while I stood looking on with awe and reverence. He ceased suddenly, pulled a blue cotton handkerchief with yellow spots on it—I see it now—from his pocket, rubbed his face with it as if drying it with a towel, put it back, turned, and said, without looking at me, “I’ll awa’ hame.”
“Wouldn’t you like a piece of her hair?” I asked.
“Gin ye please,” he answered gently, as if his daughter’s form had been mine now, and her hair were mine to give.
By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.
“Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?” I asked.
“Yes, to be sure, sir,” she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by the string suspending them from her waist.
“Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair,” I said.
She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed it respectfully to the father.
He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the communion-rail, and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky gold. It was, indeed, beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it must be a yard long. He passed his big fingers through and through it, but tenderly, as if it had been still growing on the live lovely head, stopping every moment to pick out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and shake out the sand that had been wrought into its mass. He sat thus for nearly half-an-hour, and we stood looking on with something closely akin to awe. At length he folded it up, drew from his pocket an old black leather book, laid it carefully in the innermost pocket, and rose. I led the way from the church, and he followed me.
Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with his other hand in his trousers-pocket—
“She’ll hae putten ye to some expense—for the coffin an’ sic like.”
“We’ll talk about that afterwards,” I answered. “Come home with me now, and have some refreshment.”
“Na, I thank ye. I hae putten ye to eneuch o’ tribble already. I’ll jist awa’ hame.”
“We are going to lay them down this evening. You won’t go before the funeral. Indeed, I think you can’t get away till Monday morning. My wife and I will be glad of your company till then.”
“I’m no company for gentle-fowk, sir.”
“Come and show me in which of these graves you would like to have her laid,” I said.
He yielded and followed me.
Coombes had not dug many spadefuls before he saw what had been plain enough—that ten such men as he could not dig the graves in time. But there was plenty of help to be had from the village and the neighbouring farms. Most of them were now ready, but a good many men were still at work. The brown hillocks lay all about the church-yard—the mole-heaps of burrowing Death.
The stranger looked around him. His face grew critical. He stepped a little hither and thither. At length he turned to me and said—
“I wadna like to be greedy; but gin ye wad lat her lie next the kirk there—i’ that neuk, I wad tak’ it kindly. And syne gin ever it cam’ aboot that I cam’ here again, I wad ken whaur she was. Could ye get a sma’ bit heidstane putten up? I wad leave the siller wi’ ye to pay for’t.”
“To be sure I can. What will you have put on the stone?”
“Ow jist—let me see—Maggie Jamieson—nae Marget, but jist Maggie. She was aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It’s the last thing I can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o’ Scripter aneath’t, ye ken.”
“What verse would you like?”
He thought for a little.
“Isna there a text that says, ‘The deid shall hear his voice’?”
“Yes: ‘The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.’”
“Ay. That’s it. Weel, jist put that on.—They canna do better than hear his voice,” he added, with a strange mixture of Scotch ratiocination.
I led the way home, and he accompanied me without further objection or apology. After dinner, I proposed that we should go upon the downs, for the day was warm and bright. We sat on the grass. I felt that I could not talk to them as from myself. I knew nothing of the possible gulfs of sorrow in their hearts. To me their forms seemed each like a hill in whose unseen bosom lay a cavern of dripping waters, perhaps with a subterranean torrent of anguish raving through its hollows and tumbling down hidden precipices, whose voice God only heard, and God only could still. This daughtermight, though from her face I did not think it, have gone away against her father’s will. That sonmighthave been a ne’er-do-well at home—how could I tell? The womanmightbe looking for the lover that had forsaken her—I could not divine. I would speak no words of my own. The Son of God had spoken words of comfort to his mourning friends, when he was the present God and they were the forefront of humanity; I would read some of the words he spoke. From them the human nature in each would draw what comfort it could. I took my New Testament from my pocket, and said, without any preamble,
“When our Lord was going to die, he knew that his friends loved him enough to be very wretched about it. He knew that they would be overwhelmed for a time with trouble. He knew, too, that they could not believe the glad end of it all, to which end he looked, across the awful death that awaited him—a death to which that of our friends in the wreck was ease itself. I will just read to you what he said.”
I read from the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. I knew there were worlds of meaning in the words into which I could hardly hope any of them would enter. But I knew likewise that the best things are just those from which the humble will draw the truth they are capable of seeing. Therefore I read as for myself, and left it to them to hear for themselves. Nor did I add any word of comment, fearful of darkening counsel by words without knowledge. For the Bible is awfully set against what is not wise.
When I had finished, I closed the book, rose from the grass, and walked towards the brow of the shore. They rose likewise and followed me. I talked of slight things; the tone was all that communicated between us. But little of any sort was said. The sea lay still before us, knowing nothing of the sorrow it had caused.
We wandered a little way along the cliff. The burial-service was at seven o’clock.
“I have an invalid to visit out in this direction,” I said; “would you mind walking with me? I shall not stay more than five minutes, and we shall get back just in time for tea.”
They assented kindly. I walked first with one, then with another; heard a little of the story of each; was able to say a few words of sympathy, and point, as it were, a few times towards the hills whence cometh our aid. I may just mention here, that since our return to Marshmallows I have had two of them, the young woman and the Scotchman, to visit us there.
The bell began to toll, and we went to church. My companions placed themselves near the dead. I went into the vestry till the appointed hour. I thought as I put on my surplice how, in all religions but the Christian, the dead body was a pollution to the temple. Here the church received it, as a holy thing, for a last embrace ere it went to the earth.
As the dead were already in the church, the usual form could not be carried out. I therefore stood by the communion-table, and there began to read, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
I advanced, as I read, till I came outside the rails and stood before the dead. There I read the Psalm, “Lord, thou hast been our refuge,” and the glorious lesson, “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.” Then the men of the neighbourhood came forward, and in long solemn procession bore the bodies out of the church, each to its grave. At the church-door I stood and read, “Man that is born of a woman;” then went from one to another of the graves, and read over each, as the earth fell on the coffin-lid, “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy.” Then again, I went back to the church-door and read, “I heard a voice from heaven;” and so to the end of the service.
Leaving the men to fill up the graves, I hastened to lay aside my canonicals, that I might join my guests; but my wife and daughter had already prevailed on them to leave the churchyard.
A word now concerning my own family. Turner insisted on Connie’s remaining in bed for two or three days. She looked worse in face—pale and worn; but it was clear, from the way she moved in bed, that the fresh power called forth by the shock had not vanished with the moment.
Wynnie was quieter almost than ever; but there was a constantsecretlight, if I may use the paradox, in her eyes. Percivale was at the house every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short of the impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come, however, I could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully painful to all but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual child-gift of forgetting. The servants—even Walter—looked thin and anxious.
That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because I did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had again and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended itself to me so that I could say “I must take that;” nothing said plainly, “This is what you have to speak of.”
As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind had turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion, or rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to justify me in giving it to my people. And I always took it as my sole justification, in speaking of anything to the flock of Christ, that I cared heartily in my own soul for that thing. Without this consciousness I was dumb. And I do think, highly as I value prophecy, that a clergyman ought to be at liberty upon occasion to say, “My friends, I cannot preach to-day.” What a riddance it would be for the Church, I do not say if every priest were to speak sense, but only if every priest were to abstain from speaking of that in which, at the moment, he feels little or no interest!
I went to bed, which is often the very best thing a man can do; for sleep will bring him from God that which no effort of his own will can compass. I have read somewhere—I will verify it by present search—that Luther’s translation, of the verse in the psalm, “So he giveth to his beloved sleep,” is, “He giveth his beloved sleeping,” or while asleep. Yes, so it is, literally, in English, “It is in vain that ye rise early, and then sit long, and eat your bread with care, for to his friends he gives it sleeping.” This was my experience in the present instance; for the thought of which I was first conscious when I awoke was, “Why should I talk about death? Every man’s heart is now full of death. We have enough of that—even the sum that God has sent us on the wings of the tempest. What I have to do, as the minister of the new covenant, is to speak of life.” It flashed in on my mind: “Death is over and gone. The resurrection comes next. I will speak of the raising of Lazarus.”
The same moment I knew that I was ready to speak. Shall I or shall I not give my reader the substance of what I said? I wish I knew how many of them would like it, and how many would not. I do not want to bore them with sermons, especially seeing I have always said that no sermons ought to be printed; for in print they are but what the old alchymists would have called acaput mortuum, or death’s head, namely, a lifeless lump of residuum at the bottom of the crucible; for they have no longer the living human utterance which gives all the power on the minds of the hearers. But I have not, either in this or in my preceding narrative, attempted to give a sermon as I preached it. I have only sought to present the substance of it in a form fitter for being read, somewhat cleared of the unavoidable, let me say necessary—yes, I will sayvaluable—repetitions and enforcements by which the various considerations are pressed upon the minds of the hearers. These are entirely wearisome in print—useless too, for the reader may ponder over every phrase till he finds out the purport of it—if indeed there be such readers nowadays.
I rose, went down to the bath in the rocks, had a joyous physical ablution, and a swim up and down the narrow cleft, from which I emerged as if myself newly born or raised anew, and then wandered about on the downs full of hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep in my mind the long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be not only ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but able to send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time of the soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of the body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to comfort the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of kings hath conquered Death and the Grave. There is no perfect faith that cannot laugh at winters and graveyards, and all the whole array of defiant appearances. The fresh breeze of the morning visited me. “O God,” I said in my heart, “would that when the dark day comes, in which I can feel nothing, I may be able to front it with the memory of this day’s strength, and so help myself to trust in the Father! I would call to mind the days of old, with David the king.”
When I returned to the house, I found that one of the sailors, who had been cast ashore with his leg broken, wished to see me. I obeyed, and found him very pale and worn.
“I think I am going, sir,” he said; “and I wanted to see you before I die.”
“Trust in Christ, and do not be afraid,” I returned.
“I prayed to him to save me when I was hanging to the rigging, and if I wasn’t afraid then, I’m not going to be afraid now, dying quietly in my bed. But just look here, sir.”
He took from under his pillow something wrapped up in paper, unfolded the envelope, and showed a lump of something—I could not at first tell what. He put it in my hand, and then I saw that it was part of a bible, with nearly the upper half of it worn or cut away, and the rest partly in a state of pulp.
“That’s the bible my mother gave me when I left home first,” he said. “I don’t know how I came to put it in my pocket, but I think the rope that cut through that when I was lashed to the shrouds would a’most have cut through my ribs if it hadn’t been for it.”
“Very likely,” I returned. “The body of the Bible has saved your bodily life: may the spirit of it save your spiritual life.”
“I think I know what you mean, sir,” he panted out. “My mother was a good woman, and I know she prayed to God for me.”
“Would you like us to pray for you in church to-day?”
“If you please, sir; me and Bob Fox. He’s nearly as bad as I am.”
“We won’t forget you,” I said. “I will come in after church and see how you are.”
I knelt and offered the prayers for the sick, and then took my leave. I did not think the poor fellow was going to die.
I may as well mention here, that he has been in my service ever since. We took him with us to Marshmallows, where he works in the garden and stables, and is very useful. We have to look after him though, for his health continues delicate.
When I stood up to preach, I gave them no text; but, with the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of St. John open before me, to keep me correct, I proceeded to tell the story in the words God gave me; for who can dare to say that he makes his own commonest speech?
“When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and therefore our elder brother, was going about on the earth, eating and drinking with his brothers and sisters, there was one family he loved especially—a family of two sisters and a brother; for, although he loves everybody as much as they can be loved, there are some who can be loved more than others. Only God is always trying to make us such that we can be loved more and more. There are several stories—O, such lovely stories!—about that family and Jesus; and we have to do with one of them now.
“They lived near the capital of the country, Jerusalem, in a village they called Bethany; and it must have been a great relief to our Lord, when he was worn out with the obstinacy and pride of the great men of the city, to go out to the quiet little town and into the refuge of Lazarus’s house, where everyone was more glad at the sound of his feet than at any news that could come to them.
“They had at this time behaved so ill to him in Jerusalem—taking up stones to stone him even, though they dared not quite do it, mad with anger as they were—and all because he told them the truth—that he had gone away to the other side of the great river that divided the country, and taught the people in that quiet place. While he was there his friend Lazarus was taken ill; and the two sisters, Martha and Mary, sent a messenger to him, to say to him, ‘Lord, your friend is very ill.’ Only they said it more beautifully than that: ‘Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.’ You know, when anyone is ill, we always want the person whom he loves most to come to him. This is very wonderful. In the worst things that can come to us the first thought is of love. People, like the Scribes and Pharisees, might say, ‘What good can that do him?’ And we may not in the least suppose that the person we want knows any secret that can cure his pain; yet love is the first thing we think of. And here we are more right than we know; for, at the long last, love will cure everything: which truth, indeed, this story will set forth to us. No doubt the heart of Lazarus, ill as he was, longed after his friend; and, very likely, even the sight of Jesus might have given him such strength that the life in him could have driven out the death which had already got one foot across the threshold. But the sisters expected more than this: they believed that Jesus, whom they knew to have driven disease and death out of so many hearts, had only to come and touch him—nay, only to speak a word, to look at him, and their brother was saved. Do you think they presumed in thus expecting? The fact was, they did not believe enough; they had not yet learned to believe that he could cure him all the same whether he came to them or not, because he was always with them. We cannot understand this; but our understanding is never a measure of what is true.
“Whether Jesus knew exactly all that was going to take place I cannot tell. Some people may feel certain upon points that I dare not feel certain upon. One thing I am sure of: that he did not always know everything beforehand, for he said so himself. It is infinitely more valuable to us, because more beautiful and godlike in him, that he should trust his Father than that he should foresee everything. At all events he knew that his Father did not want him to go to his friends yet. So he sent them a message to the effect that there was a particular reason for this sickness—that the end of it was not the death of Lazarus, but the glory of God. This, I think, he told them by the same messenger they sent to him; and then, instead of going to them, he remained where he was.
“But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think of being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory of God! of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the fear, the broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God? What kind of a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely good, that the things that look least like it are only the means of clearing our eyes to let us see how good he is. For he is so good that he is not satisfied withbeinggood. He loves his children, so that except he can make them good like himself, make them blessed by seeing how good he is, and desiring the same goodness in themselves, he is not satisfied. He is not like a fine proud benefactor, who is content with doing that which will satisfy his sense of his own glory, but like a mother who puts her arm round her child, and whose heart is sore till she can make her child see the love which is her glory. The glorification of the Son of God is the glorification of the human race; for the glory of God is the glory of man, and that glory is love. Welcome sickness, welcome sorrow, welcome death, revealing that glory!
“The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost seem typical of all the perplexities of God’s dealings. The old painters and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand a cup of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted Faith! she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she is not repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for the type of the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not understood. The wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the supreme Fate put that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good too,—harmless, at least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine. But let us read the verses.
“‘Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.’
“Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But remember what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely more for the final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life he could have, would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere presence of the Son of God. I saymerepresence, for, compared with the glory of God, the very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is nothing. He abode where he was that the glory of God, the final cure of humanity, the love that triumphs over death, might shine out and redeem the hearts of men, so that death could not touch them.
“After the two days, the hour had arrived. He said to his disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judæa.’ They expostulated, because of the danger, saying, ‘Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?’ The answer which he gave them I am not sure whether I can thoroughly understand; but I think, in fact I know, it must bear on the same region of life—the will of God. I think what he means by walking in the day is simply doing the will of God. That was the sole, the all-embracing light in which Jesus ever walked. I think he means that now he saw plainly what the Father wanted him to do. If he did not see that the Father wanted him to go back to Judæa, and yet went, that would be to go stumblingly, to walk in the darkness. There are twelve hours in the day—one time to act—a time of light and the clear call of duty; there is a night when a man, not seeing where or hearing how, must be content to rest. Something not inharmonious with this, I think, he must have intended; but I do not see the whole thought clearly enough to be sure that I am right. I do think, further, that it points at a clearer condition of human vision and conviction than I am good enough to understand; though I hope one day to rise into this upper stratum of light.
“Whether his scholars had heard anything of Lazarus yet, I do not know. It looks a little as if Jesus had not told them the message he had had from the sisters. But he told them now that he was asleep, and that he was going to wake him. You would think they might have understood this. The idea of going so many miles to wake a man might have surely suggested death. But the disciples were sorely perplexed with many of his words. Sometimes they looked far away for the meaning when the meaning lay in their very hearts; sometimes they looked into their hands for it when it was lost in the grandeur of the ages. But he meant them to see into all that he said by and by, although they could not see into it now. When they understood him better, then they would understand what he said better. And to understand him better they must be more like him; and to make them more like him he must go away and give them his spirit—awful mystery which no man but himself can understand.
“Now he had to tell them plainly that Lazarus was dead. They had not thought of death as a sleep. I suppose this was altogether a new and Christian idea. Do not suppose that it applied more to Lazarus than to other dead people. He was none the less dead that Jesus meant to take a weary two days’ journey to his sepulchre and wake him. If death is not a sleep, Jesus did not speak the truth when he said Lazarus slept. You may say it was a figure; but a figure that is not like the thing it figures is simply a lie.
“They set out to go back to Judæa. Here we have a glimpse of the faith of Thomas, the doubter. For a doubter is not without faith. The very fact that he doubts, shows that he has some faith. When I find anyone hard upon doubters, I always doubt thequalityof his faith. It is of little use to have a great cable, if the hemp is so poor that it breaks like the painter of a boat. I have known people whose power of believing chiefly consisted in their incapacity for seeing difficulties. Of what fine sort a faith must be that is founded in stupidity, or far worse, in indifference to the truth and the mere desire to get out of hell! That is not a grand belief in the Son of God, the radiation of the Father. Thomas’s want of faith was shown in the grumbling, self-pitying way in which he said, ‘Let us also go that we may die with him.’ His Master had said that he was going to wake him. Thomas said, ‘that we may die with him.’ You may say, ‘He did not understand him.’ True, it may be, but his unbelief was the cause of his not understanding him. I suppose Thomas meant this as a reproach to Jesus for putting them all in danger by going back to Judæa; if not, it was only a poor piece of sentimentality. So much for Thomas’s unbelief. But he had good and true faith notwithstanding; forhe went with his Master.
“By the time they reached the neighbourhood of Bethany, Lazarus had been dead four days. Someone ran to the house and told the sisters that Jesus was coming. Martha, as soon as she heard it, rose and went to meet him. It might be interesting at another time to compare the difference of the behaviour of the two sisters upon this occasion with the difference of their behaviour upon another occasion, likewise recorded; but with the man dead in his sepulchre, and the hope dead in these two hearts, we have no inclination to enter upon fine distinctions of character. Death and grief bring out the great family likenesses in the living as well as in the dead.
“When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith by almost attributing her brother’s death to Jesus’ absence. But even in the moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of faith, began in her soul. She thought—‘What if, after all, he were to bring him to life again!’ O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her half-born prayer, says, ‘Thy brother shall rise again;’ not meaning the general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all but the Sadducees, concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but meaning, ‘Be it unto thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.’ For there is no steering for a fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these words are too good for Martha to take them as he meant them. Her faith is not quite equal to the belief that he actually will do it. The thing she could hope for afar off she could hardly believe when it came to her very door. ‘O, yes,’ she said, her mood falling again to the level of the commonplace, ‘of course, at the last day.’ Then the Lord turns away her thoughts from the dogmas of her faith to himself, the Life, saying, ‘I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this?’ Martha, without understanding what he said more than in a very poor part, answered in words which preserved her honesty entire, and yet included all he asked, and a thousandfold more than she could yet believe: ‘Yea, Lord; I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.’
“I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth of Jesus’ words ‘shall never die;’ but I am pretty sure that when Martha came to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had meant when she used the ghastly worddeath, and said with her first new breath, ‘Verily, Lord, I am not dead.’
“But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the Lord would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she went to find Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother, straightway will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The family feeling blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal. Martha wants Mary to go to Jesus too.
“Mary heard her, forgot her visitors, rose, and went. They thought she went to the grave: she went to meet its conqueror. But when she came to him, the woman who had chosen the good part praised of Jesus, had but the same words to embody her hope and her grief that her careful and troubled sister had uttered a few minutes before. How often during those four days had not the self-same words passed between them! ‘Ah, if he had been here, our brother had not died!’ She said so to himself now, and wept, and her friends who had followed her wept likewise. A moment more, and the Master groaned; yet a moment, and he too wept. ‘Sorrow is catching;’ but this was not the mere infection of sorrow. It went deeper than mere sympathy; for he groaned in his spirit and was troubled. What made him weep? It was when he saw them weeping that he wept. But why should he weep, when he knew how soon their weeping would be turned into rejoicing? It was not for their weeping, so soon to be over, that he wept, but for the human heart everywhere swollen with tears, yea, with griefs that can find no such relief as tears; for these, and for all his brothers and sisters tormented with pain for lack of faith in his Father in heaven, Jesus wept. He saw the blessed well-being of Lazarus on the one side, and on the other the streaming eyes from whose sight he had vanished. The veil between was so thin! yet the sight of those eyes could not pierce it: their hearts must go on weeping—without cause, for his Father was so good. I think it was the helplessness he felt in the impossibility of at once sweeping away the phantasm death from their imagination that drew the tears from the eyes of Jesus. Certainly it was not for Lazarus; it could hardly be for these his friends—save as they represented the humanity which he would help, but could not help even as he was about to help them.
“The Jews saw herein proof that he loved Lazarus; but they little thought it was for them and their people, and for the Gentiles whom they despised, that his tears were now flowing—that the love which pressed the fountains of his weeping was love for every human heart, from Adam on through the ages.
“Some of them went a little farther, nearly as far as the sisters, saying, ‘Could he not have kept the man from dying?’ But it was such a poor thing, after all, that they thought he might have done. They regarded merely this unexpected illness, this early death; for I daresay Lazarus was not much older than Jesus. They did not think that, after all, Lazarus must die some time; that the beloved could be saved, at best, only for a little while. Jesus seems to have heard the remark, for he again groaned in himself.
“Meantime they were drawing near the place where he was buried. It was a hollow in the face of a rock, with a stone laid against it. I suppose the bodies were laid on something like shelves inside the rock, as they are in many sepulchres. They were not put into coffins, but wound round and round with linen.
“When they came before the door of death, Jesus said to them, ‘Take away the stone.’ The nature of Martha’s reply—the realism of it, as they would say now-a-days—would seem to indicate that her dawning faith had sunk again below the horizon, that in the presence of the insignia of death, her faith yielded, even as the faith of Peter failed him when he saw around him the grandeur of the high-priest, and his Master bound and helpless. Jesus answered—O, what an answer!—To meet the corruption and the stink which filled her poor human fancy, ‘the glory of God’ came from his lips: human fear; horror speaking from the lips of a woman in the very jaws of the devouring death; and the ‘said I not unto thee?’ from the mouth of him who was so soon to pass worn and bloodless through such a door! ‘He stinketh,’ said Martha. ‘The glory of God,’ said Jesus. ‘Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?’
“Before the open throat of the sepulchre Jesus began to speak to his Father aloud. He had prayed to him in his heart before, most likely while he groaned in his spirit. Now he thanked him that he had comforted him, and given him Lazarus as a first-fruit from the dead. But he will be true to the listening people as well as to his ever-hearing Father; therefore he tells why he said the word of thanks aloud—a thing not usual with him, for his Father was always hearing, him. Having spoken it for the people, he would say that it was for the people.
“The end of it all was that they might believe that God had sent him—a far grander gift than having the dearest brought back from the grave; for he is the life of men.
“‘Lazarus, come forth!”
“And Lazarus came forth, creeping helplessly with inch-long steps of his linen-bound limbs. ‘Ha, ha! brother, sister!’ cries the human heart. The Lord of Life hath taken the prey from the spoiler; he hath emptied the grave. Here comes the dead man, welcome as never was child from the womb—new-born, and in him all the human race new-born from the grave! ‘Loose him and let him go,’ and the work is done. The sorrow is over, and the joy is come. Home, home, Martha, Mary, with your Lazarus! He too will go with you, the Lord of the Living. Home and get the feast ready, Martha! Prepare the food for him who comes hungry from the grave, for him who has called him thence. Home, Mary, to help Martha! What a household will yours be! What wondrous speech will pass between the dead come to life and the living come to die!
“But what pang is this that makes Lazarus draw hurried breath, and turns Martha’s cheek so pale? Ah, at the little window of the heart the pale eyes of the defeated Horror look in. What! is he there still! Ah, yes, he will come for Martha, come for Mary, come yet again for Lazarus—yea, come for the Lord of Life himself, and carry all away. But look at the Lord: he knows all about it, and he smiles. Does Martha think of the words he spoke, ‘He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die’? Perhaps she does, and, like the moon before the sun, her face returns the smile of her Lord.
“This, my friends, is a fancy in form, but it embodies a dear truth. What is it to you and me that he raised Lazarus? We are not called upon to believe that he will raise from the tomb that joy of our hearts which lies buried there beyond our sight. Stop! Are we not? We are called upon to believe this; else the whole story were for us a poor mockery. What is it to us that the Lord raised Lazarus?—Is it nothing to know that our Brother is Lord over the grave? Will the harvest be behind the first-fruits? If he tells us he cannot, for good reasons, raise up our vanished love to-day, or to-morrow, or for all the years of our life to come, shall we not mingle the smile of faithful thanks with the sorrow of present loss, and walk diligently waiting? That he called forth Lazarus showed that he was in his keeping, that he is Lord of the living, and that all live to him, that he has a hold of them, and can draw them forth when he will. If this is not true, then the raising of Lazarus is false; I do not mean merely false in fact, but false in meaning. If we believe in him, then in his name, both for ourselves and for our friends, we must deny death and believe in life. Lord Christ, fill our hearts with thy Life!”
In a day or two Connie was permitted to rise and take to her couch once more. It seemed strange that she should look so much worse, and yet be so much stronger. The growth of her power of motion was wonderful. As they carried her, she begged to be allowed to put her feet to the ground. Turner yielded, though without quite ceasing to support her. He was satisfied, however, that she could have stood upright for a moment at least. He would not, of course, risk it, and made haste to lay her down.
The time of his departure was coming near, and he seemed more anxious the nearer it came; for Connie continued worn-looking and pale; and her smile, though ever ready to greet me when I entered, had lost much of its light. I noticed, too, that she had the curtain of her window constantly so arranged as to shut out the sea. I said something to her about it once. Her reply was:
“Papa, I can’t bear it. I know it is very silly; but I think I can make you understand how it is: I was so fond of the sea when I came down; it seemed to lie close to my window, with a friendly smile ready for me every morning when I looked out. I daresay it is all from want of faith, but I can’t help it: it looks so far away now, like a friend that had failed me, that I would rather not see it.”
I saw that the struggling life within her was grievously oppressed, that the things which surrounded her were no longer helpful. Her life had been driven as to its innermost cave; and now, when it had been enticed to venture forth and look abroad, a sudden pall had descended upon nature. I could not help thinking that the good of our visit to Kilkhaven had come, and that evil, from which I hoped we might yet escape, was following. I left her, and sought Turner.
“It strikes me, Turner,” I said, “that the sooner we get out of this the better for Connie.”
“I am quite of your opinion. I think the very prospect of leaving the place would do something to restore her. If she is so uncomfortable now, think what it will be in the many winter nights at hand.”
“Do you think it would be safe to move her?”
“Far safer than to let her remain. At the worst, she is now far better than when she came. Try her. Hint at the possibility of going home, and see how she will take it.”
“Well, I sha’n’t like to be left alone; but if she goes they must all go, except, perhaps, I might keep Wynnie. But I don’t know how her mother would get on without her.”
“I don’t see why you should stay behind. Mr. Weir would be as glad to come as you would be to go; and it can make no difference to Mr. Shepherd.”
It seemed a very sensible suggestion. I thought a moment. Certainly it was a desirable thing for both my sister and her husband. They had no such reasons as we had for disliking the place; and it would enable her to avoid the severity of yet another winter. I said as much to Turner, and went back to Connie’s room.
The light of a lovely sunset was lying outside her window. She was sitting so that she could not see it. I would find out her feeling in the matter without any preamble.
“Would you like to go back to Marshmallows, Connie?” I asked.
Her countenance flashed into light.
“O, dear papa, do let us go,” she said; “that would be delightful.”
“Well, I think we can manage it, if you will only get a little stronger for the journey. The weather is not so good to travel in as when we came down.”
“No; but I am ever so much better, you know, than I was then.”
The poor girl was already stronger from the mere prospect of going home again. She moved restlessly on her couch, half mechanically put her hand to the curtain, pulled it aside, looked out, faced the sun and the sea, and did not draw back. My mind was made up. I left her, and went to find Ethelwyn. She heartily approved of the proposal for Connie’s sake, and said that it would be scarcely less agreeable to herself. I could see a certain troubled look above her eyes, however.
“You are thinking of Wynnie,” I said.
“Yes. It is hard to make one sad for the sake of the rest.”
“True. But it is one of the world’s recognised necessities.”
“No doubt.”
“Besides, you don’t suppose Percivale can stay here the whole winter. They must part some time.”
“Of course. Only they did not expect it so soon.”
But here my wife was mistaken.
I went to my study to write to Weir. I had hardly finished my letter when Walter came to say that Mr. Percivale wished to see me. I told him to show him in.
“I am just writing home to say that I want my curate to change places with me here, which I know he will be glad enough to do. I see Connie had better go home.”
“You will all go, then, I presume?” returned Percivale.
“Yes, yes; of course.”
“Then I need not so much regret that I can stay no longer. I came to tell you that I must leave to-morrow.”
“Ah! Going to London?”
“Yes. I don’t know how to thank you for all your kindness. You have made my summer something like a summer; very different, indeed, from what it would otherwise have been.”
“We have had our share of advantage, and that a large one. We are all glad to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Percivale.”
He made no answer.
“We shall be passing through London within a week or ten days in all probability. Perhaps you will allow us the pleasure of looking at some of your pictures then?”
His face flushed. What did the flush mean? It was not one of mere pleasure. There was confusion and perplexity in it. But he answered at once:
“I will show you them with pleasure. I fear, however, you will not care for them.”
Would this fear account for his embarrassment? I hardly thought it would; but I could not for a moment imagine, with his fine form and countenance before me, that he had any serious reason for shrinking from a visit.
He began to search for a card.
“O, I have your address. I shall be sure to pay you a visit. But you will dine with us to-day, of course?” I said.
“I shall have much pleasure,” he answered; and took his leave.
I finished my letter to Weir, and went out for a walk.
I remember particularly the thoughts that moved in me and made that walk memorable. Indeed, I think I remember all outside events chiefly by virtue of the inward conditions with which they were associated. Mere outside things I am very ready to forget. Moods of my own mind do not so readily pass away; and with the memory of some of them every outward circumstance returns; for a man’s life is where the kingdom of heaven is—within him. There are people who, if you ask the story of their lives, have nothing to tell you but the course of the outward events that have constituted, as it were, the clothes of their history. But I know, at the same time, that some of the most important crises in my own history (by which wordhistoryI mean my growth towards the right conditions of existence) have been beyond the grasp and interpretation of my intellect. They have passed, as it were, without my consciousness being awake enough to lay hold of their phenomena. The wind had been blowing; I had heard the sound of it, but knew not whence it came nor whither it went; only, when it was gone, I found myself more responsible, more eager than before.
I remember this walk from the thoughts I had about the great change hanging over us all. I had now arrived at the prime of middle life; and that change which so many would escape if they could, but which will let no man pass, had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon of the future. Death looks so far away to the young, that while they acknowledge it unavoidable, the path stretches on in such vanishing perspective before them, that they see no necessity for thinking about the end of it yet; and far would I be from saying they ought to think of it. Life is the true object of a man’s care: there is no occasion to make himself think about death. But when the vision of the inevitable draws nigh, when it appears plainly on the horizon, though but as a cloud the size of a man’s hand, then it is equally foolish to meet it by refusing to meet it, to answer the questions that will arise by declining to think about them. Indeed, it is a question of life then, and not of death. We want to keep fast hold of our life, and, in the strength of that, to look the threatening death in the face. But to my walk that morning.
I wandered on the downs till I came to the place where a solitary rock stands on the top of a cliff looking seaward, in the suggested shape of a monk praying. On the base on which he knelt I seated myself, and looked out over the Atlantic. How faded the ocean appeared! It seemed as if all the sunny dyes of the summer had been diluted and washed with the fogs of the coming winter, when I thought of the splendour it wore when first from these downs I gazed on the outspread infinitude of space and colour.
“What,” I said to myself at length, “has she done since then? Where is her work visible? She has riven, and battered, and destroyed, and her destruction too has passed away. So worketh Time and its powers! The exultation of my youth is gone; my head is gray; my wife is growing old; our children are pushing us from our stools; we are yielding to the new generation; the glory for us hath departed; our life lies weary before us like that sea; and the night cometh when we can no longer work.”
Something like this was passing vaguely through my mind. I sat in a mournful stupor, with a half-consciousness that my mood was false, and that I ought to rouse myself and shake it off. There is such a thing as a state of moral dreaming, which closely resembles the intellectual dreaming in sleep. I went on in this false dreamful mood, pitying myself like a child tender over his hurt and nursing his own cowardice, till, all at once, “a little pipling wind” blew on my cheek. The morning was very still: what roused that little wind I cannot tell; but what that little wind roused I will try to tell. With that breath on my cheek, something within me began to stir. It grew, and grew, until the memory of a certain glorious sunset of red and green and gold and blue, which I had beheld from these same heights, dawned within me. I knew that the glory of my youth had not departed, that the very power of recalling with delight that which I had once felt in seeing, was proof enough of that; I knew that I could believe in God all the night long, even if the night were long. And the next moment I thought how I had been reviling in my fancy God’s servant, the sea. To how many vessels had she not opened a bounteous highway through the waters, with labour, and food, and help, and ministration, glad breezes and swelling sails, healthful struggle, cleansing fear and sorrow, yea, and friendly death! Because she had been commissioned to carry this one or that one, this hundred or that thousand of his own creatures from one world to another, was I to revile the servant of a grand and gracious Master? It was blameless in Connie to feel the late trouble so deeply that she could not be glad: she had not had the experience of life, yea, of God, that I had had; she must be helped from without. But for me, it was shameful that I, who knew the heart of my Master, to whom at least he had so often shown his truth, should ever be doleful and oppressed. Yet even me he had now helped from within. The glory of existence as the child of the Infinite had again dawned upon me. The first hour of the evening of my life had indeed arrived; the shadows had begun to grow long—so long that I had begun to mark their length; this last little portion of my history had vanished, leaving its few gray ashes behind in the crucible of my life; and the final evening must come, when all my life would lie behind me, and all the memory of it return, with its mornings of gold and red, with its evenings of purple and green; with its dashes of storm, and its foggy glooms; with its white-winged aspirations, its dull-red passions, its creeping envies in brown and black and earthy yellow. But from all the accusations of my conscience, I would turn me to the Lord, for he was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins. Then I thought what a grand gift it would be to give his people the power hereafter to fight the consequences of their sins. Anyhow, I would trust the Father, who loved me with a perfect love, to lead the soul he had made, had compelled to be, through the gates of the death-birth, into the light of life beyond. I would cast on him the care, humbly challenge him with the responsibility he had himself undertaken, praying only for perfect confidence in him, absolute submission to his will.
I rose from my seat beside the praying monk, and walked on. The thought of seeing my own people again filled me with gladness. I would leave those I had here learned to love with regret; but I trusted I had taught them something, and they had taught me much; therefore there could be no end to our relation to each other—it could not be broken, for it wasin the Lord, which alone can give security to any tie. I should not, therefore, sorrow as if I were to see their faces no more.
I now took my farewell of that sea and those cliffs. I should see them often ere we went, but I should not feel so near them again. Even this parting said that I must “sit loose to the world”—an old Puritan phrase, I suppose; that I could gather up only its uses, treasure its best things, and must let all the rest go; that those things I called mine—earth, sky, and sea, home, books, the treasured gifts of friends—had all to leave me, belong to others, and help to educate them. I should not need them. I should have my people, my souls, my beloved faces tenfold more, and could well afford to part with these. Why should I mind this chain passing to my eldest boy, when it was only his mother’s hair, and I should have his mother still?
So my thoughts went on thinking themselves, until at length I yielded passively to their flow.
I found Wynnie looking very grave when I went into the drawing-room. Her mother was there, too, and Mr. Percivale. It seemed rather a moody party. They wakened up a little, however, after I entered, and before dinner was over we were all chatting together merrily.
“How is Connie?” I asked Ethelwyn.
“Wonderfully better already,” she answered.
“I think everybody seems better,” I said. “The very idea of home seems reviving to us all.”
Wynnie darted a quick glance at me, caught my eyes, which was more than she had intended, and blushed; sought refuge in a bewildered glance at Percivale, caught his eye in turn, and blushed yet deeper. He plunged instantly into conversation, not without a certain involuntary sparkle in his eye.
“Did you go to see Mrs. Stokes this morning?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “She does not want much visiting now; she is going about her work, apparently in good health. Her husband says she is not like the same woman; and I hope he means that in more senses than one, though I do not choose to ask him any questions about his wife.”
I did my best to keep up the conversation, but every now and then after this it fell like a wind that would not blow. I withdrew to my study. Percivale and Wynnie went out for a walk. The next morning he left by the coach—early. Turner went with him.
Wynnie did not seem very much dejected. I thought that perhaps the prospect of meeting him again in London kept her up.