My invalids had now beheld the sea in such a different aspect, that I no longer feared to go back to Kilkhaven. Thither we went three days after, and at my invitation, Percivale took Turner's place in the carriage.
How bright the yellow shores of Kilkhaven looked after the dark sands of Tintagel! But how low and tame its highest cliffs after the mighty rampart of rocks which there face the sea like a cordon of fierce guardians! It was pleasant to settle down again in what had begun to look like home, and was indeed made such by the boisterous welcome of Dora and the boys. Connie's baby crowed aloud, and stretched forth her chubby arms at sight of her. The wind blew gently around us, full both of the freshness of the clean waters and the scents of the down-grasses, to welcome us back. And the dread vision of the shore had now receded so far into the past, that it was no longer able to hurt.
We had called at the blacksmith's house on our way home, and found that he was so far better as to be working at his forge again. His mother said he was used to such attacks, and soon got over them. I, however, feared that they indicated an approaching break-down.
"Indeed, sir," she said, "Joe might be well enough if he liked. It's all his own fault."
"What do you mean?" I asked. "I cannot believe that your son is in any way guilty of his own illness."
"He's a well-behaved lad, my Joe," she answered; "but he hasn't learned what I had to learn long ago."
"What is that?" I asked.
"To make up his mind, and stick to it. To do one thing or the other."
She was a woman with a long upper lip and a judicial face, and as she spoke, her lip grew longer and longer; and when she closed her mouth in mark of her own resolution, that lip seemed to occupy two-thirds of all her face under the nose.
"And what is it he won't do?"
"I don't mind whether he does it or not, if he would only make—up—his—mind—and—stick—to—it."
"What is it you want him to do, then?"
"I don't want him to do it, I'm sure. It's no good to me—and wouldn't be much to him, that I'll be bound. Howsomever, he must please himself."
I thought it not very wonderful that he looked gloomy, if there was no more sunshine for him at home than his mother's face indicated. Few things can make a man so strong and able for his work as a sun indoors, whose rays are smiles, ever ready to shine upon him when he opens the door,—the face of wife or mother or sister. Now his mother's face certainly was not sunny. No doubt it must have shone upon him when he was a baby. God has made that provision for babies, who need sunshine so much that a mother's face cannot help being sunny to them: why should the sunshine depart as the child grows older?
"Well, I suppose I must not ask. But I fear your son is very far from well. Such attacks do not often occur without serious mischief somewhere. And if there is anything troubling him, he is less likely to get over it."
"If he would let somebody make up his mind for him, and then stick to it—"
"O, but that is impossible, you know. A man must make up his own mind."
"That's just what he won't do."
All the time she looked naughty, only after a self-righteous fashion. It was evident that whatever was the cause of it, she was not in sympathy with her son, and therefore could not help him out of any difficulty he might be in. I made no further attempt to learn from her the cause of her son's discomfort, clearly a deeper cause than his illness. In passing his workshop, we stopped for a moment, and I made an arrangement to meet him at the church the next day.
I was there before him, and found that he had done a good deal since we left. Little remained except to get the keys put to rights, and the rods attached to the cranks in the box. To-day he was to bring a carpenter, a cousin of his own, with him.
They soon arrived, and a small consultation followed. The cousin was a bright-eyed, cheruby-cheeked little man, with a ready smile and white teeth: I thought he might help me to understand what was amiss in Joseph's affairs. But I would not make the attempt except openly. I therefore said half in a jocular fashion, as with gloomy, self-withdrawn countenance the smith was fitting one loop into another in two of his iron rods,—
"I wish we could get this cousin of yours to look a little more cheerful. You would think he had quarrelled with the sunshine."
The carpenter showed his white teeth between his rosy lips.
"Well, sir, if you'll excuse me, you see my cousin Joe is not like the rest of us. He's a religious man, is Joe."
"But I don't see how that should make him miserable. It hasn't made me miserable. I hope I'm a religious man myself. It makes me happy every day of my life."
"Ah, well," returned the carpenter, in a thoughtful tone, as he worked away gently to get the inside out of the oak-chest without hurting it, "I don't say it's the religion, for I don't know; but perhaps it's the way he takes it up. He don't look after hisself enough; he's always thinking about other people, you see, sir; and it seems to me, sir, that if you don't look after yourself, why, who is to look after you? That's common sense,Ithink."
It was a curious contrast—the merry friendly face, which shone good-fellowship to all mankind, accusing the sombre, pale, sad, severe, even somewhat bitter countenance beside him, of thinking too much about other people, and too little about himself. Of course it might be correct in a way. There is all the difference between a comfortable, healthy inclination, and a pained, conscientious principle. It was a smile very unlike his cousin's with which Joe heard his remarks on himself.
"But," I said, "you will allow, at least, that if everybody would take Joe's way of it, there would then be no occasion for taking care of yourself."
"I don't see why, sir."
"Why, because everybody would take care of everybody else."
"Not so well, I doubt, sir."
"Yes, and a great deal better."
"At any rate, that's a long way off; and mean time,who'sto take care of the odd man like Joe there, that don't look after hisself?"
"Why, God, of course."
"Well, there's just where I'm out. I don't know nothing about that branch, sir."
I saw a grateful light mount up in Joe's gloomy eyes as I spoke thus upon his side of the question. He said nothing, however; and his cousin volunteering no further information, I did not push any advantage I might have gained.
At noon I made them leave their work, and come home with me to have their dinner; they hoped to finish the job before dusk. Harry Cobb and I dropped behind, and Joe Harper walked on in front, apparently sunk in meditation.
Scarcely were we out of the churchyard, and on the road leading to the rectory, when I saw the sexton's daughter meeting us. She had almost come up to Joe before he saw her, for his gaze was bent on the ground, and he started. They shook hands in what seemed to me an odd, constrained, yet familiar fashion, and then stood as if they wanted to talk, but without speaking. Harry and I passed, both with a nod of recognition to the young woman, but neither of us had the ill-manners to look behind. I glanced at Harry, and he answered me with a queer look. When we reached the turning that would hide them from our view, I looked back almost involuntarily, and there they were still standing. But before we reached the door of the rectory, Joe got up with us.
There was something remarkable in the appearance of Agnes Coombes, the sexton's daughter. She was about six-and-twenty, I should imagine, the youngest of the family, with a sallow, rather sickly complexion, somewhat sorrowful eyes, a smile rare and sweet, a fine figure, tall and slender, and a graceful gait. I now saw, I thought, a good hair's-breadth further into the smith's affairs. Beyond the hair's-breadth, however, all was dark. But I saw likewise that the well of truth, whence I might draw the whole business, must be the girl's mother.
After the men had had their dinner and rested a while, they went back to the church, and I went to the sexton's cottage. I found the old man seated at the window, with his pot of beer on the sill, and an empty plate beside it.
"Come in, sir," he said, rising, as I put my head in at the door. "The mis'ess ben't in, but she'll be here in a few minutes."
"O, it's of no consequence," I said. "Are they all well?"
"All comfortable, sir. It be fine dry weather for them, this, sir. It be in winter it be worst for them."
"But it's a snug enough shelter you've got here. It seems such, anyhow; though, to be sure, it is the blasts of winter that find out the weak places both in house and body."
"It ben't the wind touchthem" he said; "they be safe enough from the wind. It be the wet, sir. There ben't much snow in these parts; but when it du come, that be very bad for them, poor things!"
Could it be that he was harping on the old theme again?
"But at least this cottage keeps out the wet," I said. "If not, we must have it seen to."
"This cottage du well enough, sir. It'll last my time, anyhow."
"Then why are you pitying your family for having to live in it?"
"Bless your heart, sir! It's not them. They du well enough. It's my people out yonder. You've got the souls to look after, and I've got the bodies. That's what it be, sir. To be sure!"
The last exclamation was uttered in a tone of impatient surprise at my stupidity in giving all my thoughts and sympathies to the living, and none to the dead. I pursued the subject no further, but as I lay in bed that night, it began to dawn upon me as a lovable kind of hallucination in which the man indulged. He too had an office in the Church of God, and he would magnify that office. He could not bear that there should be no further outcome of his labour; that the burying of the dead out of sight should be "the be-all and the end-all." He was God's vicar, the gardener in God's Acre, as the Germans call the churchyard. When all others had forsaken the dead, he remained their friend, caring for what little comfort yet remained possible to them. Hence in all changes of air and sky above, he attributed to them some knowledge of the same, and some share in their consequences even down in the darkness of the tomb. It was his way of keeping up the relation between the living and the dead. Finding I made him no reply, he took up the word again.
"You've got your part, sir, and I've got mine. You up into the pulpit, and I down into the grave. But it'll be all the same by and by."
"I hope it will," I answered. "But when you do go down into your own grave, you'll know a good deal less about it than you do now. You'll find you've got other things to think about. But here comes your wife. She'll talk about the living rather than the dead."
"That's natural, sir. She brought 'em to life, and I buried 'em—at least, best part of 'em. If only I had the other two safe down with the rest!"
I remembered what the old woman had told me—that she had two boysinthe sea; and I knew therefore what he meant. He regarded his drowned boys as still tossed about in the weary wet cold ocean, and would have gladly laid them to rest in the warm dry churchyard.
He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye with the back of his hand, and saying, "Well, I must be off to my gardening," left me with his wife. I saw then that, humorist as the old man might be, his humour, like that of all true humorists, lay close about the wells of weeping.
"The old man seems a little out of sorts," I said to his wife.
"Well, sir," she answered, with her usual gentleness, a gentleness which obedient suffering had perfected, "this be the day he buried our Nancy, this day two years; and to-day Agnes be come home from her work poorly; and the two things together they've upset him a bit."
"I met Agnes coming this way. Where is she?"
"I believe she be in the churchyard, sir. I've been to the doctor about her."
"I hope it's nothing serious."
"I hope not, sir; but you see—four on 'em, sir!"
"Well, she's in God's hands, you know."
"That she be, sir."
"I want to ask you about something, Mrs. Coombes."
"What be that, sir? If I can tell, I will, you may be sure, sir."
"I want to know what's the matter with Joe Harper, the blacksmith."
"They du say it be a consumption, sir."
"But what has he got on his mind?"
"He's got nothing on his mind, sir. He be as good a by as ever stepped, I assure you, sir."
"But I am sure there is something or other on his mind. He's not so happy as he should be. He's not the man, it seems to me, to be unhappy because he's ill. A man like him would not be miserable because he was going to die. It might make him look sad sometimes, but not gloomy as he looks."
"Well, sir, I believe you be right, and perhaps I know summat. But it's part guessing.—I believe my Agnes and Joe Harper are as fond upon one another as any two in the county."
"Are they not going to be married then?"
"There be the pint, sir. I don't believe Joe ever said a word o' the sort to Aggy. She never could ha' kep it from me, sir."
"Why doesn't he then?"
"That's the pint again, sir. All as knows him says it's because he be in such bad health, and he thinks he oughtn't to go marrying with one foot in the grave. He never said so to me; but I think very likely that be it."
"For that matter, Mrs. Coombes, we've all got one foot in the grave, I think."
"That be very true, sir."
"And what does your daughter think?"
"I believe she thinks the same. And so they go on talking to each other, quiet-like, like old married folks, not like lovers at all, sir. But I can't help fancying it have something to do with my Aggy's pale face."
"And something to do with Joe's pale face too, Mrs. Coombes," I said. "Thank you. You've told me more than I expected. It explains everything. I must have it out with Joe now."
"O deary me! sir, don't go and tell him I said anything, as if I wanted him to marry my daughter."
"Don't you be afraid. I'll take good care of that. And don't fancy I'm fond of meddling with other people's affairs. But this is a case in which I ought to do something. Joe's a fine fellow."
"That he be, sir. I couldn't wish a better for a son-in-law."
I put on my hat.
"You won't get me into no trouble with Joe, will ye, sir!"
"Indeed I will not, Mrs. Coombes. I should be doing a great deal more harm than good if I said a word to make him doubt you."
I went straight to the church. There were the two men working away in the shadowy tower, and there was Agnes standing beside, knitting like her mother, so quiet, so solemn even, that it did indeed look as if she were a long-married wife, hovering about her husband at his work. Harry was saying something to her as I went in, but when they saw me they were silent, and Agnes gently withdrew.
"Do you think you will get through to-night?" I asked.
"Sure of it, sir," answered Harry.
"You shouldn't be sure of anything, Harry. We are told in the New Testament that we ought to sayIf the Lord will," said Joe.
"Now, Joe, you're too hard upon Harry," I said. "You don't think that the Bible means to pull a man up every step like that, till he's afraid to speak a word. It was about a long journey and a year's residence that the Apostle James was speaking."
"No doubt, sir. But the principle's the same. Harry can no more be sure of finishing his work before it be dark, than those people could be of going their long journey."
"That is perfectly true. But you are taking the letter for the spirit, and that, I suspect, in more ways than one. The religion does not lie in not being sure about anything, but in a loving desire that the will of God in the matter, whatever it be, may be done. And if Harry has not learned yet to care about the will of God, what is the good of coming down upon him that way, as if that would teach him in the least. When he loves God, then, and not till then, will he care about his will. Nor does the religion lie in saying,if the Lord will, every time anything is to be done. It is a most dangerous thing to use sacred words often. It makes them so common to our ear that at length, when used most solemnly, they have not half the effect they ought to have, and that is a serious loss. What the Apostle means is, that we should always be in the mood of looking up to God and having regard to his will, not always writing D.V. for instance, as so many do—most irreverently, I think—using a Latin contraction for the beautiful words, just as if they were a charm, or as if God would take offence if they did not make the salvo of acknowledgment. It seems to me quite heathenish. Our hearts ought ever to be in the spirit of those words; our lips ought to utter them rarely. Besides, there are some things a man might be pretty sure the Lord wills."
"It sounds fine, sir; but I'm not sure that I understand what you mean to say. It sounds to me like a darkening of wisdom."
I saw that I had irritated him, and so had in some measure lost ground. But Harry struck in—
"Howcanyou say that now, Joe?Iknow what the parson means well enough, and everybody knows I ain't got half the brains you've got."
"The reason is, Harry, that he's got something in his head that stands in the way."
"And there's nothing in my headtostand in the way!" returned Harry, laughing.
This made me laugh too, and even Joe could not help a sympathetic grin. By this time it was getting dark.
"I'm afraid, Harry, after all, you won't get through to-night."
"I begin to think so too, sir. And there's Joe saying, 'I told you so,' over and over to himself, though he won't say it out like a man."
Joe answered only with another grin.
"I tell you what it is, Harry," I said—"you must come again on Monday. And on your way home, just look in and tell Joe's mother that I have kept him over to-morrow. The change will do him good."
"No, sir, that can't he. I haven't got a clean shirt."
"You can have a shirt of mine," I said. "But I'm afraid you'll want your Sunday clothes."
"I'll bring them for you, Joe—before you're up," interposed Harry. "And then you can go to church with Aggy Coombes, you know."
Here was just what I wanted.
"Hold your tongue, Harry," said Joe angrily. "You're talking of what you don't know anything about."
"Well, Joe, I ben't a fool, if I ben't so religious as you be. You ben't a bad fellow, though you be a Methodist, and I ben't a fool, though I be Harry Cobb."
"What do you mean, Harry? Do hold your tongue."
"Well, I'll tell you what I mean first, and then I'll hold my tongue. I mean this—that nobody with two eyes, or one eye, for that matter, in his head, could help seeing the eyes you and Aggy make at each other, and why you don't port your helm and board her—I won't say it's more than I know, but I du say it to be more than I think be fair to the young woman."
"Hold your tongue, Harry."
"I said I would when I'd answered you as to what I meaned. So no more at present; but I'll be over with your clothes afore you're up in the morning."
As Harry spoke he was busy gathering his tools.
"They won't be in the way, will they, sir?" he said, as he heaped them together in the furthest corner of the tower.
"Not in the least," I returned. "If I had my way, all the tools used in building the church should be carved on the posts and pillars of it, to indicate the sacredness of labour, and the worship of God that lies, not in building the church merely, but in every honest trade honestly pursued for the good of mankind and the need of the workman. For a necessity of God is laid upon every workman as well as on St. Paul. Only St. Paul saw it, and every workman doesn't, Harry."
"Thank you, sir. I like that way of it. I almost think I could be a little bit religious after your way of it, sir."
"Almost, Harry!" growled Joe—not unkindly.
"Now, you hold your tongue, Joe," I said. "Leave Harry to me. You may take him, if you like, after I've done with him."
Laughing merrily, but making no other reply than a hearty good-night, Harry strode away out of the church, and Joe and I went home together.
When he had had his tea, I asked him to go out with me for a walk.
The sun was shining aslant upon the downs from over the sea. We rose out of the shadowy hollow to the sunlit brow. I was a little in advance of Joe. Happening to turn, I saw the light full on his head and face, while the rest of his body had not yet emerged from the shadow.
"Stop, Joe," I said. "I want to see you so for a moment."
He stood—a little surprised.
"You look just like a man rising from the dead, Joe," I said.
"I don't know what you mean, sir," he returned.
"I will describe yourself to you. Your head and face are full of sunlight, the rest of your body is still buried in the shadow. Look; I will stand where you are now; and you come here. You will soon see what I mean."
We changed places. Joe stared for a moment. Then his face brightened.
"I see what you mean, sir," he said. "I fancy you don't mean the resurrection of the body, but the resurrection of righteousness."
"I do, Joe. Did it ever strike you that the whole history of the Christian life is a series of such resurrections? Every time a man bethinks himself that he is not walking in the light, that he has been forgetting himself, and must repent, that he has been asleep and must awake, that he has been letting his garments trail, and must gird up the loins of his mind—every time this takes place, there is a resurrection in the world. Yes, Joe; and every time that a man finds that his heart is troubled, that he is not rejoicing in God, a resurrection must follow—a resurrection out of the night of troubled thoughts into the gladness of the truth. For the truth is, and ever was, and ever must be, gladness, however much the souls on which it shines may be obscured by the clouds of sorrow, troubled by the thunders of fear, or shot through with the lightnings of pain. Now, Joe, will you let me tell you what you are like—I do not know your thoughts; I am only judging from your words and looks?"
"You may if you like, sir," answered Joe, a little sulkily. But I was not to be repelled.
I stood up in the sunlight, so that my eyes caught only about half the sun's disc. Then I bent my face towards the earth.
"What part of me is the light shining on now, Joe?"
"Just the top of your head," answered he.
"There, then," I returned, "that is just what you are like—a man with the light on his head, but not on his face. And why not on your face? Because you hold your head down."
"Isn't it possible, sir, that a man might lose the light on his face, as you put it, by doing his duty?"
"That is a difficult question," I replied. "I must think before I answer it."
"I mean," added Joe—"mightn't his duty be a painful one?"
"Yes. But I think that would rather etherealise than destroy the light. Behind the sorrow would spring a yet greater light from the very duty itself. I have expressed myself badly, but you will see what I mean.—To be frank with you, Joe, I do not see that light in your face. Therefore I think something must be wrong with you. Remember a good man is not necessarily in the right. St. Peter was a good man, yet our Lord called him Satan—and meant it of course, for he never said what he did not mean."
"How can I be wrong when all my trouble comes from doing my duty—nothing else, as far as I know?"
"Then," I replied, a sudden light breaking in on my mind, "I doubt whether what you suppose to be your duty can be your duty. If it were, I do not think it would make you so miserable. At least—I may be wrong, but I venture to think so."
"What is a man to go by, then? If he thinks a thing is his duty, is he not to do it?"
"Most assuredly—until he knows better. But it is of the greatest consequence whether the supposed duty be the will of God or the invention of one's own fancy or mistaken judgment. A real duty is always something right in itself. The duty a man makes his for the time, by supposing it to be a duty, may be something quite wrong in itself. The duty of a Hindoo widow is to burn herself on the body of her husband. But that duty lasts no longer than till she sees that, not being the will of God, it is not her duty. A real duty, on the other hand, is a necessity of the human nature, without seeing and doing which a man can never attain to the truth and blessedness of his own being. It was the duty of the early hermits to encourage the growth of vermin upon their bodies, for they supposed that was pleasing to God; but they could not fare so well as if they had seen the truth that the will of God was cleanliness. And there may be far more serious things done by Christian people against the will of God, in the fancy of doing their duty, than such a trifle as swarming with worms. In a word, thinking a thing is your duty makes it your duty only till you know better. And the prime duty of every man is to seek and find, that he may do, the will of God."
"But do you think, sir, that a man is likely to be doing what he ought not, if he is doing what he don't like?"
"Not so likely, I allow. But there may be ambition in it. A man must not want to be better than the right. That is the delusion of the anchorite—a delusion in which the man forgets the rights of others for the sake of his own sanctity."
"It might be for the sake of another person, and not for the person's own sake at all."
"It might be; but except it were the will of God for that other person, it would be doing him or her a real injury."
We were coming gradually towards what I wanted to make the point in question. I wished him to tell me all about it himself, however, for I knew that while advice given on request is generally disregarded, to offer advice unasked is worthy only of a fool.
"But how are you to know the will of God in every case?" asked Joe.
"By looking at the general laws of life, and obeying them—except there be anything special in a particular case to bring it under a higher law."
"Ah! but that be just what there is here."
"Well, my dear fellow, that may be; but the special conduct may not be right for the special case for all that. The speciality of the case may not be even sufficient to take it from under the ordinary rule. But it is of no use talking generals. Let us come to particulars. If you can trust me, tell me all about it, and we may be able to let some light in. I am sure there is darkness somewhere."
"I will turn it over in my mind, sir; and if I can bring myself to talk about it, I will. I would rather tell you than anyone else."
I said no more. We watched a glorious sunset—there never was a grander place for sunsets—and went home.
The next morning Harry came with the clothes. But Joe did not go to church. Neither did Agnes make her appearance that morning. They were both present at the evening service, however.
When we came out of church, it was cloudy and dark, and the wind was blowing cold from the sea. The sky was covered with one cloud, but the waves tossing themselves against the rocks, flashed whiteness out of the general gloom. As the tide rose the wind increased. It was a night of surly temper—hard and gloomy. Not a star cracked the blue above—there was no blue; and the wind wasgurly; I once heard that word in Scotland, and never forgot it.
After one of our usual gatherings in Connie's room, which were much shorter here because of the evening service in summer, I withdrew till supper should be ready.
Now I have always had, as I think I have incidentally stated before, a certain peculiar pleasure in the surly aspects of nature. When I was a young man this took form in opposition and defiance; since I had begun to grow old the form had changed into a sense of safety. I welcomed such aspects, partly at least, because they roused my faith to look through and beyond the small region of human conditions in which alone the storm can be and blow, and thus induced a feeling like that of the child who lies in his warm crib and listens to the howling of one of these same storms outside the strong-built house which yet trembles at its fiercer onsets: the house is not in danger; or, if it be, that is his father's business, not his. Hence it came that, after supper, I put on my great-coat and travelling-cap, and went out into the ill-tempered night—speaking of it in its human symbolism.
I meant to have a stroll down to the breakwater, of which I have yet said little, but which was a favourite resort, both of myself and my children. At the further end of it, always covered at high water, was an outlying cluster of low rocks, in the heart of which the lord of the manor, a noble-hearted Christian gentleman of the old school, had constructed a bath of graduated depth—an open-air swimming-pool—the only really safe place for men who were swimmers to bathe in. Thither I was in the habit of taking my two little men every morning, and bathing with them, that I might develop the fish that was in them; for, as George Herbert says:
"Man is everything,And more: he is a tree, yet bears no fruit;A beast, yet is, or should be, more;"
and he might have gone on to say that he is, or should be, a fish as well.
It will seem strange to any reader who can recall the position of my Connie's room, that the nearest way to the breakwater should be through that room; but so it was. I mention the fact because I want my readers to understand a certain peculiarity of the room. By the side of the window which looked out upon the breakwater was a narrow door, apparently of a closet or cupboard, which communicated, however, with a narrow, curving, wood-built passage, leading into a little wooden hut, the walls of which were by no means impervious to the wind, for they were formed of outside-planks, with the bark still upon them. From this hut one or two little windows looked seaward, and a door led out on the bit of sward in which lay the flower-bed under Connie's window. From this spot again a door in the low wall and thick hedge led out on the downs, where a path wound along the cliffs that formed the side of the bay, till, descending under the storm-tower, it brought you to the root of the breakwater.
This mole stretched its long strong low back to a rock a good way out, breaking the force of the waves, and rendering the channel of a small river, that here flowed into the sea across the sands from the mouth of the canal, a refuge from the Atlantic. But it was a roadway often hard to reach. In fair weather even, the wind falling as the vessel rounded the point of the breakwater into the calm of the projecting headlands, the under-current would sometimes dash her helpless on the rocks. During all this heavenly summer there had been no thought or fear of any such disaster. The present night was a hint of what weather would yet come.
When I went into Connie's room, I found her lying in bed a very picture of peace. But my entrance destroyed the picture.
"Papa," she said, "why have you got your coat on? Surely you are not going out to-night. The wind is blowing dreadfully."
"Not very dreadfully, Connie. It blew much worse the night we found your baby."
"But it is very dark."
"I allow that; but there is a glimmer from the sea. I am only going on the breakwater for a few minutes. You know I like a stormy night quite as much as a fine one."
"I shall be miserable till you come home, papa."
"Nonsense, Connie. You don't think your father hasn't sense to take care of himself! Or rather, Connie, for I grant that is poor ground of comfort, you don't think I can go anywhere without my Father to take care of me?"
"But there is no occasion—is there, papa?"
"Do you think I should be better pleased with my boys if they shrunk from everything involving the least possibility of danger because there was no occasion for it? That is just the way to make cowards. And I am certain God would not like his children to indulge in such moods of self-preservation as that. He might well be ashamed of them. The fearful are far more likely to meet with accidents than the courageous. But really, Connie, I am almost ashamed of talking so. It is all your fault. There is positively no ground for apprehension, and I hope you won't spoil my walk by the thought that my foolish little girl is frightened."
"I will be good—indeed I will, papa," she said, holding up her mouth to kiss me.
I left her room, and went through the wooden passage into the bark hut. The wind roared about it, shook it, and pawed it, and sung and whistled in the chinks of the planks. I went out and shut the door. That moment the wind seized upon me, and I had to fight with it. When I got on the path leading along the edge of the downs, I felt something lighter than any feather fly in my face. When I put up my hand, I found my cheek wet. Again and again I was thus assailed, but when I got to the breakwater I found what it was. They were flakes of foam, bubbles worked up into little masses of adhering thousands, which the wind blew off the waters and across the downs, carrying some of them miles inland. When I reached the breakwater, and looked along its ridge through the darkness of the night, I was bewildered to see a whiteness lying here and there in a great patch upon its top. They were but accumulations of these foam-flakes, like soap-suds, lying so thick that I expected to have to wade through them, only they vanished at the touch of my feet. Till then I had almost believed it was snow I saw. On the edge of the waves, in quieter spots, they lay like yeast, foaming and working. Now and then a little rush of water from a higher wave swept over the top of the broad breakwater, as with head bowed sideways against the wind, I struggled along towards the rock at its end; but I said to myself, "The tide is falling fast, and salt water hurts nobody," and struggled on over the huge rough stones of the mighty heap, outside which the waves were white with wrath, inside which they had fallen asleep, only heaving with the memory of their late unrest. I reached the tall rock at length, climbed the rude stair leading up to the flagstaff, and looked abroad, if looking it could be called, into the thick dark. But the wind blew so strong on the top that I was glad to descend. Between me and the basin where yesterday morning I had bathed in still water and sunshine with my boys, rolled the deathly waves. I wandered on the rough narrow space yet uncovered, stumbling over the stones and the rocky points between which they lay, stood here and there half-meditating, and at length, finding a sheltered nook in a mass of rock, sat with the wind howling and the waves bursting around me. There I fell into a sort of brown study—almost a half-sleep.
But I had not sat long before I came broad awake, for I heard voices, low and earnest. One I recognised as Joe's voice. The other was a woman's. I could not tell what they said for some time, and therefore felt no immediate necessity for disclosing my proximity, but sat debating with myself whether I should speak to them or not. At length, in a lull of the wind, I heard the woman say—I could fancy with a sigh—
"I'm sure you'll du what is right, Joe. Don't 'e think o' me, Joe."
"It's just of you that I du think, Aggy. You know it ben't for my sake. Surely you know that?"
There was no answer for a moment. I was still doubting what I had best do—go away quietly or let them know I was there—when she spoke again. There was a momentary lull now in the noises of both wind and water, and I heard what she said well enough.
"It ben't for me to contradict you, Joe. But I don't think you be going to die. You be no worse than last year. Be you now, Joe?"
It flashed across me how once before, a stormy night and darkness had brought me close to a soul in agony. Then I was in agony myself; now the world was all fair and hopeful around me—the portals of the world beyond ever opening wider as I approached them, and letting out more of their glory to gladden the path to their threshold. But here were two souls straying in a mist which faith might roll away, and leave them walking in the light. The moment was come. I must speak.
"Joe!" I called out.
"Who's there?" he cried; and I heard him start to his feet.
"Only Mr. Walton. Where are you?"
"We can't be very far off," he answered, not in a tone of any pleasure at finding me so nigh.
I rose, and peering about through the darkness, found that they were a little higher up on the same rock by which I was sheltered.
"You mustn't think," I said, "that I have been eavesdropping. I had no idea anyone was near me till I heard your voices, and I did not hear a word till just the last sentence or two."
"I saw someone go up the Castle-rock," said Joe; "but I thought he was gone away again. It will be a lesson to me."
"I'm no tell-tale, Joe," I returned, as I scrambled up the rock. "You will have no cause to regret that I happened to overhear a little. I am sure, Joe, you will never say anything you need be ashamed of. But what I heard was sufficient to let me into the secret of your trouble. Will you let me talk to Joe, Agnes? I've been young myself, and, to tell the truth, I don't think I'm old yet."
"I am sure, sir," she answered, "you won't be hard on Joe and me. I don't suppose there be anything wrong in liking each other, though we can't be—married."
She spoke in a low tone, and her voice trembled very much; yet there was a certain womanly composure in her utterance. "I'm sure it's very bold of me to talk so," she added, "but Joe will tell you all about it."
I was close beside them now, and fancied I saw through the dusk the motion of her hand stealing into his.
"Well, Joe, this is just what I wanted," I said. "A woman can be braver than a big smith sometimes. Agnes has done her part. Now you do yours, and tell me all about it."
No response followed my adjuration. I must help him.
"I think I know how the matter lies, Joe. You think you are not going to live long, and that therefore you ought not to marry. Am I right?"
"Not far off it, sir," he answered.
"Now, Joe," I said, "can't we talk as friends about this matter? I have no right to intrude into your affairs—none in the least—except what friendship gives me. If you say I am not to talk about it, I shall be silent. To force advice upon you would be as impertinent as useless."
"It's all the same, I'm afraid, sir. My mind has been made up for a long time. What right have I to bring other people into trouble? But I take it kind of you, sir, though I mayn't look over-pleased. Agnes wants to hear your way of it. I'm agreeable."
This was not very encouraging. Still I thought it sufficient ground for proceeding.
"I suppose you will allow that the root of all Christian behaviour is the will of God?"
"Surely, sir."
"Is it not the will of God, then, that when a man and woman love each other, they should marry?"
"Certainly, sir—where there be no reasons against it."
"Of course. And you judge you see reason for not doing so, else you would?"
"I do see that a man should not bring a woman into trouble for the sake of being comfortable himself for the rest of a few weary days."
Agnes was sobbing gently behind her handkerchief. I knew how gladly she would be Joe's wife, if only to nurse him through his last illness.
"Not except it would make her comfortable too, I grant you, Joe. But listen to me. In the first place, you don't know, and you are not required to know, when you are going to die. In fact, you have nothing to do with it. Many a life has been injured by the constant expectation of death. It is life we have to do with, not death. The best preparation for the night is to work while the day lasts, diligently. The best preparation for death is life. Besides, I have known delicate people who have outlived all their strong relations, and been left alone in the earth—because they had possibly taken too much care of themselves. But marriage is God's will, and death is God's will, and you have no business to set the one over against, as antagonistic to, the other. For anything you know, the gladness and the peace of marriage may be the very means intended for your restoration to health and strength. I suspect your desire to marry, fighting against the fancy that you ought not to marry, has a good deal to do with the state of health in which you now find yourself. A man would get over many things if he were happy, that he cannot get over when he is miserable."
"But it's for Aggy. You forget that."
"I do not forget it. What right have you to seek for her another kind of welfare than you would have yourself? Are you to treat her as if she were worldly when you are not—to provide for her a comfort which yourself you would despise? Why should you not marry because you have to die soon?—if youarethus doomed, which to me is by no means clear. Why not have what happiness you may for the rest of your sojourn? If you find at the end of twenty years that here you are after all, you will be rather sorry you did not do as I say."
"And if I find myself dying at the end of six months'?"
"You will thank God for those six months. The whole thing, my dear fellow, is a want of faith in God. I do not doubt you think you are doing right, but, I repeat, the whole thing comes from want of faith in God. You will take things into your own hands, and order them after a preventive and self-protective fashion, lest God should have ordained the worst for you, which worst, after all, would be best met by doing his will without inquiry into the future; and which worst is no evil. Death is no more an evil than marriage is."
"But you don't see it as I do," persisted the blacksmith.
"Of course I don't. I think you see it as it is not."
He remained silent for a little. A shower of spray fell upon us. He started.
"What a wave!" he cried. "That spray came over the top of the rock. We shall have to run for it."
I fancied that he only wanted to avoid further conversation.
"There's no hurry," I said. "It was high water an hour and a half ago."
"You don't know this coast, sir," returned he, "or you wouldn't talk like that."
As he spoke he rose, and going from under the shelter of the rock, looked along.
"For God's sake, Aggy!" he cried in terror, "come at once. Every other wave be rushing across the breakwater as if it was on the level."
So saying, he hurried back, caught her by the hand, and began to draw her along.
"Hadn't we better stay where we are?" I suggested.
"If you can stand the night in the cold. But Aggy here is delicate; and I don't care about being out all night. It's not the tide, sir; it's a ground swell—from a storm somewhere out at sea. That never asks no questions about tide or no tide."
"Come along, then," I said. "But just wait one minute more. It is better to be ready for the worst."
For I remembered that the day before I had seen a crowbar lying among the stones, and I thought it might be useful. In a moment or two I had found it, and returning, gave it to Joe. Then I took the girl's disengaged hand. She thanked me in a voice perfectly calm and firm. Joe took the bar in haste, and drew Agnes towards the breakwater.
Any real thought of danger had not yet crossed my mind. But when I looked along the outstretched back of the mole, and saw a dim sheet of white sweep across it, I felt that there was ground for his anxiety, and prepared myself for a struggle.
"Do you know what to do with the crowbar, Joe?" I said, grasping my own stout oak-stick more firmly.
"Perfectly," answered Joe. "To stick between the stones and hold on. We must watch our time between the waves."
"You take the command, then, Joe," I returned. "You see better than I do, and you know the ways of that raging wild beast there better than I do. I will obey orders—one of which, no doubt, will be, not for wind or sea to lose hold of Agnes—eh, Joe?"
Joe gave a grim enough laugh in reply, and we started, he carrying his crowbar in his right hand towards the advancing sea, and I my oak-stick in my left towards the still water within.
"Quick march!" said Joe, and away we went out on the breakwater.
Now the back of the breakwater was very rugged, for it was formed of huge stones, with wide gaps between, where the waters had washed out the cement, and worn their edges. But what impeded our progress secured our safety.
"Halt!" cried Joe, when we were yet but a few yards beyond the shelter of the rocks. "There's a topper coming."
We halted at the word of command, as a huge wave, with combing crest, rushed against the far out-sloping base of the mole, and flung its heavy top right over the middle of the mass, a score or two of yards in front of us.
"Now for it!" cried Joe. "Run!"
We did run. In my mind there was just sense enough of danger to add to the pleasure of the excitement. I did not know how much danger there was. Over the rough worn stones we sped stumbling.
"Halt!" cried the smith once more, and we did halt; but this time, as it turned out, in the middle front of the coming danger.
"God be with us!" I exclaimed, when the huge billow showed itself through the night, rushing towards the mole. The smith stuck his crowbar between two great stones. To this he held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes's waist. I, too, had got my oak firmly fixed, held on with one hand, and threw the other arm round Agnes. It took but a moment.
"Now then!" cried Joe. "Here she comes! Hold on, sir. Hold on, Aggy!"
But when I saw the height of the water, as it rushed on us up the sloping side of the mound, I cried out in my turn, "Down, Joe! Down on your face, and let it over us easy! Down Agnes!"
They obeyed. We threw ourselves across the breakwater, with our heads to the coming foe, and I grasped my stick close to the stones with all the power of a hand that was then strong. Over us burst the mighty wave, floating us up from the stones where we lay. But we held on, the wave passed, and we sprung gasping to our feet.
"Now, now!" cried Joe and I together, and, heavy as we were, with the water pouring from us, we flew across the remainder of the heap, and arrived, panting and safe, at the other end, ere one wave more had swept the surface. The moment we were in safety we turned and looked back over the danger we had traversed. It was to see a huge billow sweep the breakwater from end to end. We looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
"I believe, sir," said Joe at length, with slow and solemn speech, "if you hadn't taken the command at that moment we should all have been lost."
"It seems likely enough, when I look back on it. For one thing, I was not sure that my stick would stand, so I thought I had better grasp it low down."
"We were awfully near death," said Joe.
"Nearer than you thought, Joe; and yet we escaped it. Things don't go all as we fancy, you see. Faith is as essential to manhood as foresight—believe me, Joe. It is very absurd to trust God for the future, and not trust him for the present. The man who is not anxious is the man most likely to do the right thing. He is cool and collected and ready. Our Lord therefore told his disciples that when they should be brought before kings and rulers, they were to take no thought what answer they should make, for it would be given them when the time came."
We were climbing the steep path up to the downs. Neither of my companions spoke.
"You have escaped one death together," I said at length: "dare another."
Still neither of them returned an answer. When we came near the parsonage, I said, "Now, Joe, you must go in and get to bed at once. I will take Agnes home. You can trust me not to say anything against you?"
Joe laughed rather hoarsely, and replied: "As you please, sir. Good night, Aggie. Mind you get to bed as fast as you can."
When I returned from giving Agnes over to her parents, I made haste to change my clothes, and put on my warm dressing-gown. I may as well mention at once, that not one of us was the worse for our ducking. I then went up to Connie's room.
"Here I am, you see, Connie, quite safe."
"I've been lying listening to every blast of wind since you went out, papa. But all I could do was to trust in God."
"Do you call thatall, Connie? Believe me, there is more power in that than any human being knows the tenth part of yet. It is indeedall."
I said no more then. I told my wife about it that night, but we were well into another month before I told Connie.
When I left her, I went to Joe's room to see how he was, and found him having some gruel. I sat down on the edge of his bed, and said,
"Well, Joe, this is better than under water. I hope you won't be the worse for it."
"I don't much care what comes of me, sir. It will be all over soon."
"But you ought to care what comes of you, Joe. I will tell you why. You are an instrument out of which ought to come praise to God, and, therefore, you ought to care for the instrument."
"That way, yes, sir, I ought."
"And you have no business to be like some children who say, 'Mamma won't give me so and so,' instead of asking her to give it them."
"I see what you mean, sir. But really you put me out before the young woman. I couldn't say before her what I meant. Suppose, you know, sir, there was to come a family. It might be, you know."
"Of course. What else would you have?"
"But if I was to die, where would she be then?"
"In God's hands; just as she is now."
"But I ought to take care that she is not left with a burden like that to provide for."
"O, Joe! how little you know a woman's heart! It would just be the greatest comfort she could have for losing you—that's all. Many a woman has married a man she did not care enough for, just that she might have a child of her own to let out her heart upon. I don't say that is right, you know. Such love cannot be perfect. A woman ought to love her child because it is her husband's more than because it is her own, and because it is God's more than either's. I saw in the papers the other day, that a woman was brought before the Recorder of London for stealing a baby, when the judge himself said that there was no imaginable motive for her action but a motherly passion to possess the child. It is the need of a child that makes so many women take to poor miserable, broken-nosed lap-dogs; for they are self-indulgent, and cannot face the troubles and dangers of adopting a child. They would if they might get one of a good family, or from a respectable home; but they dare not take an orphan out of the dirt, lest it should spoil their silken chairs. But that has nothing to do with our argument. What I mean is this, that if Agnes really loves you, as no one can look in her face and doubt, she will be far happier if you leave her a child—yes, she will be happier if you only leave her your name for hers—than if you died without calling her your wife."
I took Joe's basin from him, and he lay down. He turned his face to the wall. I waited a moment, but finding him silent, bade him good-night, and left the room.
A month after, I married them.
It was some time before we got the bells to work to our mind, but at last we succeeded. The worst of it was to get the cranks, which at first required strong pressure on the keys, to work easily enough. But neither Joe nor his cousin spared any pains to perfect the attempt, and, as I say, at length we succeeded. I took Wynnie down to the instrument and made her try whether she could not do something, and she succeeded in making the old tower discourse loudly and eloquently.
By this time the thanksgiving for the harvest was at hand: on the morning of that first of all would I summon the folk to their prayers with the sound of the full peal. And I wrote a little hymn of praise to the God of the harvest, modelling it to one of the oldest tunes in that part of the country, and I had it printed on slips of paper and laid plentifully on the benches. What with the calling of the bells, like voices in the highway, and the solemn meditation of the organ within to bear aloft the thoughts of those who heard, and came to the prayer and thanksgiving in common, and the message which God had given me to utter to them, I hoped that we should indeed keep holiday.
Wynnie summoned the parish with the hundredth psalm pealed from aloft, dropping from the airy regions of the tower on village and hamlet and cottage, calling aloud—for who could dissociate the words from the music, though the words are in the Scotch psalms?—written none the less by an Englishman, however English wits may amuse themselves with laughing at their quaintness—calling aloud,
"All people that on earth do dwellSing to the Lord with cheerful voice;Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell—Come ye before him and rejoice."
Then we sang the psalm before the communion service, making bold in the name of the Lord to serve him withmirthas in the old version, and not with thefearwith which some editor, weak in faith, has presumed to alter the line. Then before the sermon we sang the hymn I had prepared—a proceeding justifiable by many an example in the history of the church while she was not only able to number singers amongst her clergy, but those singers were capable of influencing the whole heart and judgment of the nation with their songs. Ethelwyn played the organ. The song I had prepared was this:
"We praise the Life of All;From buried seeds so smallWho makes the ordered ranks of autumn stand;Who stores the cornIn rick and barnTo feed the winter of the land.
We praise the Life of Light!Who from the brooding nightDraws out the morning holy, calm, and grand;Veils up the moon,Sends out the sun,To glad the face of all the land.
We praise the Life of Work,Who from sleep's lonely darkLeads forth his children to arise and stand,Then go their way,The live-long day,To trust and labour in the land.
We praise the Life of Good,Who breaks sin's lazy mood,Toilsomely ploughing up the fruitless sand.The furrowed wasteThey leave, and hasteHome, home, to till their Father's land.
We praise the Life of Life,Who in this soil of strifeCasts us at birth, like seed from sower's hand;To die and soLike corn to growA golden harvest in his land."
After we had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect." And this is something like what I said to them:
"The world, my friends, is full of resurrections, and it is not always of the same resurrection that St. Paul speaks. Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it—the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life. That you may feel that the sunrise is a resurrection—the word resurrection just means a rising again—I will read you a little description of it from a sermon by a great writer and great preacher called Jeremy Taylor. Listen. 'But as when the sun approaching towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a man's reason and his life.' Is not this a resurrection of the day out of the night? Or hear how Milton makes his Adam and Eve praise God in the morning,—
'Ye mists and exhalations that now riseFrom hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray,Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,In honour to the world's great Author rise,Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,Rising or falling still advance his praise.'
But it is yet more of a resurrection to you. Think of your own condition through the night and in the morning. You die, as it were, every night. The death of darkness comes down over the earth; but a deeper death, the death of sleep, descends on you. A power overshadows you; your eyelids close, you cannot keep them open if you would; your limbs lie moveless; the day is gone; your whole life is gone; you have forgotten everything; an evil man might come and do with your goods as he pleased; you are helpless. But the God of the Resurrection is awake all the time, watching his sleeping men and women, even as a mother who watches her sleeping baby, only with larger eyes and more full of love than hers; and so, you know not how, all at once you know that you are what you are; that there is a world that wants you outside of you, and a God that wants you inside of you; you rise from the death of sleep, not by your own power, for you knew nothing about it; God put his hand over your eyes, and you were dead; he lifted his hand and breathed light on you and you rose from the dead, thanked the God who raised you up, and went forth to do your work. From darkness to light; from blindness to seeing; from knowing nothing to looking abroad on the mighty world; from helpless submission to willing obedience,—is not this a resurrection indeed? That St. Paul saw it to be such may be shown from his using the two things with the same meaning when he says, 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' No doubt he meant a great deal more. No man who understands what he is speaking about can well mean only one thing at a time.
"But to return to the resurrections we see around us in nature. Look at the death that falls upon the world in winter. And look how it revives when the sun draws near enough in the spring to wile the life in it once more out of its grave. See how the pale, meek snowdrops come up with their bowed heads, as if full of the memory of the fierce winds they encountered last spring, and yet ready in the strength of their weakness to encounter them again. Up comes the crocus, bringing its gold safe from the dark of its colourless grave into the light of its parent gold. Primroses, and anemones, and blue-bells, and a thousand other children of the spring, hear the resurrection-trumpet of the wind from the west and south, obey, and leave their graves behind to breathe the air of the sweet heavens. Up and up they come till the year is glorious with the rose and the lily, till the trees are not only clothed upon with new garments of loveliest green, but the fruit-tree bringeth forth its fruit, and the little children of men are made glad with apples, and cherries, and hazel-nuts. The earth laughs out in green and gold. The sky shares in the grand resurrection. The garments of its mourning, wherewith it made men sad, its clouds of snow and hail and stormy vapours, are swept away, have sunk indeed to the earth, and are now humbly feeding the roots of the flowers whose dead stalks they beat upon all the winter long. Instead, the sky has put on the garments of praise. Her blue, coloured after the sapphire-floor on which stands the throne of him who is the Resurrection and the Life, is dashed and glorified with the pure white of sailing clouds, and at morning and evening prayer, puts on colours in which the human heart drowns itself with delight—green and gold and purple and rose. Even the icebergs floating about in the lonely summer seas of the north are flashing all the glories of the rainbow. But, indeed, is not this whole world itself a monument of the Resurrection? The earth was without form and void. The wind of God moved on the face of the waters, and up arose this fair world. Darkness was on the face of the deep: God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.
"In the animal world as well, you behold the goings of the Resurrection. Plainest of all, look at the story of the butterfly—so plain that the pagan Greeks called it and the soul by one name—Psyche. Psyche meant with them a butterfly or the soul, either. Look how the creeping thing, ugly to our eyes, so that we can hardly handle it without a shudder, finding itself growing sick with age, straightway falls a spinning and weaving at its own shroud, coffin, and grave, all in one—to prepare, in fact, for its resurrection; for it is for the sake of the resurrection that death exists. Patiently it spins its strength, but not its life, away, folds itself up decently, that its body may rest in quiet till the new body is formed within it; and at length when the appointed hour has arrived, out of the body of this crawling thing breaks forth the winged splendour of the butterfly—not the same body—a new one built out of the ruins of the old—even as St. Paul tells us that it is not the same bodywehave in the resurrection, but a nobler body like ourselves, with all the imperfect and evil thing taken away. No more creeping for the butterfly; wings of splendour now. Neither yet has it lost the feet wherewith to alight on all that is lovely and sweet. Think of it—up from the toilsome journey over the low ground, exposed to the foot of every passer-by, destroying the lovely leaves upon which it fed, and the fruit which they should shelter, up to the path at will through the air, and a gathering of food which hurts not the source of it, a food which is but as a tribute from the loveliness of the flowers to the yet higher loveliness of the flower-angel: is not this a resurrection? Its children too shall pass through the same process, to wing the air of a summer noon, and rejoice in the ethereal and the pure.
"To return yet again from the human thoughts suggested by the symbol of the butterfly"—
Here let me pause for a moment—and there was a corresponding pause, though but momentary, in the sermon as I spoke it—to mention a curious, and to me at the moment an interesting fact. At this point of my address, I caught sight of a white butterfly, a belated one, flitting about the church. Absorbed for a moment, my eye wandered after it. It was near the bench where my own people sat, and, for one flash of thought, I longed that the butterfly would alight on my Wynnie, for I was more anxious about her resurrection at the time than about anything else. But the butterfly would not. And then I told myself that God would, and that the butterfly was only the symbol of a grand truth, and of no private interpretation, to make which of it was both selfishness and superstition. But all this passed in a flash, and I resumed my discourse.
—"I come now naturally to speak of what we commonly call the Resurrection. Some say: 'How can the same dust be raised again, when it may be scattered to the winds of heaven?' It is a question I hardly care to answer. The mere difficulty can in reason stand for nothing with God; but the apparent worthlessness of the supposition renders the question uninteresting to me. What is of import is, that I should stand clothed upon, with a body which ismybody because it serves my ends, justifies my consciousness of identity by being, in all that was good in it, like that which I had before, while now it is tenfold capable of expressing the thoughts and feelings that move within me. How can I care whether the atoms that form a certain inch of bone should be the same as those which formed that bone when I died? All my life-time I never felt or thought of the existence of such a bone! On the other hand, I object to having the same worn muscles, the same shrivelled skin with which I may happen to die. Why give me the same body as that? Why not rather my youthful body, which was strong, and facile, and capable? The matter in the muscle of my arm at death would not serve to make half the muscle I had when young. But I thank God that St. Paul says it willnotbe the same body. That body dies—up springs another body. I suspect myself that those are right who say that this body being the seed, the moment it dies in the soil of this world, that moment is the resurrection of the new body. The life in it rises out of it in a new body. This is not after it is put in the mere earth; for it is dead then, and the germ of life gone out of it. If a seed rots, no new body comes of it. The seed dies into a new life, and so does man. Dying and rotting are two very different things.—But I am not sure by any means. As I say, the whole question is rather uninteresting to me. What do I care about my old clothes after I have done with them? What is it to me to know what becomes of an old coat or an old pulpit gown? I have no such clinging to the flesh. It seems to me that people believe their bodies to be themselves, and are therefore very anxious about them—and no wonder then. Enough for me that I shall have eyes to see my friends, a face that they shall know me by, and a mouth to praise God withal. I leave the matter with one remark, that I am well content to rise as Jesus rose, however that was. For me the will of God is so good that I would rather have his will done than my own choice given me.
"But I now come to the last, because infinitely the most important part of my subject—the resurrection for the sake of which all the other resurrections exist—the resurrection unto Life. This is the one of which St. Paul speaks in my text. This is the one I am most anxious—indeed, the only one I am anxious to set forth, and impress upon you.
"Think, then, of all the deaths you know; the death of the night, when the sun is gone, when friend says not a word to friend, but both lie drowned and parted in the sea of sleep; the death of the year, when winter lies heavy on the graves of the children of summer, when the leafless trees moan in the blasts from the ocean, when the beasts even look dull and oppressed, when the children go about shivering with cold, when the poor and improvident are miserable with suffering or think of such a death of disease as befalls us at times, when the man who says, 'Would God it were morning!' changes but his word, and not his tune, when the morning comes, crying, 'Would God it were evening!' when what life is left is known to us only by suffering, and hope is amongst the things that were once and are no more—think of all these, think of them all together, and you will have but the dimmest, faintest picture of the death from which the resurrection of which I have now to speak, is the rising. I shrink from the attempt, knowing how weak words are to set forththedeath, set forththeresurrection. Were I to sit down to yonder organ, and crash out the most horrible dissonances that ever took shape in sound, I should give you but a weak figure of this death; were I capable of drawing from many a row of pipes an exhalation of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, such as Milton himself could have invaded our ears withal, I could give you but a faint figure of this resurrection. Nevertheless, I must try what I can do in my own way.