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THE MINISTER'S GARDEN.
Up and down the garden paced the pastor, stung by the gadflies of debt.
If he were in London he could sell his watch and seals; he had a ring
somewhere, too--an antique, worth what now seemed a good deal; but his
wife had given him both. Besides, it would cost so much to go to London,
and he had no money. Mr. Drew, doubtless, would lend him what he wanted,
but he could not bring himself to ask him. If he parted with them in
Glaston, they would be put in the watchmaker's window, and that would be
a scandal--with the Baptists making head in the very next street! For,
notwithstanding the heartless way in which the Congregationalists had
treated him, theirs was the cause of scriptural Christianity, and it
made him shudder to think of bringing the smallest discredit upon the
denomination. The church-butcher was indeed a worse terror to him than
Apollyon had been to Christian, for it seemed to his faithlessness that
not even the weapon of All-prayer was equal to his discomfiture; nothing
could render him harmless but the payment of his bill. He began to look
back with something like horror upon the sermons he had preached on
honesty; for how would his inability to pay his debts appear in the eyes
of those who had heard them? Oh! why had he not paid for every thing as
they had it? Then when the time came that he could not pay, they would
only have had to go without, whereas now, there was the bill louring at
the back of the want!
When Miss Drake returned from the chapel, she found her father leaning
on the sun-dial, where she had left him. To all appearance he had not
moved. He knew her step but did not stir.
"Father!" she said.
"It is a hard thing, my child," he responded, still without moving,
"when the valley of Humiliation comes next the river Death, and no land
of Beulah between! I had my good things in my youth, and now I have my
evil things."
She laid her hand on his shoulder lovingly, tenderly, worshipfully, but
did not speak.
"As you see me now, my Dorothy, my God's-gift, you would hardly believe
your father was once a young and popular preacher, ha, ha! Fool that I
was! I thought they prized my preaching, and loved me for what I taught
them. I thought I was somebody! With shame I confess it! Who were they,
or what was their judgment, to fool me in my own concerning myself!
Their praise was indeed a fit rock for me to build my shame upon."
"But, father dear, what is even a sin when it is repented of?"
"A shame forever, my child. Our Lord did not cast out even an apostle
for his conceit and self-sufficiency, but he let him fall."
"He has not let you fall, father?" said Dorothy, with tearful eyes.
"He is bringing my gray hairs with sorrow and shame to the grave, my
child."
"Why, father!" cried the girl, shocked, as she well might be, at his
words, "what have I done to make you say that?"
"Done, my darling! you done? You have done nothing but righteousness
ever since you could do any thing! You have been like a mother to your
old father. It is that bill! that horrid butcher's bill!"
Dorothy burst out laughing through her dismay, and wept and laughed
together for more than a minute ere she could recover herself.
"Father! you dear father! you're too good to live! Why, there are forks
and spoons enough in the house to pay that paltry bill!--not to mention
the cream-jug which is, and the teapot which we thought was silver,
because Lady Sykes gave it us. Why didn't you tell me what was troubling
you, father dear?"
"I can't bear--I never could bear to owe money. I asked the man for
his bill some time ago. I could have paid it then, though it wouldn't
have left me a pound. The moment I looked at it, I felt as if the Lord
had forsaken me. It is easy for you to bear; you are not the one
accountable. I am. And if the pawnbroker or the silver-smith does stand
between me and absolute dishonesty, yet to find myself in such a
miserable condition, with next to nothing between us and the workhouse,
may well make me doubt whether I have been a true servant of the Lord,
for surely such shall never be ashamed! During these last days the enemy
has even dared to tempt me with the question, whether after all, these
unbelievers may not be right, and the God that ruleth in the earth a
mere projection of what the conscience and heart bribe the imagination
to construct for them!"
"I wouldn't think that before I was driven to it, father," said Dorothy,
scarcely knowing what she said, for his doubt shot a poisoned arrow of
despair into the very heart of her heart.
He, never doubting the security of his child's faith, had no slightest
suspicion into what a sore spot his words had carried torture. He did
not know that the genius of doubt--shall I call him angel or demon?--had
knocked at her door, had called through her window; that words dropped
by Faber, indicating that science was against all idea of a God, and the
confidence of their tone, had conjured up in her bosom hollow fears,
faint dismays, and stinging questions. Ready to trust, and incapable of
arrogance, it was hard for her to imagine how a man like Mr. Faber,
upright and kind and self-denying, could say such things if he did not
know them true. The very word science appeared to carry an awful
authority. She did not understand that it was only because science had
never come closer to Him than the mere sight of the fringe of the
outermost folds of the tabernacle of His presence, that her worshipers
dared assert there was no God. She did not perceive that nothing ever
science could find, could possibly be the God of men; that science is
only the human reflex of truth, and that truth itself can not be
measured by what of it is reflected from the mirror of the
understanding. She did not see that no incapacity of science to find
God, even touched the matter of honest men's belief that He made His
dwelling with the humble and contrite. Nothing she had learned from her
father either provided her with reply, or gave hope of finding argument
of discomfiture; nothing of all that went on at chapel or church seemed
to have any thing to do with the questions that presented themselves.
Such a rough shaking of so-called faith, has been of endless service to
many, chiefly by exposing the insecurity of all foundations of belief,
save that which is discovered in digging with the spade of obedience.
Well indeed is it for all honest souls to be thus shaken, who have been
building upon doctrines concerning Christ, upon faith, upon experiences,
upon any thing but Christ Himself, as revealed by Himself and His spirit
to all who obey Him, and so revealing the Father--a doctrine just as
foolish as the rest to men like Faber, but the power of God and the
wisdom of God to such who know themselves lifted out of darkness and an
ever-present sense of something wrong--if it be only into twilight and
hope.
Dorothy was a gift of God, and the trouble that gnawed at her heart she
would not let out to gnaw at her father's.
"There's Ducky come to call us to dinner," she said, and rising, went to
meet her.
"Dinner!" groaned Mr. Drake, and would have remained where he was. But
for Dorothy's sake he rose and followed her, feeling almost like a
repentant thief who had stolen the meal.
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