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FOLLOW IT, and will find some day that Satan had not forgotten how
to dress like an angel of light. Nay, he can be more cunning with
the demands of the time. We are clever: he will be cleverer. Why
should he dress and not speak like an angel of light? Why should he
not give good advice if that will help to withdraw people by degrees
from regarding the source of all good? He knows well enough that
good advice goes for little, but that what fills the heart and mind
goes for much. What religion is there in being convinced of a future
state? Is that to worship God? It is no more religion than the
belief that the sun will rise to-morrow is religion. It may be a
source of happiness to those who could not believe it before, but it
is not religion. Where religion comes that will certainly be
likewise, but the one is not the other. The devil can afford a kind
of conviction of that. It costs him little. But to believe that the
spirits of the departed are the mediators between God and us is
essential paganism--to call it nothing worse; and a bad enough name
too since Christ has come and we have heard and seen the
only-begotten of the Father. Thus the instinctive desire for the
wonderful, the need we have of a revelation from above us, denied
its proper food and nourishment, turns in its hunger to feed upon
garbage. As a devout German says--I do not quote him quite correctly
--"Where God rules not, demons will." Let us once see with our
spiritual eyes the Wonderful, the Counsellor, and surely we shall
not turn from Him to seek elsewhere the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge.
Those who sympathize with my feeling in regard to this form of the
materialism of our day, will forgive this divergence. I submit to
the artistic blame of such as do not, and return to my story.
Dorothy was there three or four years. I said I would be brief. She
and the clergyman's son fell in love with each other. The mother
heard of it, and sent for her home. She had other views for her. Of
course, in such eyes, a daughter's FANCY was, irrespective of its
object altogether, a thing to be sneered at. But she found, to her
fierce disdain, that she had not been able to keep all her beloved
obstinacy to herself: she had transmitted a portion of it to her
daughter. But in her it was combined with noble qualities, and,
ceasing to be the evil thing it was in her mother, became an
honourable firmness, rendering her able to withstand her mother's
stormy importunities. Thus Nature had begun to right herself--the
right in the daughter turning to meet and defy the wrong in the
mother, and that in the same strength of character which the mother
had misused for evil and selfish ends. And thus the bad breed was
broken. She was and would be true to her lover. The consequent
SCENES were dreadful. The spirit but not the will of the girl was
all but broken. She felt that she could not sustain the strife long.
By some means, unknown to my informant, her lover contrived to
communicate with her. He had, through means of relations who had
great influence with Government, procured a good appointment in
India, whither he must sail within a month. The end was that she
left her mother's house. Mr Gladwyn was waiting for her near, and
conducted her to his father's, who had constantly refused to aid Mrs
Oldcastle by interfering in the matter. They were married next day
by the clergyman of a neighbouring parish. But almost immediately
she was taken so ill, that it was impossible for her to accompany
her husband, and she was compelled to remain behind at the rectory,
hoping to join him the following year.
Before the time arrived, she gave birth to my little friend Judy;
and her departure was again delayed by a return of her old
complaint, probably the early stages of the disease of which she
died. Then, just as she was about to set sail for India, news
arrived that Mr Gladwyn had had a sunstroke, and would have leave of
absence and come home as soon as he was able to be moved; so that
instead of going out to join him, she must wait for him where she
was. His mother had been dead for some time. His father, an elderly
man of indolent habits, was found dead in his chair one Sunday
morning soon after the news had arrived of the illness of his son,
to whom he was deeply attached. And so the poor young creature was
left alone with her child, without money, and in weak health. The
old man left nothing behind him but his furniture and books. And
nothing could be done in arranging his affairs till the arrival of
his son, of whom the last accounts had been that he was slowly
recovering. In the meantime his wife was in want of money, without a
friend to whom she could apply. I presume that one of the few
parishioners who visited at the rectory had written to acquaint Mrs
Oldcastle with the condition in which her daughter was left, for,
influenced by motives of which I dare not take upon me to conjecture
an analysis, she wrote, offering her daughter all that she required
in her old home. Whether she fore-intended her following conduct, or
old habit returned with the return of her daughter, I cannot tell;
but she had not been more than a few days in the house before she
began to tyrannise over her, as in old times, and although Mrs
Gladwyn's health, now always weak, was evidently failing in
consequence, she either did not see the cause, or could not restrain
her evil impulses. At length the news arrived of Mr Gladwyn's
departure for home. Perhaps then for the first time the temptation
entered her mind to take her revenge upon him, by making her
daughter's illness a pretext for refusing him admission to her
presence. She told her she should not see him till she was better,
for that it would make her worse; persisted in her resolution after
his arrival; and effected, by the help of Sarah, that he should not
gain admittance to the house, keeping all the doors locked except
one. It was only by the connivance of Ethelwyn, then a girl about
fifteen, that he was admitted by the underground way, of which she
unlocked the upper door for his entrance. She had then guided him as
far as she dared, and directed him the rest of the way to his wife's
room.
My reader will now understand how it came about in the process of
writing these my recollections, that I have given such a long
chapter chiefly to that one evening spent with my good friend, Dr
Duncan; for he will see, as I have said, that what he told me opened
up a good deal to me.
I had very little time for the privacy of the church that night.
Dark as it was, however, I went in before I went home: I had the key
of the vestry-door always in my pocket. I groped my way into the
pulpit, and sat down in the darkness, and thought. Nor did my
personal interest in Dr Duncan's story make me forget poor Catherine
Weir and the terrible sore in her heart, the sore of
unforgivingness. And I saw that of herself she would not, could not,
forgive to all eternity; that all the pains of hell could not make
her forgive, for that it was a divine glory to forgive, and must
come from God. And thinking of Mrs Oldcastle, I saw that in
ourselves we could be sure of no safety, not from the worst and
vilest sins; for who could tell how he might not stupify himself by
degrees, and by one action after another, each a little worse than
the former, till the very fires of Sinai would not flash into eyes
blinded with the incense arising to the golden calf of his worship?
A man may come to worship a devil without knowing it. Only by being
filled with a higher spirit than our own, which, having caused our
spirits, is one with our spirits, and is in them the present life
principle, are we or can we be safe from this eternal death of our
being. This spirit was fighting the evil spirit in Catherine Weir:
how was I to urge her to give ear to the good? If will would but
side with God, the forces of self, deserted by their leader, must
soon quit the field; and the woman--the kingdom within her no longer
torn by conflicting forces--would sit quiet at the feet of the
Master, reposing in that rest which He offered to those who could
come to Him. Might she not be roused to utter one feeble cry to God
for help? That would be one step towards the forgiveness of others.
To ask something for herself would be a great advance in such a
proud nature as hers. And to ask good heartily is the very next step
to giving good heartily.
Many thoughts such as these passed through my mind, chiefly
associated with her. For I could not think how to think about Mrs
Oldcastle yet. And the old church gloomed about me all the time. And
I kept lifting up my heart to the God who had cared to make me, and
then drew me to be a preacher to my fellows, and had surely
something to give me to say to them; for did He not choose so to
work by the foolishness of preaching?--Might not my humble
ignorance work His will, though my wrath could not work His
righteousness? And I descended from the pulpit thinking with myself,
"Let Him do as He will. Here I am. I will say what I see: let Him
make it good."
And the next morning, I spoke about the words of our Lord:
"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to them that ask Him!"
And I looked to see. And there Catherine Weir sat, looking me in the
face.
There likewise sat Mrs Oldcastle, looking me in the face too.
And Judy sat there, also looking me in the face, as serious as man
could wish grown woman to look.
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