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ACCOUNTABLE FOR me, who hath glorified me with his own image--in my
soul, gentlemen, sadly disfigured as it is in my body!--shall I say
that THAT is to do anything for God? Was I serving my father when I
ate the dinner he provided for me? Am I serving my God when I eat
his bread and drink his wine?"
"But," said Drew, "is not God pleased that a man should pour out his
soul to him?"
"Yes, doubtless; but what would you think of a child who said, 'I am
very useful to my father, for when I ask him for anything, or tell
him I love him, it gives him--oh, such pleasure!'?"
"I should say he was an unendurable prig. Better he had to be
whipped for stealing!" said the curate.
"There would be more hope of his future," returned Polwarth. "--Is
the child," he continued, "who sits by his father's knee and looks
up into his father's face, SERVING that father, because the heart of
the father delights to look down upon his child? And shall the
moment of my deepest repose and bliss, the moment when I serve
myself with the very life of the universe, be called a serving of my
God? It is communion with God; he holds it with me, else never could
I hold it with him. I am as the foam-froth upon his infinite ocean,
but of the water of the ocean is the bubble on its waves."
Not the eyes only, but the whole face of the man, which had grown of
a pure, semi-transparent whiteness, appeared to Wingfold to emit
light.
"When my child would serve me," he went on," he spies out some need
I have, springs from his seat at my knee, finds that which will meet
my necessity, and is my eager, happy servant, of consequence in his
own eyes inasmuch as he has done something for his father. His seat
by my knee is love, delight, well-being, peace--not service, however
pleasing in my eyes.--'Why do you seat yourself at my knee, my son?'
'To please you, father.' 'Nay then, my son! go from me, and come
again when it shall be to please thyself.'--'Why do you cling to my
chair, my daughter? 'Because I want to be near you, father. It makes
me so happy!' 'Come nearer still--come to my bosom, my child, and be
yet happier.'--Talk not of public worship as divine service; it is a
mockery. Search the prophets and you will find the observances,
fasts and sacrifices and solemn feasts, of the temple by them
regarded with loathing and scorn, just because by the people they
were regarded as DIVINE SERVICE."
"But," said Mr. Drew, while Wingfold turned towards him with some
anxiety lest he should break the mood of the little prophet, "I
can't help thinking I have you! for how are poor creatures like
us--weak, blundering creatures, sometimes most awkward when
best-intentioned--how are we to minister to a perfect God--perfect
in wisdom, strength, and everything--of whom Paul says that he is
not worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything? I
cannot help thinking that you are fighting merely with a word.
Certainly, if the phrase ever was used in that sense, there is no
meaning of the kind attached to it now: it stands merely for the
forms of public worship."
"Were there no such thing as Divine Service in the true sense of the
word, then, indeed it would scarcely be worth while to quarrel with
its misapplication. But I assert that true and genuine service may
be rendered to the living God; and, for the development of the
divine nature in man, it is necessary that he should do something
for God. Nor is it hard to discover how; for God is in every
creature that he has made, and in their needs he is needy, and in
all their afflictions he is afflicted. Therefore Jesus says that
whatever is done to one of his little ones is done to him. And if
the soul of a man be the temple of the Spirit, then is the place of
that man's labour, his shop, his counting-house, his laboratory, the
temple of Jesus Christ, where the spirit of the man is incarnate in
work.--Mr. Drew!"--Here the gate-keeper stood up, and held out both
his hands, palms upward, towards the draper on the other side of the
table.--"Mr. Drew! your shop is the temple of your service where the
Lord Christ, the only image of the Father is, or ought to be
throned; your counter is, or ought to be his altar; and everything
thereon laid, with intent of doing as well as you can for your
neighbour, in the name of THE man Christ Jesus, is a true sacrifice
offered to Him, a service done to the eternal creating Love of the
universe."
The little prophet's head as he stood, did not reach the level of
the draper's as he sat, but at this Drew dropped his head on his
hands upon the table, as if bowed down by a weight of thought and
feeling and worship.
"I say not," Polwarth went on, "that so doing you will grow a rich
man, but I say that so doing you will be saved from growing too
rich, and that you will be a fellow-worker with God for the
salvation of his world."
"I must live; I cannot give my goods away!" murmured Mr. Drew,
thinkingly, as one that sought enlightenment.
"That would be to go direct against the order of his world, "said
Polwarth." No; a harder task is yours, Mr. Drew--to make your
business a gain to you, and at the same time to be not only what is
commonly counted just, but interested in, and careful of, and caring
for your neighbour, as a servant of the God of bounty who giveth to
all men liberally. Your calling is to do the best for your neighbour
that you reasonably can."
"But who is to fix what is reasonable?" asked Drew.
"The man himself, thinking in the presence of Jesus Christ. There is
a holy moderation which is of God."
"There won't be many fortunes--great fortunes--made after that rule,
Mr. Polwarth."
"Very few."
"Then do you say that no great fortunes have been righteously made?"
"If RIGHTEOUSLY means AFTER THE FASHION OF JESUS CHRIST.--But I will
not judge: that is for the God-enlightened conscience of the man
himself to do--not for his neighbour's. Why should I be judged by
another man's conscience?--But you see, Mr. Drew,--and this is what
I was driving at--that you have it in your power to SERVE God,
through the needs of his children, all the working day, from morning
to night, so long as there is a customer in your shop."
"I do think you are right, sir," said the linen-draper. "I had a
glimpse of the same thing the other night myself. And yet it seems
as if you spoke of a purely ideal state--one that could not be
realised in this world."
"Purely ideal or not, one thing is certain: it will never be reached
by one who is so indifferent to it as to believe it impossible.
Whether it may be reached in this world or not, that is a question
of NO consequence; whether a man has begun to REACH AFTER it, is of
the utmost awfulness of import. And should it be ideal, which I
doubt, what else than the ideal have the followers of the ideal man
to do with?"
"Can a man reach anything ideal before he has God dwelling in
him--filling every cranny of his soul?" asked the curate with
shining eyes.
"Nothing, I do most solemnly believe," answered Polwarth. "It weighs
on me heavily sometimes," he resumed, after a pause, "to think how
far all but a few are from being able even to entertain the idea of
the indwelling in them of the original power of their life. True,
God is in every man, else how could he live the life he does live?
but that life God keeps alive for the hour when he shall inform the
will, the aspiration, the imagination of the man. When the man
throws wide his door to the Father of his spirit, when his
individual being is thus supplemented--to use a poor miserable
word--with the individuality that originated it, then is the man a
whole, healthy, complete existence. Then indeed, and then only, will
he do no wrong, think no wrong, love perfectly, and be right merry.
Then will he scarce think of praying, because God is in every
thought and enters anew with every sensation. Then will he forgive,
and endure, and pour out his soul for the beloved who yet grope
their way in doubt and passion. Then every man will be dear and
precious to him, even the worst, for in him also lies an unknown
yearning after the same peace wherein he rests and loves."
He sat down suddenly, and a deep silence filled the room.
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