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HOME AGAIN.
The curate had entered the draper's shop in the full blaze of
sunset, but the demon of unbelief sat on his shoulders; he could get
no nearer his heart, but that was enough to make of the "majestical
roof fretted with golden fire .... a foul and pestilent congregation
of vapours." When he left the shop, the sun was far below the
horizon, and the glory had faded out of the west; but the demon had
fled, and the brown feathers of the twilight were beautiful as the
wings of the silver dove, sprung heavenwards from among the pots.
And as he went he reasoned with himself--
"Either there is a God, and that God the perfect heart of truth and
loveliness, or all poetry and art is but an unsown, unplanted,
rootless flower, crowning a somewhat symmetrical heap of stones. The
man who sees no beauty in its petals, finds no perfume in its
breath, may well accord it the parentage of the stones; the man
whose heart swells beholding it will be ready to think it has roots
that reach below them."
The curate's search, it will be remarked, had already widened
greatly the sphere of his doubts; but, the larger the field, the
greater the chance of finding a marl-pit; and, if there be such a
thing as truth, every fresh doubt is yet another finger-post
pointing towards its dwelling.--So talked the curate to himself,
and, full in the face, rounding the corner of a street, met George
Bascombe.
The young barrister held out his large hospitable hand at the full
length of his arm, and spread abroad his wide chest to greet him,
and they went through the ceremony of shaking hands,--which, even
in their case, I cannot judge so degrading and hypocritical as the
Latin nations seem to consider it. Then Wingfold had the first word.
"I have not yet had an opportunity of thanking you for the great
service you have done me," he said.
"I am glad to know I have such an honour; but--"
"I mean, in opening my eyes to my true position."
"Ah, my dear fellow! I was sure you only required to have your
attention turned in the right direction. When--?--ah!--I--I was on
the verge of committing the solecism of asking you when you thought
of resigning. Ha! ha!"
"Not yet," replied Wingfold to the question thus at once withdrawn
and put. "The more I look into the matter, the more reason I find
for hoping it may be possible for me to--to--keep the appointment."
"Oh!"
"The further I inquire, the more am I convinced that, if not in a
certain portion of what the church teaches, then nowhere else, and
assuredly not in what you teach, shall I find anything by which life
can either account for or justify itself."
"But if what you find is not true!" cried George, with a burst of
semi-grand indignation.
"But if what I find should be true, even though you should never be
able to see it!" returned the curate. And as if disjected by an
explosion between them, the two men were ten paces asunder, each
hurrying his own way.
"If I can't prove there is a God," said Wingfold to himself, "as
little surely can he prove there is none."
But then came the thought--"The fellow will say that, there being no
sign of a God, the burden of proof lies with me." And therewith he
saw how useless it would be to discuss the question with any one
who, not seeing him, had no desire to see him.
"No," he said, "my business is not to prove to any other man that
there is a God, but to find him for myself. If I should find him,
then will be time enough to think of showing him." And with that his
thoughts turned from Bascombe, and went back to the draper.
When he reached home, he took out his sonnet, but, after working at
it for a little while, he found that he must ease his heart by
writing another. Here it is:
Methought that in a solemn church I stood.
Its marble acres, worn with knees and feet,
Lay spread from, door to door, from street to street.
Midway the form hung high upon the rood
Of him who gave his life to be our good;
Beyond, priests flitted, bowed, and murmured meet
Among the candles shining still and sweet.
Men came and went, and worshipped as they could,
And still their dust a woman with her broom,
Bowed to her work, kept sweeping to the door.
Then saw I, slow through all the pillared gloom,
Across the church a silent figure come;
"Daughter," it said, "thou sweepest well my floor!"
It is the Lord! I cried; and saw no more.
I suppose, if one could so stop the throat of the blossom-buried
nightingale, that, though he might breathe at will, he could no
longer sing, he would drop from his bough, and die of suppressed
song. Perhaps some men so die--I do not know; it were better than to
live, and to bore their friends with the insuppressible. But,
however this may be, the man who can utter himself to his own joy in
any of the forms of human expression--let him give thanks to God;
and, if he give not his verses to the printer, he will probably have
cause to give thanks again. To the man's self, the utterance is not
the less invaluable. And so Wingfold found it.
He went out again, and into the churchyard, where he sat down on a
stone.
"How strange," he said to himself, "that out of faith should have
sprung that stone church! A poor little poem now and then is all
that stands for mine--all that shows, that is! But my heart does
sometimes burn, within me. If only I could be sure they were HIS
words that set it burning!"
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