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THE GULF THAT DIVIDED.
When Ian ceased, a silence deep as the darkness around, fell upon
them. To Ian, the silence seemed the very voice of God, clear in the
darkness; to the mother it was a darkness interpenetrating the
darkness; it was a great gulf between her and her boy. She must cry
to him aloud, but what should she cry? If she did not, an
opportunity, perhaps the last, on which hung eternal issues, would
be gone for ever! Each moment's delay was a disobedience to her
conscience, a yielding to love's sinful reluctance! With "sick
assay" she heaved at the weight on her heart, but not a word would
come. If Ian would but speak again, and break the spell of the
terrible stillness! She must die in eternal wrong if she did not
speak! But no word would come. Something in her would not move. It
was not in her brain or her lips or her tongue, for she knew all the
time she could speak if she would. The caitiff will was not all on
the side of duty! She was not FOR the truth!--could she then be OF
the truth? She did not suspect a divine reluctance to urge that
which was not good.
Not always when the will works may we lay hold of it in the act:
somehow, she knew not how, she heard herself speaking.
"Are you sure it was God, Ian?" she said.
The voice she heard was weak and broken, reedy and strained, like
the voice of one all but dead.
"No, mother," answered Ian, "but I hope it was."
"Hopes, my dear hoy, are not to be trusted."
"That is true, mother; and yet we are saved by hope."
"We are saved by faith."
"I do not doubt it."
"You rejoice my heart. But faith in what?"
"Faith in God, mother."
"That will not save you."
"No, but God will."
"The devils believe in God, and tremble."
"I believe in the father of Jesus Christ, and do not tremble."
"You ought to tremble before an unreconciled God."
"Like the devils, mother?"
"Like a sinful child of Adam. Whatever your fancies, Ian, God will
not hear you, except you pray to him in the name of his Son."
"Mother, would you take my God from me? Would you blot him out of
the deeps of the universe?"
"Ian! are you mad? What frightful things you would lay to my
charge!"
"Mother, I would gladly--oh how gladly! perish for ever, to save God
from being the kind of God you would have me believe him. I love
God, and will not think him other than good. Rather than believe he
does not hear every creature that cries to him, whether he knows
Jesus Christ or not, I would believe there was no God, and go
mourning to my grave."
"That is not the doctrine of the gospel."
"It is, mother: Jesus himself says, 'Every one that hath heard and
learned of the Father, cometh unto me.'"
"Why then do you not come to him, Ian?"
"I do come to him; I come to him every day. I believe in nobody but
him. He only makes the universe worth being, or any life worth
living!"
"Ian, I can NOT understand you! If you believe like that about
him,--"
"I don't believe ABOUT him, mother! I believe in him. He is my
life."
"We will not dispute about words! The question is, do you place your
faith for salvation in the sufferings of Christ for you?"
"I do not, mother. My faith is in Jesus himself, not in his
sufferings."
"Then the anger of God is not turned away from you."
"Mother, I say again--I love God, and will not believe such things
of him as you say. I love him so that I would rather lose him than
believe so of him."
"Then you do not accept the Bible as your guide?"
"I do, mother, for it tells me of Jesus Christ. There is no such
teaching as you say in the Bible."
"How little you know your New Testament!"
"I don't know my New Testament! It is the only book I do know! I
read it constantly! It is the only thing I could not live
without!--No, I do not mean that! I COULD do without my Testament!
Christ would BE all the same!"
"Oh, Ian! Ian! and yet you will not give Christ the glory of
satisfying divine justice by his suffering for your sins!"
"Mother, to say that the justice of God is satisfied with suffering,
is a piece of the darkness of hell. God is willing to suffer, and
ready to inflict suffering to save from sin, but no suffering is
satisfaction to him or his justice."
"What do you mean by his justice then?"
"That he gives you and me and everybody fair play."
The homeliness of the phrase offended the moral ear of the mother.
"How dare you speak lightly of HIM in my hearing!" she cried.
"Because I will speak for God even to the face of my mother!"
answered Ian. "He is more to me than you, mother--ten times more."
"You speak against God, Ian," she rejoined, calmed by the feeling
she had roused.
"No, mother. He speaks against God who says he does things that are
not good. It does not make a thing good to call it good. I speak FOR
him when I say lie cannot but give fair play. He knows he put rue
where I was sure to sin; he will not condemn me because I have
sinned; he leaves me to do that myself. He will condemn me only if I
do not turn away from sin, for he has made me able to turn from it,
and I do."
"He will forgive sin only for Christ's sake."
"He forgives it for his own name's sake, his own love's sake. There
is no such word as FOR CHRIST'S SAKE in the New Testament--except
where Paul prays us for Christ's sake to be reconciled to God. It is
in the English New Testament, but not in the Greek."
"Then you do not believe that the justice of God demands the
satisfaction of the sinner's endless punishment?"
"I do not. Nothing can satisfy the justice of God but justice in his
creature. The justice of God is the love of what is right, and the
doing of what is right. Eternal misery in the name of justice could
satisfy none but a demon whose bad laws had been broken."
"I grant you that no amount of suffering on the part of the wicked
could SATISFY justice; but it is the Holy One who suffers for our
sins!"
"Oh, mother! JUSTICE do wrong for its own satisfaction! Did Jesus
DESERVE punishment? If not, then to punish him was to wrong him!"
"But he was willing; he consented;"
"He yielded to injustice--but the injustice was man's, not God's. If
Justice, insisted on punishent, it would at least insist on the
guilty, not the innocent, being punished! it would revolt from the
idea of the innocent being punished for the guilty! Mind, I say
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