Methought I heard one calling: “Child,”
And I replied: 'My Lord!'”
George Herbert
A favorite pastime with country children is to watch the gradual growth
of the acorn into the oak tree. They will suspend the acorn in a glass
of water and watch the slow progress during long months. First one tiny
white thread is put forth, then another, until at length the glass is
almost filled with a tangle of white fibers, a sturdy little stem
raises itself up, and the baby tree, if it is to live, must be at once
transplanted into good soil. The process may be botanically interesting,
but there is something a little sickly about it, too there is a feeling
that, after all, the acorn would have done better in its natural ground
hidden away in darkness.
And, if we have this feeling with regard to vegetable growth, how much
more with regard to spiritual growth! To attempt to set up the gradually
awakening spirit in an apparatus where it might be the observed of all
observers would be at once repulsive and presumptuous. Happily, it is
impossible. We may trace influences and suggestions, just as we may note
the rain or drought, the heat or cold that affect vegetable growth, but
the actual birth is ever hidden.
To attempt even to shadow forth Erica's growth during the next year
would be worse than presumptuous. As to her outward life it was not
greatly changed, only intensified. October always began their busiest
six months. There was the night school at which she was able to work
again indefatigably. There were lectures to be attended. Above all there
was an ever-increasing amount of work to be done for her father. In all
the positive and constructive side of secularism, in all the efforts
made by it to better humanity, she took an enthusiastic share. Naturally
she did not see so much of Charles Osmond now that she was strong again.
In the press of business, in the hard, every-day life there was little
time for discussion. They met frequently, but never for one of their
long tete-a-tetes. Perhaps Erica purposely avoided them. She was
strangely different now from the little impetuous girl who had come to
his study years ago, trembling with anger at the lady superintendent's
insult. Insults had since then, alas, become so familiar to her, that
she had acquired a sort of patient dignity of endurance, infinitely sad
to watch in such a young girl.
One morning in early June, just a year after the memorable Hyde Park
meeting, Charles Osmond happened to be returning from the death bed of
one of his parishioners when, at the corner of Guilford Square, he met
Erica. It might have been in part the contrast with the sad and painful
scene he had just quitted, but he thought she had never before looked so
beautiful. Her face seemed to have taken to itself the freshness and the
glow of the summer morning.
“You are early abroad,” he said, feeling older and grayer and more tired
than ever as he paused to speak to her.
“I am off to the museum to read,” she said, “I like to get there by
nine, then you don't have to wait such an age for your books; I can't
bear waiting.”
“What are you at work upon now?”
“Oh, today for the last time I am going to hunt up particulars about
Livingstone. Hazeldine was very anxious that a series of papers on his
life should be written for our people. What a grand fellow he was!”
“I heard a characteristic anecdote of him the other day,” said Charles
Osmond. “He was walking beside one of the African lakes which he had
discovered, when suddenly there dawned on him a new meaning to long
familiar words: 'The blood of Christ,' he exclaimed. 'That must be
Charity! The blood of Christ that must be Charity!' A beautiful thought,
too seldom practically taught.”
Erica looked grave.
“Characteristic, certainly, of his broad-heartedness, but I don't think
that anecdote will do for the readers of the 'Idol-Breaker.'” Then,
looking up at Charles Osmond, she added in a rather lower tone: “Do
you know, I had no idea when I began what a difficult task I had got. I
thought in such an active life as that there would be little difficulty
in keeping the religious part away from the secular, but it is wonderful
how Livingstone contrives to mix them up.”
“You see, if Christianity be true, it must, as you say, 'mix up' with
everything. There should be no rigid distinction between secular and
religious,” said Charles Osmond.
“If it is true,” said Erica, suddenly, and with seeming irrelevance,
“then sooner or later we must learn it to be so. Truth MUST win in the
end. But it is worse to wait for perfect certainty than for books at
the museum,” she added, laughing. “It is five minutes to nine I shall be
late.”
Charles Osmond walked home thoughtfully; the meeting had somehow cheered
him.
“Absolute conviction that truth must out that truth must make itself
perceptible. I've not often come across a more beautiful faith than
that. Yes, little Undine, right you are. 'Ye shall know the truth, and
the truth shall make you free.' Here or there, here or there
'All things come round to him who will but wait.'
There's one for yourself, Charles Osmond. None of your hurrying and
meddling now, old man; you've just got to leave it to your betters.”
Soliloquizing after this fashion he reached home, and was not sorry to
find his breakfast awaiting him, for he had been up the greater part of
the night.
The great domed library of the British Museum had become very home-like
to Erica, it was her ideal of comfort; she went there whenever she
wanted quiet, for in the small and crowded lodgings she could never be
secure from interruptions, and interruptions resulted in bad work. There
was something, too, in the atmosphere of the museum which seemed to help
her. She liked the perfect stillness, she liked the presence of all the
books. Above all, too, she liked the consciousness of possession. There
was no narrow exclusiveness about this place, no one could look askance
at her here. The place belonged to the people, and therefore belonged
to her; she heretic and atheist as she was had as much share in the
ownership as the highest in the land. She had her own peculiar nook over
by the encyclopedias, and, being always an early comer, seldom failed to
secure her own particular chair and desk.
On this morning she took her place, as she had done hundreds of times
before, and was soon hard at work. She was finishing her last paper on
Livingstone when a book she had ordered was deposited on her desk by one
of the noiseless attendants. She wanted it to verify one or two dates,
and she half thought she would try to hunt up Charles Osmond's anecdote.
In order to write her series of papers, she had been obliged to study
the character of the great explorer pretty thoroughly. She had always
been able to see the nobility even of those differing most widely
from herself in point of creed, and the great beauty of Livingstone's
character had impressed her very much. Today she happened to open on
an entry in his journal which seemed particularly characteristic of the
man. He was in great danger from the hostile tribes at the union of
the Zambesi and Loangwa, and there was something about his spontaneous
utterance which appealed very strongly to Erica.
“Felt much turmoil of spirit in view of having all my plans for the
welfare of this great region and teeming population knocked on the head
by savages tomorrow. But I read that Jesus came and said: 'All power
is given unto me in Heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all
nations, and lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.'
It is the word of a gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honor,
and there's an end on't. I will not cross furtively by night as I
intended... Nay, verily, I shall take observations for latitude and
longitude tonight, though they may be the last.”
The courage, the daring, the perseverance, the intense faith of the man
shone out in these sentences. Was it indeed a delusion, such practical
faith as that?
Blackness of darkness seemed to hem her in. She struggled through it
once more by the one gleam of certainty which had come to her in the
past year. Truth must be self-revealing. Sooner or later, if she were
honest, if she did not shut her mind deliberately up with the assurance
“You have thought out these matters fully and fairly; enough! Let us
now rest content” and if she were indeed a true “Freethinker,” she MUST
know. And even as that conviction returned to her the words half quaint,
half pathetic, came to her mind: “It is the word of a gentleman of the
most sacred and strictest honor, and there's an end on't.”
Yes, there would “be an end on't,” if she could feel sure that he, too,
was not deluded.
She turned over the pages of the book, and toward the end found a copy
of the inscription on Livingstone's tomb. Her eye fell on the words:
“And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must
bring, and they shall hear My voice.”
Somehow the mention of the lost sheep brought to her mind the little
lost child on the beach at Codrington Dolly, who had “putted on” her own
hat, who had wanted to be independent and to dig by herself. She had run
away from home, and could not find the way back. What a steep climb they
had had up the beach how the little thing's tiny feet had slipped and
stumbled over the stones, and just when they were most perplexed, the
father had found them.
Exactly how it all came to her Erica never knew, nor could she ever put
into words the story of the next few moments. When “God's great sunrise”
finds us out we have need of something higher than human speech there
ARE no words for it. At the utmost she could only say that it was like
coming out of the twilight, that it seemed as if she were immersed in a
great wave of all pervading light.
All in a moment the Christ who had been to her merely a noble character
of ancient history seemed to become to her the most real and living of
all living realities. Even her own existence seemed to fade into a
vague and misty shadow in comparison with the intensity of this new
consciousness this conviction of His being which surrounded her which
she knew, indeed, to be “way, and truth, and life. They shall hear
My voice.” In the silence of waiting, in the faithfulness of honest
searching, Erica for the first time in her life heard it. Yes, she had
been right truth was self-revealing. A few minutes ago those words had
been to her an unfulfilled, a vain promise the speaker, broad-hearted
and loving as he was, had doubtless been deluded. But now the voice
spoke to her, called her by name, told her what she wanted.
“Dolly,” became to her a parable of life. She had been like that little
child; for years and years she had been toiling up over rough stones
and slippery pebbles, but at last she had heard the voice. Was this the
coming to the Father?
That which often appears sudden and unaccountable is, if we did but
know it, a slow, beautiful evolution. It was now very nearly seven years
since the autumn afternoon when the man “too nice to be a clergyman,”
and “not a bit like a Christian,” had come to Erica's home, had shown
her that at least one of them practiced the universal brotherliness
which almost all preached. It was nearly seven years since words of
absolute conviction, words of love and power, had first sounded forth
from Christian lips in her father's lecture hall, and had awakened in
her mind that miserably uncomfortable question “supposing Christianity
should be true?”
All the most beautiful influences are quiet; only the destructive
agencies, the stormy wind, the heavy rain and hail, are noisy. Love of
the deepest sort is wordless, the sunshine steals down silently, the dew
falls noiselessly, and the communion of spirit with spirit is calmer and
quieter than anything else in the world quiet as the spontaneous turning
of the sunflower to the sun when the heavy clouds have passed away, and
the light and warmth reveal themselves. The subdued rustle of leaves,
the hushed footsteps sounded as usual in the great library, but Erica
was beyond the perception of either place or time.
Presently she was recalled by the arrival of another student, who took
the chair next to hers a little deformed man, with a face which looked
prematurely old, and sad, restless eyes. A few hours before she would
have regarded him with a sort of shuddering compassion; now with the
compassion there came to her the thought of compensation which even here
and now might make the poor fellow happy. Was he not immortal? Might he
not here and now learn what she had just learned, gain that unspeakable
joy? And might not the knowledge go on growing and increasing forever?
She took up her pen once more, verified the dates, rolled up her
manuscript, and with one look at Livingstones's journal, returned it to
the clerk and left the library.
It was like coming into a new world; even dingy Bloomsbury seemed
beautiful. Her face was so bright, so like the face of a happy child,
that more than one passer-by was startled by it, lifted for a moment
from sordid cares into a purer atmosphere. She felt a longing to speak
to some one who would understand her new happiness. She had reached
Guilford Square, and looked doubtfully across to the Osmonds' house.
They would understand. But no she must tell her father first. And then,
with a fearful pang, she realized what her new conviction meant. It
meant bringing the sword into her father's house; it meant grieving him
with a life-long grief; it meant leaving the persecuted minority and
going over to the triumphant majority; it meant unmitigated pain to all
those she loved best.
Erica had had her full share of pain, but never had she known anything
so agonizing as that moment's sharp revulsion. Mechanically she walked
on until she reached home; nobody was in. She looked into the little
sitting room but, only Friskarina sat purring on the rug. The table
was strewn with the Saturday papers; the midday post had just come.
She turned over the letters and found one for herself in her father's
handwriting. It was the one thing needed to complete the realization
of her pain. She snatched it up with a stifled sob, ran upstairs to her
room, and threw herself down on the bed in silent agony.
A new joy had come to her which her father could not share; a joy which
he would call a delusion, which he spent a great part of his life
in combating. To tell him that she was convinced of the truth of
Christianity why, it would almost break his heart.
And yet she must inflict this terrible pain. Her nature was far too
noble to have dreamed for a single instant of temporizing, of keeping
her thoughts to herself. A Raeburn was not likely to fail either in
courage or in honesty; but with her courage and honesty, Erica had the
violin-like sensitiveness of nature which Eric Haeberlein had noticed
even in her childhood. She saw in the future all the pain she must bring
to her father, intensified by her own sensitiveness. She knew so well
what her feelings would have been but a short time ago, if any one she
greatly loved had “fallen back” into Christianity. How could she tell
him? How COULD she!
Yet it was a thing which must be done. Should she write to him? No, the
letter might reach him when he was tired and worried yet, to speak would
be more painful.
She got up and went to the window, and let the summer wind blow on her
heated forehead. The world had seemed to her just before one glorious
presence-chamber full of sunshine and rejoicing. But already the shadow
of a life-long pain had fallen on her heart. A revealed Christ meant
also a revealed cross, and a right heavy one.
It was only by degrees that she grew strong again, and Livingstone's
text came back to her once more, “I am with you always.”
By and by she opened her father's letter. It ran as follows:
“I have just remembered that Monday will be your birthday. Let us spend
it together, little son Erica. A few days at Codrington would do us
both good, and I have a tolerably leisure week. If you can come down on
Saturday afternoon, so much the better. I will meet you there, if you
will telegraph reply as soon as you get this. I have three lectures at
Helmstone on Sunday, but you will probably prefer a quiet day by the
sea. Bring me Westcott's new book, and you might put in the chisel and
hammer. We will do a little geologizing for the professor, if we have
time. Meeting here last night a great success. Your loving father, Luke
Raeburn.”
“He is only thinking how he can give me pleasure,” sighed Erica. “And I
have nothing to give him but pain.”
She went at once, however, for the “Bradshaw,” and looked out the
afternoon trains to Codrington.