And so Michael Trevanion sinned and suffered for his sin! For my part, I
have no stones to cast at him. I would rather sit at his feet and learn
the golden lesson of his life. For love--and especially the love of an
earnest man for another's soul--covers a multitude of sins. There come
to all of us mountain moments, moments in which we stand on the higher
altitudes and catch a glimpse of the unutterable preciousness of a human
soul. But we are disobedient to the heavenly vision. We are like
Augustine Saint Clare in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. He could never forget, he
said, the words with which his mother impressed upon him the dignity and
worth of the souls of the slaves. Those passionate sentences of hers
seemed to have burnt themselves into his brain. 'I have looked into her
face with solemn awe,' he told Miss Ophelia, 'when she pointed to the
stars in the evening and said to me, "See there, Auguste! the poorest,
meanest soul on our place will be living when all those stars are gone
for ever--will live as long as God lives!"'
'Then why don't you free your slaves?' asked Miss Ophelia, with a
woman's practical and incisive logic.
'I'm not equal to that!' Saint Clare replied; and he confessed that,
through having proved recreant to the ideals that had once so clearly
presented themselves, he was not the man that he might have been.
'I'm not equal to that!' said Augustine Saint Clare.
But Michael Trevanion _was_ equal to that--and to a great deal more. He
saw the value of his son's soul, and he was willing to be shut out of
heaven for ever and ever if only Robert could be eternally saved! 'My
witness is above,' says Samuel Rutherford, in his _Second Letter to his
Parishioners_, 'my witness is above that your heaven would be two
heavens to me, and the salvation of you all as two salvations to me. I
would agree to a suspension and a postponement of my heaven for many
hundreds of years if ye could so be assured of a lodging in the Father's
house.' Michael Trevanion's behavior--mistaken as it was--proved that he
was willing to make an even greater sacrifice if, by so doing, he could
compass the salvation of his son.