THE SICK CHAMBER.
In the course of a month there was a good deal more of light in the
smile with which my darling greeted me when I entered her room in the
morning. Her pain was greatly gone, but the power of moving her limbs
had not yet even begun to show itself.
One day she received me with a still happier smile than I had yet seen
upon her face, put out her thin white hand, took mine and kissed it, and
said, “Papa,” with a lingering on the last syllable.
“What is it, my pet?” I asked.
“I am so happy!”
“What makes you so happy?” I asked again.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I haven’t thought about it yet. But
everything looks so pleasant round me. Is it nearly winter yet, papa?
I’ve forgotten all about how the time has been going.”
“It is almost winter, my dear. There is hardly a leaf left on the
trees--just two or three disconsolate yellow ones that want to get away
down to the rest. They go fluttering and fluttering and trying to break
away, but they can’t.”
“That is just as I felt a little while ago. I wanted to die and get
away, papa; for I thought I should never be well again, and I should be
in everybody’s way.--I am afraid I shall not get well, after all,” she
added, and the light clouded on her sweet face.
“Well, my darling, we are in God’s hands. We shall never get tired of
you, and you must not get tired of us. Would you get tired of nursing
me, if I were ill?”
“O, papa!” And the tears began to gather in her eyes.
“Then you must think we are not able to love so well as you.”
“I know what you mean. I did not think of it that way. I will never
think so about it again. I was only thinking how useless I was.”
“There you are quite mistaken, my dear. No living creature ever was
useless. You’ve got plenty to do there.”
“But what have I got to do? I don’t feel able for anything,” she said;
and again the tears came in her eyes, as if I had been telling her to
get up and she could not.
“A great deal of our work,” I answered, “we do without knowing what it
is. But I’ll tell you what you have got to do: you have got to believe
in God, and in everybody in this house.”
“I do, I do. But that is easy to do,” she returned.
“And do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus
says his yoke is easy, his burden is light. People sometimes refuse to
do God’s work just because it is easy. This is, sometimes, because they
cannot believe that easy work is his work; but there may be a very bad
pride in it: it may be because they think that there is little or no
honour to be got in that way; and therefore they despise it. Some again
accept it with half a heart, and do it with half a hand. But, however
easy any work may be, it cannot be well done without taking thought
about it. And such people, instead of taking thought about their work,
generally take thought about the morrow, in which no work can be done
any more than in yesterday. The Holy Present!--I think I must make one
more sermon about it--although you, Connie,” I said, meaning it for a
little joke, “do think that I have said too much about it already.”
“Papa, papa! do forgive me. This is a judgment on me for talking to
you as I did that dreadful morning. But I was so happy that I was
impertinent.”
“You silly darling!” I said. “A judgment! God be angry with you for
that! Even if it had been anything wrong, which it was not, do you think
God has no patience? No, Connie. I will tell you what seems to me much
more likely. You wanted something to do; and so God gave you something
to do.”
“Lying in bed and doing nothing!”
“Yes. Just lying in bed, and doing his will.”
“If I could but feel that I was doing his will!”
“When you do it, then you will feel you are doing it.”
“I know you are coming to something, papa. Please make haste, for my
back is getting so bad.”
“I’ve tired you, my pet. It was very thoughtless of me. I will tell you
the rest another time,” I said, rising.
“No, no. It will make me much worse not to hear it all now.”
“Well, I will tell you. Be still, my darling, I won’t be long. In
the time of the old sacrifices, when God so kindly told his ignorant
children to do something for him in that way, poor people were told to
bring, not a bullock or a sheep, for that was more than they could get,
but a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. But now, as Crashaw
the poet says, ‘Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.’ God wanted
to teach people to offer themselves. Now, you are poor, my pet, and you
cannot offer yourself in great things done for your fellow-men, which
was the way Jesus did. But you must remember that the two young pigeons
of the poor were just as acceptable to God as the fat bullock of the
rich. Therefore you must say to God something like this:--‘O heavenly
Father, I have nothing to offer thee but my patience. I will bear thy
will, and so offer my will a burnt-offering unto thee. I will be as
useless as thou pleasest.’ Depend upon it, my darling, in the midst of
all the science about the world and its ways, and all the ignorance of
God and his greatness, the man or woman who can thus say, _Thy will be
done_, with the true heart of giving up is nearer the secret of things
than the geologist and theologian. And now, my darling, be quiet in
God’s name.”
She held up her mouth to kiss me, but did not speak, and I left her, and
sent Dora to sit with her.
In the evening, when I went into her room again, having been out in my
parish all the morning, I began to unload my budget of small events.
Indeed, we all came in like pelicans with stuffed pouches to empty them
in her room, as if she had been the only young one we had, and we
must cram her with news. Or, rather, she was like the queen of the
commonwealth sending out her messages into all parts, and receiving
messages in return. I might call her the brain of the house; but I have
used similes enough for a while.
After I had done talking, she said--
“And you have been to the school too, papa?”
“Yes. I go to the school almost every day. I fancy in such a school as
ours the young people get more good than they do in church. You know I
had made a great change in the Sunday-school just before you came home.”
“I heard of that, papa. You won’t let any of the little ones go to
school on the Sunday.”
“No. It is too much for them. And having made this change, I feel the
necessity of being in the school myself nearly every day, that I may do
something direct for the little ones.”
“And you’ll have to take me up soon, as you promised, you know,
papa--just before Sprite threw me.”
“As soon as you like, my dear, after you are able to read again.”
“O, you must begin before that, please.--You could spare time to read a
little to me, couldn’t you?” she said doubtfully, as if she feared she
was asking too much.
“Certainly, my dear; and I will begin to think about it at once.”
It was in part the result of this wish of my child’s that it became the
custom to gather in her room on Sunday evenings. She was quite unable
for any kind of work such as she would have had me commence with her,
but I used to take something to read to her every now and then, and
always after our early tea on Sundays.
What a thing it is to have one to speak and think about and try to find
out and understand, who is always and altogether and perfectly good!
Such a centre that is for all our thoughts and words and actions and
imaginations! It is indeed blessed to be human beings with Jesus Christ
for the centre of humanity.
In the papers wherein I am about to record the chief events of the
following years of my life, I shall give a short account of what passed
at some of these assemblies in my child’s room, in the hope that it may
give my friends something, if not new, yet fresh to think about. For God
has so made us that everyone who thinks at all thinks in a way that must
be more or less fresh to everyone else who thinks, if he only have the
gift of setting forth his thoughts so that we can see what they are.
I hope my readers will not be alarmed at this, and suppose that I am
about to inflict long sermons upon them. I am not. I do hope, as I say,
to teach them something; but those whom I succeed in so teaching will
share in the delight it will give me to write about what I love most.
As far as I can remember, I will tell how this Sunday-evening class
began. I was sitting by Constance’s bed. The fire was burning brightly,
and the twilight had deepened so nearly into night that it was reflected
back from the window, for the curtains had not yet been drawn. There was
no light in the room but that of the fire.
Now Constance was in the way of asking often what kind of day or night
it was, for there never was a girl more a child of nature than she.
Her heart seemed to respond at once to any and every mood of the world
around her. To her the condition of air, earth, and sky was news, and
news of poetic interest too. “What is it like?” she would often say,
without any more definite shaping of the question. This same evening she
said:
“What is it like, papa?”
“It is growing dark,” I answered, “as you can see. It is a still
evening, and what they call a black frost. The trees are standing as
still as if they were carved out of stone, and would snap off everywhere
if the wind were to blow. The ground is dark, and as hard as if it were
of cast iron. A gloomy night rather, my dear. It looks as if there were
something upon its mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars
are coming out one after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake
soon. A strange thing the life that goes on all night, is it not? The
life of owlets, and mice, and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars,” I
said, with no very categorical arrangement, “and dreams, and flowers
that don’t go to sleep like the rest, but send out their scent all night
long. Only those are gone now. There are no scents abroad, not even of
the earth in such a frost as this.”
“Don’t you think it looks sometimes, papa, as if God turned his back on
the world, or went farther away from it for a while?”
“Tell me a little more what you mean, Connie.”
“Well, this night now, this dark, frozen, lifeless night, which you have
been describing to me, isn’t like God at all--is it?”
“No, it is not. I see what you mean now.”
“It is just as if he had gone away and said, ‘Now you shall see what you
can do without me.’
“Something like that. But do you know that English people--at least I
think so--enjoy the changeful weather of their country much more upon
the whole than those who have fine weather constantly? You see it is
not enough to satisfy God’s goodness that he should give us all things
richly to enjoy, but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he
gives them. He has to consider not only the gift, but the receiver of
the gift. He has to make us able to take the gift and make it our own,
as well as to give us the gift. In fact, it is not real giving, with the
full, that is, the divine, meaning of giving, without it. He has to give
us to the gift as well as give the gift to us. Now for this, a break,
an interruption is good, is invaluable, for then we begin to think about
the thing, and do something in the matter ourselves. The wonder of God’s
teaching is that, in great part, he makes us not merely learn, but teach
ourselves, and that is far grander than if he only made our minds as he
makes our bodies.”
“I think I understand you, papa. For since I have been ill, you would
wonder, if you could see into me, how even what you tell me about the
world out of doors gives me more pleasure than I think I ever had when I
could go about in it just as I liked.”
“It wouldn’t do that, though, you know, if you hadn’t had the other
first. The pleasure you have comes as much from your memory as from my
news.”
“I see that, papa.”
“Now can you tell me anything in history that confirms what I have been
saying?”
“I don’t know anything about history, papa. The only thing that comes
into my head is what you were saying yourself the other day about
Milton’s blindness.”
“Ah, yes. I had not thought of that. Do you know, I do believe that God
wanted a grand poem from that man, and therefore blinded him that
he might be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the
point--given him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread
of a single day, only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys;
then placed him at Cromwell’s side, in the midst of the tumultuous
movement of public affairs, into which the late student entered with all
his heart and soul; and then last of all he cast the veil of a divine
darkness over him, sent him into a chamber far more retired than that in
which he laboured at Cambridge, and set him like the nightingale to sing
darkling. The blackness about him was just the great canvas which God
gave him to cover with forms of light and music. Deep wells of memory
burst upwards from below; the windows of heaven were opened from above;
from both rushed the deluge of song which flooded his soul, and which he
has poured out in a great river to us.”
“It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn’t it, papa?”
“Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with _such_ blindness
as Milton’s?”
“Those that do not care about his poetry, papa,” answered Constance,
with a deprecatory smile.
“Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can’t love one
you know nothing about.”
“I have tried to read him a little.”
“Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you
had never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But
you and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of
what we had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?”
“Not the least, papa. You don’t mind what I said about Milton?”
“Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much
if you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him
was more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him.”
“O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him.”
“There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of
appreciating him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen.
You think of him as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry
things. Now he is not dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry
things. You have a figure before you in your fancy, which is dry, and
which you call Milton. But it is no more Milton than your dull-faced
Dutch doll, which you called after her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But
here comes your mamma; and I haven’t said what I wanted to say yet.”
“But surely, husband, you can say it all the same,” said my wife. “I
will go away if you can’t.”
“I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me.
I was trying to show Connie--”
“You did show me, papa.”
“Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right.”
Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.
“And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too
much revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long
enough. They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as
soon as he said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that
he had not come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over
again after their own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own
worldly notions of grandeur and command, that they could not receive
into their souls the gift of God present before their eyes. Therefore he
was taken away, that his Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily
presence, might come into them--that they might receive the gift of God
into their innermost being. After he had gone out of their sight, and
they might look all around and down in the grave and up in the air, and
not see him anywhere--when they thought they had lost him, he began to
come to them again from the other side--from the inside. They found that
the image of him which his presence with them had printed in light upon
their souls, began to revive in the dark of his absence; and not that
only, but that in looking at it without the overwhelming of his bodily
presence, lines and forms and meanings began to dawn out of it which
they had never seen before. And his words came back to them, no longer
as they had received them, but as he meant them. The spirit of Christ
filling their hearts and giving them new power, made them remember, by
making them able to understand, all that he had said to them. They were
then always saying to each other, ‘You remember how;’ whereas before,
they had been always staring at each other with astonishment and
something very near incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after
he had gone away, he was really nearer to them than he had been before.
The meaning of anything is more than its visible presence. There is a
soul in everything, and that soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the
world and all its beauty has come nearer to you, my dear, just because
you are separated from it for a time.”
“Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself
now and then. That is another good of being ill.”
“You don’t mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?” said my
wife, smiling at her daughter’s pleasure.
“O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say
by this time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to
yourself.”
“Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful
of sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I
should be sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say
by this time next year.”
“Well, papa, I wish I could be sure of knowing more next year.”
“Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of
learning is very different in the two cases.”
“But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should
not know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him--as
he came to the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long
ago.”
“As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer
that if he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I
believe we should be further off it.”
“Do you think, then,” said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if
I were the prophet of great evil, “that we shall never, never, never see
him?”
“That is _quite_ another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my hopes
by day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to me
the one thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for;
but I think it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as
ever we are capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I
think, what is meant by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a
consequence of his spirit in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us.
The pure in heart shall see God. The seeing of him will be the sign that
we are like him, for only by being like him can we see him as he is. All
the time that he was with them, the disciples never saw him as he was.
You must understand a man before you can see and read his face aright;
and as the disciples did not understand our Lord’s heart, they could
neither see nor read his face aright. But when we shall be fit to look
that man in the face, God only knows.”
“Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know
him better than the disciples? I don’t mean, of course, better than they
knew him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew
him while he was still with them?”
“Certainly I do, my dear.”
“O, papa! Is it possible? Why don’t we all, then?”
“Because we won’t take the trouble; that is the reason.”
“O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living--worth being
ill for. But how? how? Can’t you help me? Mayn’t one human being help
another?”
“It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever
wants to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey--that is
simply, do what Jesus says.”
There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing.
And the tears stood in; my wife’s eyes--tears of gladness to hear her
daughter’s sobs.
“I will try, papa,” Constance said at last. “But you _will_ help me?”
“That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying
to tell you what I have heard and learned about him--heard and learned
of the Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time when
he was born;--but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to bear
to-night.”
“No, no, papa. Do go on.”
“No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday--you
have plenty to think about till then--I will talk to you about the baby
Jesus; and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that time,
besides what I have got to say now.”
“But,” said my wife, “don’t you think, Connie, this is too good to keep
all to ourselves? Don’t you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?”
“Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too.”
“I fear they are rather young yet,” I said. “Perhaps it might do them
harm.”
“It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow,” said Ethelwyn,
smiling.
“How do you mean, my dear?”
“Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you.
Besides, you always say such things to children as delight grown people,
though they could never get them out of you.”
It was a wife’s speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t mind them coming in, but I don’t promise to say
anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
wish it.”
“Certainly,” answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.