The bickerings between her father and mother had had not a little to do
with the peculiar features of Barbara's life in the colony. As soon as
she saw a cloud rising, having learned by frequent experience what
it was sure to result in, she would creep away, mount one of the many
horses at her choice, and race from the house like a dog in terror, till
she was miles from the spot where her father and mother would by that
time be writhing in fiercest wordy warfare. What the object of their
wrangling might be, she never inquired. It was plain to her almost from
the first that nothing was gained by it beyond the silence of fatigue;
and as that silence was always fruitful of new strife, it brought a
comfort known to be but temporary. Had she not been accustomed to it
from earliest childhood, it would have been terrible to her to see human
lives going off in such a foul smoke of hell! Not a sentence was
uttered by the one but was furiously felt as a wrong by the other--to
be remorselessly met by wrong as flagrant, rousing in its turn the
indignation of injury to a pain unendurable. It is strange that the man
who most keenly feels the wrong done him, should so often be the most
insensible to the wrong he does. So dominant is the unreason of the
moment, that the injury he inflicts appears absolute justice, and the
injury he suffers absolute injustice. Yet such disputes turn seldom upon
the main point at issue between the parties; it may not even once be
mentioned, while some new trifle is fought over with all the bitterness
of the alienation that lies gnawing and biting and burning beneath.
War is raging between kingdoms for the possession of a hovel, which
possessed, the quarrel were no nearer settlement than before!
Hence it came that Barbara paid so little regard to her mother's
challenge of the clergyman. Single combat of the sort she seemed to
seek was an experience of Barbara's life too often recurrent to be
interesting; the thunders of its artillery, near or afar, passed over
her almost unheeded. She had indeed sufficient respect for the forms of
religion to regret that her mother should make her behaviour in church
the talk of the parish, and to be rather pleased that the clergyman
should have had the best of it in his joust of arms with her, but
further interest in the matter she scarcely took.
On a certain day, Miss Brown wanting at least one pair of new shoes, and
her mistress cherishing the idea of a lesson in shoeing her, for which
lesson arrangement had not even yet been made, Barbara, having been all
the afternoon in the house, went out toward sunset, to have a walk with
a book.
She was sauntering along a grassy road which, though within their
own park, belonged to the public, when she almost ran against a man
similarly occupied with herself, for he also was absorbed in the book
he carried. I should like to know what two books brought them thus
together! Each started back with an apology, then both burst into a
modest laugh, which renewed itself with merrier ring, when the first and
then the second attempt to pass, with all space for elbow-room, failed,
and they stood opposite each other in a hopeless mental paralysis.
“Fate is opposed to our unneighbourliness!” said Mr. Wingfold. “She
will not allow us to pass, and depart in peace! What do you say, Miss
Wylder?--shall we yield or shall we resist?” As he spoke, he held out
his hand.
Now Barbara was the last person in the world to refuse, without a
painfully good reason, any offered hand. She had never seen cause to
desire the acquaintance of a man because he was a clergyman; but neither
had she any unwillingness, because he was a clergyman, to make his
acquaintance; while to Thomas Wingfold she already felt some attraction:
the strong little hand was in his immediately, and felt comfortable in
the great honest clasp, which it returned heartily.
“I never saw you on your own feet before, Miss Wylder!” said the
clergyman.
“Nor on anybody else's, I hope!” she returned.
“Oh, yes, indeed!--on Miss Brown's many a time!”
“You know Miss Brown then? She is my most intimate friend!”
“I am well aware of that! Everything worth knowing in the parish, and a
good deal that is not, comes to my ears.”
“May I hope you count Miss Brown's affairs worth hearing about, then?”
“Of course I do! Does not a lady call her friend, whose acquaintance I
have long wished to make! and do I not know that Miss Brown loves her in
return! I cannot help sometimes regretting for a moment that four-footed
friends in general are so short-lived.”
“Why only for a moment?” said Barbara.
“Because I remind myself that it must be best for them and us--best for
the friendship between us, best for us every way. But indeed I have more
to be thankful for in the relation than most people of my acquaintance,
for I sometimes drive a pony yet that is over forty!”
“Forty years of age!”
“Yes.”
“I should like to see that pony!”
“You shall see her, any day you will come to the parsonage. I will
gladly introduce her to you, but it is getting rather late to desire her
acquaintance: she does not see very well, and is not so good-tempered as
she once was. But she will soon be better.”
“How do you mean?”
“She has a process to go through out of which she will come ever so much
the better.”
“Good gracious! you're not going to have an operation performed on
her--at _her_ age?”
“She is going to have her body stript off her!”
“Good gracious!” cried Barbara again, but with yet greater energy--then
seeing what he meant, laughed at her mistake.
“But then,” she said, with eager resumption, “you must believe there is
something to strip her body off? _I_ do! I have always thought so!”
“So have I, and so I do indeed!” answered Wingfold. “I can't prove it. I
can't prove anything--to my own satisfaction, that is, though I dare say
I might to the satisfaction of one who did not love the creatures enough
to be anxious about them. I don't think you can prove anything that is
worth being anxious about.”
“Then why do you believe it?” asked Barbara, influenced by the talk of
the century.
“Because I _can_,” answered Wingfold. “To believe and to be able to
prove, have little or nothing to do with each other. To believe and to
convince have much to do with each other.”
“But,” persisted Barbara, with Richard in her mind, “how are you to be
sure of a thing you can't prove?”
“That's a good question, and this is my answer,” said Wingfold:--“What
you love, you already believe enough to put it to the proof of trial. My
life is such a proving; and the proof is so promising that it fills me
with the happiest hope. To prove with your brains the thing you love,
would be to deck the garments of salvation with a useless fringe. Shall
I search heaven and earth for proof that my wife is a good and lovely
woman? The signs of it are everywhere; the proofs of it nowhere.”
They walked along for a while, side by side, in silence. Which had
turned and gone with the other neither knew. Barbara was beginning
already to feel that safety which almost everybody sooner or later came
to feel in Wingfold's company--a safety born of the sense that, in
the closest talk, he never lay in wait for a victory, but took his
companion, as one of his own people, into the end after which he was
striving.
“Then,” said Barbara at length, still thinking of Richard, “if you
believe that even the beasts are saved, you must think it very bad of a
man not to believe in a God!”
“I should think anyhow that he didn't care much about the beasts--that
he hadn't a heart big enough to take the beasts in!”
“But he couldn't, you know, if he didn't believe in God!”
“I understand; only, if he loved the poor beasts very much, and thought
what a bad time they have of it in the world, I don't know how he could
help _hoping_ at least, that there was a God somewhere who would somehow
make up to them for it all! For my own part I don't know how to be
content except the beasts themselves, when it is all over and the good
time come, are able to say, 'After all, it is well worth it, bad as it
was!'”
“But what if it was just that suffering that made the man think there
could not be a God, or he would put a stop to it?”
“That looks to me very close to believing in God.”
“How do you make that out?”
“If a man believed in a God that did not heed the suffering of the
creation, one who made men and women and beasts knowing that they must
suffer, and suffer only--and went on believing so however you set him
thinking about it, I should say to him, 'You believe in a devil, and
so are in the way to become a devil yourself.' A thousand times rather
would I believe that there was no God, and that the misery came by
chance from which there was no escape. What I do believe is, that there
is a God who is even now doing his best to take all men and all beasts
out of the misery in which they find themselves.”
“But why did he let them come into it?”
“That the God will tell them, to their satisfaction, so soon as ever
they shall have become capable of understanding it. There must be things
so entirely beyond our capacity, that we cannot now see enough of them
to be able even to say that they are incomprehensible. There must be
millions of truths that have not yet risen above the horizon of what we
call the finite.”
“Then you would not think a person so very, very wicked, for not
believing in a God?”
“That depends on the sort of God he fancied himself asked to believe in.
Would you call a Greek philosopher wicked for not believing in Mercury
or Venus? If a man had the same notion of God that I have, or anything
like it, and did not at least desire that there might be such a God,
then I confess I should have difficulty in understanding how he could
be good. But the God offered him might not be worth believing in, might
even be such that it was a virtuous act to refuse to believe in him.”
“One thing more, Mr. Wingfold--and you must not think I am arguing
against you or against God, for if I thought there was no God, I should
just take poison:--tell me, mightn't a man think the idea of such a God
as you believe in, too good to be true?”
“I should need to know something of his history, rightly to understand
that. Why should he be able to think anything too good to be true? Why
should a thing not be true because it was good? It seems to me, if a
thing be bad, it cannot possibly be true. If you say the thing is, I
answer it exists because of something under the badness. Badness by
itself can have no life in it. But if the man really thought as you
suggest, I would say to him, 'You cannot _know_ such a being does not
exist: is it possible you should be content that such a being should
not exist? If such a being did exist, would you be content never to find
him, but to go on for ever and ever saying, _He can't be! He can't be!
He's so good he can't be!_ Supposing you find one day that there he is,
will your defence before him be satisfactory to yourself: “There he is
after all, but he was too good to believe in, therefore I did not try
to find him”? Will you say to him--“_If you had not been so good, if you
had been a little less good, a little worse, just a trifle bad, I could
and would have believed in you?”_'”
“But if the man could not believe there was any such being, how could he
have heart to look for him?”
“If he believed the idea of him so good, yet did not desire such a being
enough to wish that he might be, enough to feel it worth his while to
cry out, in some fashion or other, after him, then I could not help
suspecting something wrong in his will, or his moral nature somewhere;
or, perhaps, that the words he spoke were but words, and that he did
not really and truly feel that the idea of such a God was too good to
be true. In any such case his maker would not have cause to be satisfied
with him. And if his maker was not satisfied with what he had made, do
you think the man made would have cause to be satisfied with himself?”
“But if he was made so?”
“Then no good being, not to say a faithful creator, would blame him for
what he could not help. If the God had made his creature incapable of
knowing him, then of course the creature would not feel that he
needed to know him. He would be where we generally imagine the lower
animals--unable, therefore not caring to know who made him.”
“But is not that just the point? A man may say truly, 'I don't feel
I want to know anything about God; I do not believe I am made to
understand him; I take no interest in the thought of a God'!”
“Before I could answer you concerning such a man, I should want to know
whether he had not been doing as he knew he ought not to do, living
as he knew he ought not to live, and spoiling himself, so spoiling the
thing that God had made that, although naturally he would like to know
about God, yet now, through having by wrong-doing injured his deepest
faculty of understanding, he did not care to know anything concerning
him.”
“What could be done for such a man?”
“God knows--God _does_ know. I think he will make his very life a
terrible burden, so that for pure misery he will cry to him.”
“But suppose he was a man who tried to do right, who tried to help his
neighbour, who was at least so far a good man as to deny the God that
most people seem to believe in--what would you say then?”
“I would say, 'Have patience.' If there be a good God, he cannot be
altogether dissatisfied with such a man. Of course it is something
wanting that makes him like that, and it may be he is to blame, or it
may be he can't help it: I do not know when any man has arrived at the
point of development at which he is capable of believing in God: the
child of a savage may be capable, and a gray-haired man of science
incapable. If such a man says, 'The question of a God is not interesting
to me,' I believe him; but, if he be such a man as you have last
described, I believe also that, as God is taking care of him who is the
God of patience, the time must come when something will make him want to
know whether there be a God, and whether he cannot get near him, so as
to be near him.' I would say, 'He is in God's school; don't be too much
troubled about him, as if God might overlook and forget him. He will see
to all that concerns him. He has made him, and he loves him, and he is
doing and will do his very best for him.'”
“Oh, I am so glad to hear you speak like that!” cried Barbara. “I didn't
know clergymen were like that! I'm sure they don't talk like that in the
pulpit!”
“Well, you know a man can't just chat with his people in the pulpit
as he may when he has one alone to himself! For, you see, there are
hundreds there, and they are all very different, and that must make
a difference in the way he can talk to them. There are multitudes who
could not understand a word of what we have been saying to each, other!
But if a clergyman says anything in the pulpit that differs in essence
from what he says out of it, he is a false prophet, and has no business
anywhere but in the realm of falsehood.”
“Why is he in the church, then?”
“If there be any such man in the church of England, we have to ask first
how he got into it. I used to think the bishop who ordained him must be
to blame for letting such a man in. But I am told the bishops haven't
the power to keep out any one who passes their examination, provided he
is morally decent; and if that be true, I don't know what is to be done.
What I know is, that I have enough to do with my parish, and that to
mind my work is the best I can do to set the church right.”
“I suppose the bishops--some of them at least--would say, 'If we do not
take the men we can get, how is the work of the church to go on?'”
“I presume that even such bishops would allow that the business of the
church is to teach men about God: that they cannot get men who know God,
is a bad argument for employing men who do not know him to teach others
about him. It is founded on utter distrust of God. I believe the only
way to set the thing right is to refuse the bad that there may be room
for God to send the good. By admitting the false they block the way for
the true. But the poor bishops have great difficulties. I am glad I am
not a bishop! My parish is nearly too much for me sometimes!”
Barbara could not help thinking how her mother alone had been almost too
much for him.
Their talk the rest of the way was lighter and more general; and to her
great joy Barbara discovered that the clergyman loved books the same way
the bookbinder loved them. But she did not mention Richard.
The parson took leave of her at a convenient issue from the park. But
before she had gone many steps he came running after her and said--
“By the way, Miss Wylder, here are some verses that may please you! We
were talking about our hopes for the animals! I heard the story they are
founded on the other day from my friend the dissenting minister of
the village. The little daughter of Dr. Doddridge, the celebrated
theologian, was overheard asking the dog if he knew who made him.
Receiving no reply, she said what you will find written there as the
text of the poem.”
He put a paper in her hand, and left her. She opened it, and found what
follows:--
DR. DODDRIDGE'S DOG.
“What! you Dr. Doddridge's dog, and not know who made you!”
My little dog, who blessed you
With such white toothy-pegs?
And who was it that dressed you
In such a lot of legs!
I'm sure he never told you
Not to speak when spoken to!
But it's not for me to scold you:--
Dogs bark, and pussies mew!
I'll tell you, little brother,
In case you do not know:--
One only, not another,
Could make us two just so.
You love me?--Quiet!--I'm proving!--
It must be God above
That, filled those eyes with loving!--
He was the first to love!
One day he'll stop all sadness--
Hark to the nightingale!
Oh blessed God of gladness!--
Come, doggie, wag your tail!
That's “Thank you, God!”--He gave you
Of life this little taste;
And with more life he'll save you,
Not let you go to waste!
So we'll live on together,
And share our bite and sup;
Until he says, “Come hither,”--
And lifts us both high up!
Barbara was so much pleased with the verses that she thought them a
great deal better than they were.
Wingfold walked home thinking how, in his dull parish, where so few
seemed to care whether they were going back to be monkeys or on to be
men, he had yet found two such interesting young people as Richard and
Barbara.
He had come upon Richard again at his grandfather's, had had a little
more talk with him, and had found him not so far from the kingdom of
heaven but that he cared to deny a false god; and he had just discovered
in Barbara, who so seldom went to church and who came of such strange
parents, one in whom the love of God was not merely innate, but keenly
alive. The heart of the one recoiled from a God that was not; the heart
of the other was drawn to a God of whom she knew little: were not the
two upon converging tracks? What to most clergymen would have seemed the
depth of a winter of unbelief, seemed to Wingfold a springtime full of
the sounds of the rising sap.
“What man,” he said to himself, “knowing the care that some men have of
their fellow-men, even to the spending of themselves for them, can doubt
that, loving the children, they must one day love the father! Who more
welcome to the heart of the eternal father, than the man who loves his
brother, whom also the unchanging father loves!”
Personally, I find the whole matter of religious teaching and observance
in general a very dull business--as dull as most secular teaching. If
salvation is anything like what are commonly considered its _means_, it
is to me a consummation devoutly to be deprecated. But no one ever found
Wingfold dull. For one thing he scarcely thought about the church, and
never mistook it for the kingdom of God. Its worldly affairs gave him no
concern, and party-spirit was loathsome to him as the very antichrist.
He was a servant of the church universal, of all that believed or ever
would believe in the Lord Christ, therefore of all men, of the whole
universe--and first, of every man, woman, and child in his own parish.
But though he was the servant of the boundless church, no church was
his master. He had no master but the one lord of life. Therefore the
so-called prosperity of the church did not interest him. He knew that
the Master works from within outward, and believed no danger possible to
the church, except from such of its nominal pastors as know nothing
of the life that works leavening from within. The will of God was all
Wingfold cared about, and if the church was not content with that, the
church was nothing to him, and might do to him as it would. He did not
spend his life for the people because he was a parson, but he was a
parson because the church of England gave him facilities for spending
his life for the people. He gave himself altogether to the Lord, and
therefore to his people. He believed in Jesus Christ as the everyday
life of the world, whose presence is just us needful in bank, or shop,
or house of lords, as at what so many of the clergy call the altar. When
the Lord is known as the heart of every joy, as well as the refuge
from every sorrow, then the altar will be known for what it is--an
ecclesiastical antique. The Father permitted but never ordained
sacrifice; in tenderness to his children he ordered the ways of their
unbelieving belief. So at least thought and said Wingfold, and if he did
not say so in the pulpit, it was not lest his fellows should regard
him as a traitor, but because so few of his people would understand. He
would spend no strength in trying to shore up the church; he sent his
life-blood through its veins, and his appeal to the Living One, for
whose judgment he waited.
The world would not perish if what is called the church did go to
pieces; a truer church, for there might well be a truer, would arise out
of her ruins. But let no one seek to destroy; let him that builds only
take heed that he build with gold and silver and precious stones, not
with wood and hay and stubble! If the church were so built, who could
harm it! if it were not in part so built, it would be as little worth
pulling down as letting stand. There is in it a far deeper and better
vitality than its blatant supporters will be able to ruin by their
advocacy, or the enviers of its valueless social position by their
assaults upon that position.
Wingfold never thought of associating the anxiety of the heiress with
the unbelief of the bookbinder. He laughed a laugh of delight when
afterward he learned their relation to each other.
The next Sunday, Barbara was at church, and never afterward willingly
missed going. She sought the friendship of Mrs. Wingfold, and found at
last a woman to whom she could heartily look up. She found in her also
a clergyman's wife who understood her husband--not because he was
small-minded, but because she was large-hearted--and fell in thoroughly
with his modes of teaching his people, as well as his objects in regard
to them. She never sought to make one in the parish a churchman, but
tried to make every one she had to do with a scholar of Christ, a child
to his father in heaven.