Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/354

348 it any wonder if the light should have soon gone up in a soul like that? When I was a younger man I used to go out with the fishing-boats now and then, drawn chiefly by my love for the boy, who earned his own bread that way before he was in his teens. One night we were caught in a terrible storm, arnd had to stand out to sea in the pitch-dark. He was then not fourteen. 'Can you let a boy like that steer?' I said to the captain of the boat. — 'Yes, just a boy like that,' he answered. 'Ma'colm 'll steer as straucht's a porpus.' — When he was relieved he crept over the thwarts to where I sat. 'Is there any true definition of a straight line, sir?' he said. 'I can't take the one in my Euclid.' — 'So you're not afraid, Malcolm?' I returned, heedless of his question, for I wanted to see what he would answer. — 'Afraid, sir!' he rejoined with some surprise. 'I wad ill like to hear the Lord say, O thou o' little faith!"' — 'But,' I persisted, 'God may mean to drown you.' — 'An' what for not?' he returned. 'Gien ye war to tell me 'at I micht be droon't ohn him meant it, I wad be fleyt eneuch.' I see your ladyship does not understand: I will interpret the dark saying: 'And why should he not drown me? If you were to tell me I might be drowned without his meaning it, I should be frightened enough.' Believe me, my lady, the right way is simple to find, though only they that seek it first can find it. But I have allowed myself," concluded the schoolmaster, "to be carried adrift in my laudation of Malcolm. You did not come to hear praises of him, my lady."

"I owe him much," said Clementina. "But tell me, then, Mr. Graham, how is it that you know there is a God, and one — one — fit to be trusted as you trust him?"

"In no way that I can bring to bear on to the reason of another so as to produce conviction."

"Then what is to become of me?"

"I can do for you what is far better. I can persuade you to look and see whether before your own door stands not a gate — lies not a path to walk in. Entering by that gate, walking in that path, you shall yourself arrive at the conviction, which no man can give you, that there is a living love and truth at the heart of your being and pervading all that surrounds you. The man who seeks the truth in any other manner will never find it. Listen to me a moment, my lady. I loved that boy's mother. Naturally, she did not love me — how could she? I was very unhappy. I sought comfort from the unknown Source of my life. He gave me to understand his Son, and so I understood himself, knew that I came of God, and was comforted."

"But how do you know that it was not all a delusion, the product of your own fervid imagination? Do not mistake me: I want to find it true."

"It is a right and honest question, my lady. I will tell you. Not to mention the conviction which a truth beheld must carry with itself, and concerning which there can be no argument either with him who does or him who does not see it, this experience goes far with me, and would with you if you had it, as you may — namely, that all my difficulties and confusions have gone on clearing themselves up ever since I set out to walk in that way. My consciousness of life is threefold what it was; my perception of what is lovely around me, and my delight in it, threefold; my power of understanding things and of ordering my way threefold also: the same with my hope and my courage, my love to my kind, my power of forgiveness. In short, I cannot but believe that my whole being and its whole world are in process of rectification for me. Is not that something to set against the doubt born of the eye and ear, and the questions of an intellect that can neither grasp nor disprove? I say nothing of better things still. To the man who receives such as I mean, they are the heart of life — to the man who does not, they exist not. But, I say, if I thus find my whole being enlightened and redeemed, and know that therein I fare according to the word of the man of whom the old story tells; if I find that his word, and the result of action founded upon that word, correspond and agree, opening a heaven within and beyond me, in which I see myself delivered from all that now in myself is to myself despicable and unlovely; if I can reasonably — reasonably to myself, not to another — cherish hopes of a glory of conscious being divinely better than all my imagination when most daring could invent — a glory springing from absolute unity with my Creator, and therefore with my neighbor; if the Lord of the ancient tale, I say, has thus held word with me, am I likely to doubt much or long whether there be such a Lord or no?"

"What, then, is the way that lies before my own door? Help me to see it."

"It is just the old way — as old as the conscience — that of obedience to any and every law of personal duty. But if you have ever seen the Lord, if only from afar 