Prisoners of Conscience by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (mini ebook reader txt) 📕

will not dare to discuss in any way what he has already decided. We will now sing together the Forty-third Psalm."

And, amid the rustle of the opening leaves, the minister himself started the psalmody. There was a little air of hurry in his movements, as if he hasted to drown all contention in singing; but he had reached his usual grave composure before the end of the verses, and the benediction fell like the final satisfying chords of the melody.

Matilda was dumfounded by such a cutting short of the case, but even she dared not interrupt functions so holy as praise and prayer. In the kirk she was compelled to restrain her indignation, but when she found that the resolution of Minister Campbell not to discuss the matter or enter into any conversation about it was universally adopted by the townspeople, her anger found words such as are not to be met with in books; and she did not spare them.

David was singularly happy and satisfied. He had been grandly supported both by God and man, and he was grateful for the pronounced kindness of his friends, for their hand-shakings and greetings and loving words and wishes. But when both the enthusiasm and the pang of conflict were over, oh, how good it was to clasp Nanna's hand, and in this perfect but silent companionship to walk home with her! Then Nanna made a cup of tea, and they drank it together, and talked over what had been said and done, finally drifting, as they always did, to that invincible necessity that whatever is could not but so have been. And though their words were, as all human words about God must be, terribly inadequate, yet their longing, their love, and their fears were all understood. And He who is so vast and strange when


With intellect we gaze,
Close to their hearts stole in,
In a thousand tender ways.


----- [Footnote 3: 1 Ps. xxvii.]


IX


A SACRIFICE ACCEPTED

After this the winter came on rapidly and severely. The seas were dangerous, and the fishing precarious and poor, and the fever still lingered, many cases being found as far north as Yell. Thus suffering and hard poverty and death filled the short days and made twice as long the stretched-out nights of the dark season. The old cloud gathered round David, and when the minister preached of "the will and purposes of God," it seemed to David that they were altogether penal. The unfathomable inner side of his life was all gloom and doubt; how, then, could the material side be cheerful and confident?

The new minister, however, had conceived a strong liking for the young man; they were nearly of the same age; and he saw that David was troubled about spiritual matters, and took every opportunity to discuss them with him. But he had too much of the schools, he was too untried, and had been, in the main, too happily situated to comprehend David's views. The very piety of the two men was different. David's was lively, personal, and tender; it sat in the center. The minister's was official, intellectually accepted, conscientiously practised. It was not strange, then, that any dissent David ventured to make was not conceived of as a soul-query, but rather as a challenge against impregnable truths. He was always ready to defend Calvinism, though David did not consciously attack it. To be sure, he said strange and daring things--things which came from his heart, and which often staggered his opponent; but all the more Minister Campbell put on his armor to defend his creed.

"It is a hard religion for men and for women," said David, as they talked a stormy afternoon away on Barbara's hearthstone; "and why God gave it, I can't tell; for, after all, minister, the blessedness of heaven is an eternity older than the damnation of hell."

"Men called it unto themselves, and it is not hard, David. It is a grand creed; it is a strong anchor for a weak soul; it won't let a man drift into the deep waters of infidelity or the miserable shoals of 'perhaps' and 'suppose.' Neither will it let him float on waves of feeling like Arminianism, and be content with 'ahs' and 'ohs,' and shrink from 'therefores.' Calvinism makes strong men before the Lord, David, and strong men are not laid on rose-leaves and fed on pap and cream."

"That is true, minister; for it seems to me that whenever men are to be fishers, and fight the winds and waves, or to make a living out of bare moor or rocks, or to do any other of the hard work of life, they are born Calvinists."

"Just so, David. Arminians can weave a piece of broadcloth, and Episcopals can till the rich, juicy fields of England; but God's hard work--yes, David, and his hard fighting--has to be done by his Calvinists. They were the only fighting Protestants. But for Calvinists, Puritans, Huguenots, there would have been no Reformation. Philip and the Pope would have had their way, and we should all have been papists or atheists."

"I know not. You say so, minister, and it is doubtless true."

"It is true. You have been born to a noble creed; accept it with thankfulness and without demur. You are not called upon to understand it or to reason about it. It is faith that conquers."

And after such an oration the young minister would go away with a proud sense of duty well performed, burning with his own evangel, and liking David well for being the invoker of his enthusiasm. But David, after his departure, was always silent and depressed; his intellect may have been quickened, but he was not comforted.

The sunshine that had brightened his life during the past year was gone, for he had found out that all his happiness was bound up in Nanna, and Nanna was on the verge of despair. Day by day she grew thinner and whiter, more melancholy and more silent. She did only work enough to supply the barest needs of life, and for the most part sat hour after hour with dropped hands and closed eyes; or she was seized with a restlessness that drove her to motion, and then she walked the small bounds of her room until physical exhaustion threw her into deep sleep.

David watched her with a sad patience. He had felt severely the loss of Vala, and he did not presume to measure Nanna's sorrow by his own. He knew it was natural that for some weeks she should weep for a child so dear, whose little life had been so pitifully wronged, so bound to suffering, so cruelly cut short. But when this natural sorrow was not healed by time, when Nanna nursed her grief to despair and dwelt with it in the valley of the shadow of death, he thought it time to reason with her.

"You will kill yourself, Nanna," he said.

"Well, then, David, I hate life."

"Do you wish to die?"

"No; I am afraid to die. I know that I am sinning every day in weeping for my poor lost bairn, and yet I am that way made that I cannot help but weep for her. For it is my fault, David, all my fault. Why, then, did He pursue the child with His anger from the first hour of her sorrowful life to the last? And where is she now? O David, where is she? If God would only let me go to her!"

"_Whist_, Nanna! You know not what you are saying. You might be asking yourself away from His presence."

"I would rather be with Vala. If that be sinful, let me thole the wages of my sin. Where is my dear bairn?"

"I heard Elder Kennoch say we may have a hope that God will eventually take pity on those babes who have done no actual sin."

"But _when_ will he take pity? And until he does, how can the wee souls endure his anger? O David, my heart will break! My heart will break!"

"Nanna, listen to this: when Elga Wick's child died, the minister said there was a benign interpretation of the doctrines which taught us that _none but elect infants died_. It would be unjust, Nanna, unless the child was elect, not to give it the offer of salvation."

"What good would eighty years of 'offers' do, if there was no election to eternal life?"

"Nanna, your father was a child of God, and you have loved him from your youth upward."

"Can that help Vala?"

"Even so. He keeps his mercy for children's children, to the third and fourth generation of them that fear him. Vala was in the direct succession of faith."

"You know what her father and his folk have been?"

"Yes, I know."

"Oh, why did my father let me marry the man? He should rather have tied me hands and feet, and cast me into the depths of the sea. He should have said to me, 'Nanna, you may have a bairn, and it may be a child of sin, and thus foreordained to hell-fire.' Do you think then I would have wed Nicol Sinclair?"

"Ay, I think you would."

"Do you believe that I was born for that end?"

"I think you had set your heart on Nicol at all risks."

"At that time Nicol was in good favor with all folk."

"You have told me that your father liked him not, and that he said many things to you against a marriage with him; so, then, if your heart had not been fully set on its own way, his 'no' would have been sufficient. If we heed not fathers and mothers and teachers, we should not heed, Nanna, no, not if one came from the dead to warn us."

"That is an awful truth, David."

"And one must speak truth to heal a wounded soul. If there be a canker in the body, you know well the doctor must not spare the sharp knife. But I would not put away hope for Vala--no, indeed!"

"Why, David? Oh, why?"

"Has she not kindred in His presence? Will He not remember His promise to them? Will they forget to remind Him of it? I think not so hardly of the dead."

"David, I will tell you the last awful truth. I never could get the poor little one baptized,--things ay went so against it,--and she died without being signed and sealed to His mercy; that is the dreadful part of her death. I was ashamed--I was afraid to tell you before. O David, if you had stayed by Vala instead of going to that man, you might perhaps have won her this saving grace; but it was not to be."

David almost fainted with the shock of this intelligence. He understood now the anguish which was driving Nanna into the grave; and he had no comfort to offer her, for Nanna seemed to make out a terribly clear case of rejection and of foreordained refusal.

"I was feared to ask Nicol to stand with the child when it ought to have been presented in the kirk," she said.

"But your father?" asked David.

"I was feared to ask my father to stand in Nicol's place, lest it should make Nicol harder to me than he was. And," she continued, weeping bitterly as she spoke, "I thought not of Vala dying, and hoped that in the future there might be a way opened. If father had