Surgeon Paul Faber by George MacDonald (e book free reading txt) 📕

or the pains of death, come upon us, we are ready to despair, and cry out that there is no God, or, if there be, He has forgotten His children. There are times when the darkness closes about us like a wall, and Thou appearest nowhere, either in our hearts, or in the outer universe; we can not tell whether the things we seemed to do in Thy name, were not mere hypocrisies, and our very life is but a gulf of darkness. We cry aloud, and our despair is as a fire in our bones to make us cry; but to all our crying and listening, there seems neither hearing nor answer in the boundless waste. Thou who knowest Thyself God, who knowest Thyself that for which we groan, Thou whom Jesus called Father, we appeal to Thee, not as we imagine Thee, but as Thou seest Thyself, as Jesus knows Thee, to Thy very self we cry-help us, O Cause of us! O Thou from whom alone we are this weakness, through whom alone we can become strength, help us-be our Father. We ask for nothing beyond what Thy Son has told us to ask. We beg for no signs or wonders, but for Thy breath upon our souls, Thy spirit in our hearts. We pray for no cloven tongues of fire-for no mighty rousing of brain or imagination; but we do, with all our power of prayer, pray for Thy spirit; we do not even pray to know that it is given to us; let us, if so it pleases Thee, remain in doubt of the gift for years to come-but lead us thereby. Knowing ourselves only as poor and feeble, aware only of ordinary and common movements of mind and soul, may we yet be possessed by the spirit of God, led by His will in ours. For all things in a man, even those that seem to him the commonest and least uplifted, are the creation of Thy heart, and by the lowly doors of our wavering judgment, dull imagination, luke-warm love, and palsied will, Thou canst enter and glorify all. Give us patience because our hope is in Thee, not in ourselves. Work Thy will in us, and our prayers are ended. Amen."

They rose. The curate said he would call again in the evening, bade them good-by, and went. Mr. Drake turned to his daughter and said-

"Dorothy, that's not the way I have been used to pray or hear people pray; nevertheless the young man seemed to speak very straight up to God. It appears to me there was another spirit there with his. I will humble myself before the Lord. Who knows but he may lift me up!"

"What can my father mean by saying that perhaps God will lift him up?" said Dorothy to herself when she was alone. "It seems to me if I only knew God was anywhere, I should want no other lifting up. I should then be lifted up above every thing forever."

Had she said so to the curate, he would have told her that the only way to be absolutely certain of God, is to see Him as He is, and for that we must first become absolutely pure in heart. For this He is working in us, and perfection and vision will flash together. Were conviction possible without that purity and that vision, I imagine it would work evil in us, fix in their imperfection our ideas, notions, feelings, concerning God, give us for His glory the warped reflection of our cracked and spotted and rippled glass, and so turn our worship into an idolatry.

Dorothy was a rather little woman, with lightish auburn hair, a large and somewhat heavy forehead, fine gray eyes, small well-fashioned features, a fair complexion on a thin skin, and a mouth that would have been better in shape if it had not so often been informed of trouble. With this trouble their poverty had nothing to do; that did not weigh upon her a straw. She was proud to share her father's lot, and could have lived on as little as any laboring woman with seven children. She was indeed a trifle happier since her father's displacement, and would have been happier still had he found it within the barest possibility to decline the annuity allotted him; for, as far back as she could remember, she had been aware of a dislike to his position-partly from pride it may be, but partly also from a sense of the imperfection of the relation between him and his people-one in which love must be altogether predominant, else is it hateful-and chiefly because of a certain sordid element in the community-a vile way of looking at sacred things through the spectacles of mammon, more evident-I only say more evident-in dissenting than in Church of England communities, because of the pressure of expenses upon them. Perhaps the impossibility of regarding her father's church with reverence, laid her mind more open to the cause of her trouble-such doubts, namely, as an active intellect, nourished on some of the best books, and disgusted with the weak fervor of others rated high in her hearing, had been suggesting for years before any words of Faber's reached her. The more her devout nature longed to worship, the more she found it impossible to worship that which was presented for her love and adoration. See believed entirely in her father, but she knew he could not meet her doubts, for many things made it plain that he had never had such himself. An ordinary mind that has had doubts, and has encountered and overcome them, or verified and found them the porters of the gates of truth, may be profoundly useful to any mind similarly assailed; but no knowledge of books, no amount of logic, no degree of acquaintance with the wisest conclusions of others, can enable a man who has not encountered skepticism in his own mind, to afford any essential help to those caught in the net. For one thing, such a man will be incapable of conceiving the possibility that the net may be the net of The Fisher of Men.

Dorothy, therefore, was sorely oppressed. For a long time her life had seemed withering from her, and now that her father was fainting on the steep path, and she had no water to offer him, she was ready to cry aloud in bitterness of spirit.

She had never heard the curate preach-had heard talk of his oddity on all sides, from men and women no more capable of judging him than the caterpillar of judging the butterfly-which yet it must become. The draper, who understood him, naturally shrunk from praising to her the teaching for which he not unfrequently deserted that of her father, and she never looked in the direction of him with any hope. Yet now, the very first time she had heard him speak out of the abundance of his heart, he had left behind him a faint brown ray of hope in hers. It was very peculiar of him to break out in prayer after such an abrupt fashion-in the presence of an older minister than himself-and praying for him too! But there was such an appearance of reality about the man! such a simplicity in his look! such a directness in his petitions! such an active fervor of hope in his tone-without an atom of what she had heard called unction ! His thought and speech appeared to arise from no separated sacred mood that might be assumed and laid aside, but from present faith and feeling, from the absolute point of life at that moment being lived by him. It was an immediate appeal to a hearing, and understanding, and caring God, whose breath was the very air His creatures breathed, the element of their life; an utter acknowledgment of His will as the bliss of His sons and daughters! Such was the shining of the curate's light, and it awoke hope in Dorothy.

In the evening he came again as he had said, and brought Juliet. Each in the other, Dorothy and she recognized suffering, and in a very few moments every thing was arranged between them. Juliet was charmed with the simplicity and intentness of Dorothy; in Juliet's manner and carriage, Dorothy at once recognized a breeding superior to her own, and at once laid hold of the excellence by acknowledging it. In a moment she made Juliet understand how things were, and Juliet saw as quickly that she must assent to the arrangement proposed. But she had not been with them two days, when Dorothy found the drawing-room as open to her as before she came, and far more pleasant.

While the girls were talking below, the two clergymen sat again in the study.

"I have taken the liberty," said the curate, "of bringing an old book I should like you to look at, if you don't mind-chiefly for the sake of some verses that pleased me much when I read them first, and now please me more when I read them for the tenth time. If you will allow me, I will read them to you."

Mr. Drake liked good poetry, but did not much relish being called upon to admire, as he imagined he was now. He assented, of course, graciously enough, and soon found his mistake.

This is the poem Wingfold read:

CONSIDER THE RAVENS.

Lord, according to Thy words,
I have considered Thy birds;
And I find their life good,
And better the better understood;
Sowing neither corn nor wheat,
They have all that they can eat;
Reaping no more than they sow.
They have all they can stow;
Having neither barn nor store,
Hungry again, they eat more.

Considering, I see too that they
Have a busy life, and plenty of play;
In the earth they dig their bills deep,
And work well though they do not heap;
Then to play in the air they are not loth,
And their nests between are better than both.

But this is when there blow no storms;
When berries are plenty in winter, and worms;
When their feathers are thick, and oil is enough
To keep the cold out and the rain off:
If there should come a long hard frost,
Then it looks as Thy birds were lost.

But I consider further, and find
A hungry bird has a free mind;
He is hungry to-day, not to-morrow;
Steals no comfort, no grief doth borrow;
This moment is his, Thy will hath said it,
The next is nothing till Thou hast made it.

The bird has pain, but has no fear,
Which is the worst of any gear;
When cold and hunger and harm betide him,
He gathers them not to stuff inside him;
Content with the day's ill he has got,
He waits just, nor haggles with his lot;
Neither jumbles God's will
With driblets from his own still.

But next I see, in my endeavor,
Thy birds here do not live forever;
That cold or hunger, sickness or age,
Finishes their earthly stage;
The rook drops without a stroke,
And never gives another croak;
Birds lie here, and birds lie there,
With little feathers all astare;
And