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

disquietude. The sin had got into her soul, and she was comfortable with it. God is her judge. He only knew her aright. She left her money wisely and for good ends."

"I heard tell, to the kirk and the societies and the freedom fund. Yet she had kinsfolk in the Orkneys."

"They are all very rich. They went to lawyers about her property, but Mistress Sabiston had made all too fast and sure for any one to alter. She was a woman that would have her way, dead or alive."

"Well, then, this time, it seems, her way is a good way."

After this David settled his life very much on the old lines. He went to live in Nanna's cottage, and returned to the boats and the fishing with Groat's sons. As for his higher duty, that vocation that had come to him on that blessed night when God opened his mouth and he spoke wonderful and gracious things of his law, he was never for a moment recreant to it. But the kingdom of God frequently comes without observation. To preach a sermon, that was a thing far outside David's possibilities. The power of the church, and its close and exclusive privileges, were at that day in Shetland papal in prerogative. David never dreamed of encroaching on them; nor, indeed, would public opinion have permitted him to do so.

As it was, there grew gradually a feeling of unrest about David. Though he was humble and devout in all kirk exercises, it was known that the people gathered round him not only in his own cottage, but at Groat's and Barbara Traill's, and that he spoke to them of the everlasting gospel as never man had spoken before to them. It was known that when the boats lay stilly rocking on the water, waiting for the "take," David, sitting among his mates, reasoned with them on the love of God, until every face of clay flushed with a radiance quite different from mere color--a radiance that was a direct spiritual emanation, a shining of the soul through mere matter. And as these men were all theologians in a measure, with their "creed" and "evidences" at their tongues' end, it was a wonderful joy to watch their doubts, like the needle verging to the pole, tremble and tremble into certainty.

In about three years such opposition as David roused was strong enough to induce the kirk to consider his behavior. The minister sent for him, and in the privacy of his study David's opportunity came at last. For he spoke so eloquently and mightily of the mercy of the Infinite One that the minister covered his face, and when the young man ceased speaking, he looked tenderly at him, and sent him away with his blessing. And afterward he said to the elders:

"There is nothing to call a session anent. David Borson has been to the school of Christ, and he is learned in the Scriptures. We will not silence him, lest haply we be found to be fighting against God."

Thus for many a year David went in and out among his mates and friends, living the gospel in their sight. The memory of Nanna filled his heart; he loved no other woman, but every desolate and sorrowful woman found in him a friend and a helper. And he drew the little children like a magnet. He was the elder brother of every boy and girl who claimed his love; his hands were ever ready to help them, his heart was ever ready to love them. And in such blessed service he grew nobly aged.

He had come to Shetland when the islands were very far off, when the Norse element ruled them, and the Christianized men and women of the sagas dwelt alone in the strong, quaint stone houses they had built. He lived to see the influx of the southern race and influences, the coming of modern travel and civilization; but he never altered his life, for in its simple, pious dignity it befitted any era.

Now, it is noticeable that good men very often have their desire about the manner of their death. And God so favored his servant David Borson. He went out alone one day in his boat, and a sudden storm came up from the northeast. He did not return. Some said there had been no time to take in the boat's sail, and that she must have gone down with her canvas blowing; others thought she had become unmanageable and drifted into some of the dangerous "races" near the coast.

But, this manner or that manner, David went to heaven as he desired, "by the way of the sea," and God found his body a resting-place among its cool, clean graves--a sepulcher that no man knoweth of, nor shall know until the mighty angel sets his right foot upon the sea, and swears that there shall "be time no longer."
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Publication Date: 08-04-2010

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