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

it only brings us closer to each other. Help me, father: I am trying hard to find God. At the same time, I confess I would rather not find Him, than find Him such as I have sometimes heard you represent Him."

"It may well be," returned her father-the ex-cathedral , the professional tone had vanished utterly for the time, and he spoke with the voice of an humble, true man-"it may well be that I have done Him wrong; for since now at my age I am compelled to allow that I am not sure of Him, what more likely than that I may have been cherishing wrong ideas concerning Him, and so not looking in the right direction for finding Him?"

"Where did you get your notions of God, father-those, I mean, that you took with you to the pulpit?"

A year ago even, if he had been asked the same question, he would at once have answered, "From the Word of God;" but now he hesitated, and minutes passed before he began a reply. For he saw now that it was not from the Bible he had gathered them, whence soever they had come at first. He pondered and searched-and found that the real answer eluded him, hiding itself in a time beyond his earliest memory. It seemed plain, therefore, that the source whence first he began to draw those notions, right or wrong, must be the talk and behavior of the house in which he was born, the words and carriage of his father and mother and their friends. Next source to that came the sermons he heard on Sundays, and the books given him to read. The Bible was one of those books, but from the first he read it through the notions with which his mind was already vaguely filled, and with the comments of his superiors around him. Then followed the books recommended at college, this author and that, and the lectures he heard there upon the attributes of God and the plan of salvation. The spirit of commerce in the midst of which he had been bred, did not occur to him as one of the sources.

But he had perceived enough. He opened his mouth and bravely answered her question as well as he could, not giving the Bible as the source from which he had taken any one of the notions of God he had been in the habit of presenting.

"But mind," he added, "I do not allow that therefore my ideas must be incorrect. If they be second-hand, they may yet be true. I do admit that where they have continued only second-hand, they can have been of little value to me."

"What you allow, then, father," said Dorothy, "is that you have yourself taken none of your ideas direct from the fountain-head?"

"I am afraid I must confess it, my child-with this modification, that I have thought many of them over a good deal, and altered some of them not a little to make them fit the molds of truth in my mind."

"I am so glad, father!" said Dorothy. "I was positively certain, from what I knew of you-which is more than any one else in this world, I do believe-that some of the things you said concerning God never could have risen in your own mind."

"They might be in the Bible for all that," said the minister, very anxious to be and speak the right thing. "A man's heart is not to be trusted for correct notions of God."

"Nor yet for correct interpretation of the Bible, I should think," said Dorothy.

"True, my child," answered her father with a sigh, "-except as it be already a Godlike heart. The Lord says a bramble-bush can not bring forth grapes."

"The notions you gathered of God from other people, must have come out of their hearts, father?"

"Out of somebody's heart?"

"Just so," answered Dorothy.

"Go on, my child," said her father. "Let me understand clearly your drift."

"I have heard Mr. Wingfold say," returned Dorothy, "that however men may have been driven to form their ideas of God before Christ came, no man can, with thorough honesty, take the name of a Christian, whose ideas of the Father of men are gathered from any other field than the life, thought, words, deeds, of the only Son of that Father. He says it is not from the Bible as a book that we are to draw our ideas of God, but from the living Man into whose presence that book brings us, Who is alive now, and gives His spirit that they who read about Him may understand what kind of being He is, and why He did as He did, and know Him, in some possible measure, as He knows Himself.-I can only repeat the lesson like a child."

"I suspect," returned the minister, "that I have been greatly astray. But after this, we will seek our Father together, in our Brother, Jesus Christ."

It was the initiation of a daily lesson together in the New Testament, which, while it drew their hearts closer to each other, drew them, with growing delight, nearer and nearer to the ideal of humanity, Jesus Christ, in whom shines the glory of its Father.

A man may look another in the face for a hundred years and not know him. Men have looked Jesus Christ in the face, and not known either Him or his Father. It was needful that He should appear, to begin the knowing of Him, but speedily was His visible presence taken away, that it might not become, as assuredly it would have become, a veil to hide from men the Father of their spirits. Do you long for the assurance of some sensible sign? Do you ask why no intellectual proof is to be had? I tell you that such would but delay, perhaps altogether impair for you, that better, that best, that only vision, into which at last your world must blossom-such a contact, namely, with the heart of God Himself, such a perception of His being, and His absolute oneness with you, the child of His thought, the individuality softly parted from His spirit, yet living still and only by His presence and love, as, by its own radiance, will sweep doubt away forever. Being then in the light and knowing it, the lack of intellectual proof concerning that which is too high for it, will trouble you no more than would your inability to silence a metaphysician who declared that you had no real existence. It is for the sake of such vision as God would give that you are denied such vision as you would have. The Father of our spirits is not content that we should know Him as we now know each other. There is a better, closer, nearer than any human way of knowing, and to that He is guiding us across all the swamps of our unteachableness, the seas of our faithlessness, the desert of our ignorance. It is so very hard that we should have to wait for that which we can not yet receive? Shall we complain of the shadows cast upon our souls by the hand and the napkin polishing their mirrors to the receiving of the more excellent glory! Have patience, children of the Father. Pray always and do not faint. The mists and the storms and the cold will pass-the sun and the sky are for evermore. There were no volcanoes and no typhoons but for the warm heart of the earth, the soft garment of the air, and the lordly sun over all. The most loving of you can not imagine how one day the love of the Father will make you love even your own.

Much trustful talk passed between father and daughter as they walked home: they were now nearer to each other than ever in their lives before.

"You don't mind my coming out here alone, papa?" said Dorothy, as, after a little chat with the gate-keeper, they left the park. "I have of late found it so good to be alone! I think I am beginning to learn to think."

"Do in every thing just as you please, my child," said her father. "I can have no objection to what you see good. Only don't be so late as to make me anxious."

"I like coming early," said Dorothy. "These lovely mornings make me feel as if the struggles of life were over, and only a quiet old age were left."

The father looked anxiously at his daughter. Was she going to leave him? It smote him to the heart that he had done so little to make her life a blessed one. How hard no small portion of it had been! How worn and pale she looked! Why did she not show fresh and bright like other young women-Mrs. Faber for instance? He had not guided her steps into the way of peace! At all events he had not led her home to the house of wisdom and rest! Too good reason why-he had not himself yet found that home! Henceforth, for her sake as well as his own, he would besiege the heavenly grace with prayer.

The opening of his heart in confessional response to his daughter, proved one of those fresh starts in the spiritual life, of which a man needs so many as he climbs to the heavenly gates.


CHAPTER XXXIII.

PAUL FABER'S DRESSING-ROOM.


Faber did not reach home till a few minutes before the dinner hour. He rode into the stable-yard, entered the house by the surgery, and went straight to his dressing-room; for the roads were villianous, and Ruber's large feet had made a wonderful sight of his master, who respected his wife's carpet. At the same time he hoped, as it was so near dinner-time, to find her in her chamber. She had, however, already made her toilet, and was waiting his return in the drawing-room. Her heart made a false motion and stung her when she heard his steps pass the door and go up stairs, for generally he came to greet her the moment he entered the house.-Had he seen any body!-Had he heard any thing? It was ten dreadful minutes before he came down, but he entered cheerily, with the gathered warmth of two days of pent-up affection. She did her best to meet him as if nothing had happened. For indeed what had happened-except her going to church? If nothing had taken place since she saw him-since she knew him-why such perturbation? Was marriage a slavery of the very soul, in which a wife was bound to confess every thing to her husband, even to her most secret thoughts and feelings? Or was a husband lord not only over the present and future of his wife, but over her past also? Was she bound to disclose every thing that lay in that past? If Paul made no claim upon her beyond the grave, could he claim back upon the dead past before he knew her, a period over which she had now no more control than over that when she would be but a portion of the material all?

But whatever might be Paul's theories of marriage or claims upon his wife, it was enough for her miserable unrest that she was what is called a living soul, with a history, and what has come to be called a conscience-a something, that is, as most people regard it, which has the power, and uses it, of making uncomfortable.

The existence of such questions as I have indicated reveals that already between her and him there showed space,