“Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid, Leave them to God above; him serve and fear.
... Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there. Be lowly wise.”
Milton.
“The calm philosopher may analyze
The elements that form a water-drop;
But will the faint and thirsty pilgrim stop
To scan its nature, ere the fount he tries?
Thus, while the haughty soul God’s truth receives
With cold indifference, reasoning, doubting still,—
The poor in spirit from the sacred rill
Drinks life, and, ere he comprehends, believes.”
The red glow of sunset had ceased to light up the latticed windows of the vicarage, or bathe its smooth lawn and thick shrubbery in a crimson glow. The rosy tint of the sky had faded into grey, and the evening mist had begun to rise, but still the vicar prolonged his walk on the gravel path in front of his dwelling. Up and down he slowly paced, with his hands behind him, his eyes bent on the ground, and an expression of thought—painful thought—upon his benevolent face. Ida passed him on her return from a class, but, contrary to his usual habit, he took no notice of his daughter. Mabel tripped[76] through the open window,—a mode of exit which she usually preferred to the door,—and, running lightly up to her father, locked her arm within his, with a playful remark on his solitary mood. The remark did not call up an answering smile; Mr. Aumerle did not appear even to have heard it, so Mabel, concluding from his manner that he must be composing a funeral sermon, quietly left him to his grave meditations.
At length, with a little sigh, as if he had just arrived at the conclusion of some painful line of reflection, the clergyman turned towards the house, and entering at the door, made his way towards his own little study.
As he had expected, the room was not empty. His brother sat reading at the table by the light of a lamp, which threw into strong relief the classic outline of his handsome features. Aumerle saw not—no mortal could see—the dim, dark form beside him, or mark the gigantic shadow cast over the reader by the bat-like wing extended over him by Pride.
Mr. Aumerle sat down near Augustine in silence. He surveyed his brother some moments with a look of anxious tenderness, then gave a little cough, as if to arouse his attention.
Augustine glanced up from the volume of German philosophy which he had been perusing. He had perhaps an idea that something unpleasant was[77] coming, for he did not choose to commence the conversation.
“My dear Augustine,” began Lawrence Aumerle, after another uneasy little cough, “I have been for some time wishing to speak to you on a subject of great interest to us both. You must be aware,—you cannot but feel that the light observation which escaped you to-day at dinner, was of a nature to give me considerable pain.”
“What I said about the Bible?” replied his brother. “Well, it was a thoughtless observation, I own; but I certainly never intended to pain you. Your good lady came down upon me so sharp, and gave me such an oratorical cudgelling, that even Ida herself must have confessed that the punishment exceeded the offence.”
“Augustine, this is no jesting matter,” said his brother.
“I own that I was indiscreet and wrong in talking after that fashion in presence of the girls. Are you not satisfied with that frank confession?”
“I am not satisfied; I cannot be satisfied while I remain in doubt as to whether those careless words did not really express the opinion of my brother. Ever since you have been here on this visit, Augustine, it has seemed to me as if a change had passed over you; you are no longer what you once were. There is not the frank interchange of thought between us that there used to be in former years.”
[78]
“I am no longer a boy,” replied Augustine, leaning carelessly back in his chair.
“When you were a boy,” continued Mr. Aumerle, “you used often to express to me your desire to enter the ministry.”
“Oh, that’s all over,” replied Augustine quickly; “my views on many points have changed. I have discovered that there are many paths open to speculative thought besides the dry beaten one which you and all the pious world have been content for generations to tread.”
“There is nothing,” murmured Pride, “so hateful to an exalted spirit as travelling in a crowd.”
“Is it well,” said Aumerle, “to wander from the narrow path, in which so many have found happiness in life, and peace in death?”
“There are stumbling-blocks in that path,” replied Augustine; “difficulties which it would puzzle even a theologian like yourself to remove, and over which the learned and the zealous have wrangled from time immemorial. How can you explain to me this?” and the young man ran over, with rapid eloquence, one after another of the difficult questions which have for ages put human wisdom to fault. “How can you explain all this?” he repeated, at the close of his argument.
“These things are beyond the grasp of the human mind,” replied the clergyman; “they are not contrary to reason, but above it.”
[79]
“Reason is the guide allotted to intellectual man,” said Augustine; “I go as far as she leads me, and no further.”
“Reason is the guide that leads to the temple of revelation. There is an overwhelming mass of evidence, external and internal, to convince any unprejudiced mind that the Bible is the word of God. Prophecies accomplished, types fulfilled, the divine Spirit breathed through the pages, the unearthly perfection of One character there portrayed, with superhuman knowledge of the frailties and requirements of man; the devotion of the early witnesses to its truth, who sealed their testimony with their blood; the standing miracles foretold in the Scriptures, of the Jewish people scattered amongst all nations, and yet separate, and of a Church which, rising in an obscure land from the tomb of its Founder, has spread against the opposition of earth and hell, has swept away the barriers raised against it by temporal power and spiritual idolatry, and the natural opposition of every unregenerate heart, and which still goes on conquering and to conquer;—is not all this sufficient to bring reason to the position of the handmaid of religion, and make her, as I said at the first, the guide to the temple of revelation?”
“Granted,” said Augustine, after a pause; “but, when we enter that temple, when we scrutinize the mysteries which it contains—”
[80]
“Reason is no longer capable of guiding the soul; the appointed guardian of these mysteries is faith.”
“Who would lead us blindfold!” said Augustine impatiently. “Here it is that I would make my stand, for I maintain that no man—”
Pride.—“Gifted, intellectual man—”
Augustine.—“Is bound to believe what he cannot understand!”
Aumerle.—“Augustine, Augustine, all nature refutes you! What do we understand of the physical wonders that have environed man for thousands of years? We note facts, but in what innumerable instances are we baffled when we attempt to trace back effects to their causes! We hear the power of electricity in the thunder-clap, see it in the flash of lightning, nay, make it the servant of our will to unite distant continents together; but who can say that he understands it? We give it a name, we calculate its force, but reason grasps not its nature. Who can say how the soul is united to the body? Who can say what the faculty of memory may be, where it hoards up its life-accumulated treasures, and produces on the moment from the mass the very idea which it requires? These are not foreign subjects, they are subjects brought daily to the attention of myriads of reasoning beings, and during sixty centuries what has reason made of them? She is content to give up her place to faith; we believe, but we cannot understand. And can we expect that aught[81] else should be the case when a weak, helpless worm like man fixes his thoughts upon the solemn mysteries of the invisible world,—when the finite attempts to comprehend the infinite! Reason, your boasted reason, at once shows the folly of such an expectation. On this earth we are in the infancy of our existence. As little could the young child of a monarch, while scarcely yet able to read, expect to grasp the difficult science of administration, and make himself master of the details of the business of an empire, as man, with his limited faculties, fathom the deep things of God!”
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