Having read
it over, and found nothing to compromise him with his conscience,
which was like an irritable man trying to find his way in a windy
wood by means of a broken lantern, he laid all the rest aside and
felt a little relieved.
Wingfold had never neglected the private duty of a clergyman in
regard of morning and evening devotions, but was in the habit of
dressing and undressing his soul with the help of certain chosen
contents of the prayer-book--a somewhat circuitous mode of
communicating with Him who was so near him,--that is, if St. Paul
was right in saying that he lived, and moved, and was, IN Him; but
that Saturday he knelt by his bedside at noon, and began to pray or
try to pray as he had never prayed or tried to pray before. The
perplexed man cried out within the clergyman, and pressed for some
acknowledgment from God of the being he had made.
But--was it strange to tell? or if strange, was it not the most
natural result nevertheless?--almost the same moment he began to
pray in this truer fashion, the doubt rushed up in him like a
torrent-spring from the fountains of the great deep--Was
there--could there be a God at all? a real being who might actually
hear his prayer? In this crowd of houses and shops and churches,
amidst buying and selling, and ploughing and praising and
backbiting, this endless pursuit of ends and of means to ends, while
yet even the wind that blew where it listed blew under laws most
fixed, and the courses of the stars were known to a hair's-breadth,
--was there--could there be a silent invisible God working his own
will in it all? Was there a driver to that chariot whose
multitudinous horses seemed tearing away from the pole in all
directions? and was he indeed, although invisible and inaudible,
guiding that chariot, sure as the flight of a comet, straight to its
goal? Or was there a soul to that machine whose myriad wheels went
grinding on and on, grinding the stars into dust, matter into man,
and man into nothingness? Was there--could there be a living heart
to the universe that did positively hear him--poor, misplaced,
dishonest, ignorant Thomas Wingfold, who had presumed to undertake a
work he neither could perform nor had the courage to forsake, when
out of the misery of the grimy little cellar of his consciousness he
cried aloud for light and something to make a man of him? For now
that Thomas had begun to doubt like an honest being, every ugly
thing within him began to show itself to his awakened probity.
Pages:
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83