No system of theology had come between me and a
common-sense reading of the book. I did not for a moment imagine
that to be saved from my sins meant to be saved from the punishment
of them. That would have been no glad tidings to me. My sinfulness
was ever before me, and often my sins too, and I loved them not, yet
could not free myself of them. They were in me and of me, and how
was I to part myself from that which came to me with my
consciousness, which asserted itself in me as one with my
consciousness? I could not get behind myself so as to reach its
root. But here was news of one who came from behind that root itself
to deliver me from that in me which made being a bad thing! Ah, Mr.
Wingfold! what if, after all the discoveries made, and all the
theories set up and pulled down, amid all the commonplaces men call
common sense, notwithstanding all the over-powering and excluding
self-assertion of things that are seen, ever crying, 'Here we are,
and save us there is nothing: the Unseen is the Unreal!'--what if, I
say, notwithstanding all this, it should yet be that the strongest
weapon a man can wield is prayer to one who made him! What if the
man who lifts up his heart to the unknown God even, be entering,
amid the mockery of men who worship what they call natural law and
science, into the region whence issues every law, and where the very
material of science is born!
"To tell you all that followed, if I could recall and narrate it in
order, would take hours.
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