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.And now what was she to conclude from his reading the Apocrypha?The fact was not to be interpreted to his advantage: was he notreading what was not the Bible as if it were the Bible, and when hemight have been reading the Bible itself? Besides, the Apocryphacame so near the Bible when it was not the Bible! it must be atleast rather wicked! At the same time she could not drive from hermind the impressiveness both of the matter she had heard, and hismanner of reading it: the strong sound of judgment and condemnationin it came home to her--she could not have told how or why, exceptgenerally because of her sins.She was one of those--not very few Ithink--who from conjunction of a lovely conscience with anill-instructed mind, are doomed for a season to much suffering.Shewas largely different from her friend: the religious opinions of thelatter--they were in reality rather metaphysical than religious, andbad either way--though she clung to them with all the tenacity of acreature with claws, occasioned her not an atom of mentaldiscomposure: perhaps that was in part why she clung to them! theywere as she would have them! She did not trouble herself about whatGod required of her, beyond holding the doctrine the holding ofwhich guaranteed, as she thought, her future welfare.Consciencetoward God had very little to do with her opinions, and her heartstill less.Her head on the contrary, perhaps rather her memory,was considerably occupied with the matter; nothing she held had everbeen by her regarded on its own merits--that is, on its individualclaim to truth; if it had been handed down by her church, that wasenough; to support it she would search out text after text, andpress it into the service.Any meaning but that which the church ofher fathers gave to a passage must be of the devil, and every manopposed to the truth who saw in that meaning anything but truth! Itwas indeed impossible Miss Carmichael should see any meaning butthat, even if she had looked for it; she was nowise qualified fordiscovering truth, not being herself true.What she saw and lovedin the doctrines of her church was not the truth, but the assertion;and whoever questioned, not to say the doctrine, but even theproving of it by any particular passage, was a dangerous person, andunsound.All the time her acceptance and defence of any doctrinemade not the slightest difference to her life--as indeed how shouldit?Such was the only friend lady Arctura had.But the conscience andheart of the younger woman were alive to a degree that boded illeither for the doctrine that stinted their growth, or the natureunable to cast it off.Miss Carmichael was a woman aboutsix-and-twenty--and had been a woman, like too many Scotch girls,long before she was out of her teens--a human flower cut anddried--an unpleasant specimen, and by no means valuable from itsscarcity.Self-sufficient, assured, with scarce shyness enough formodesty, handsome and hard, she was essentially a self-gloriousPhilistine; nor would she be anything better till something was sentto humble her, though what spiritual engine might be equal to thetask was not for man to imagine.She was clever, but her clevernessmade nobody happier; she had great confidence, but her confidencegave courage to no one, and took it from many; she had little fancy,and less imagination than any other I ever knew.The divine wonderwas, that she had not yet driven the delicate, truth-loving Arcturamad.From her childhood she had had the ordering of all heropinions: whatever Sophy Carmichael said, lady Arctura never thoughtof questioning.A lie is indeed a thing in its nature unbelievable,but there is a false belief always ready to receive the false truth,and there is no end to the mischief the two can work.The awfulpunishment of untruth in the inward parts is that the man is givenover to believe a lie.Lady Arctura was in herself a gentle creature who shrank from eithergiving or receiving a rough touch; but she had an inherited pride,by herself unrecognized as such, which made her capable of hurtingas well as being hurt.Next to the doctrines of the Scottishchurch, she respected her own family: it had in truth no other claimto respect than that its little good and much evil had been donebefore the eyes of a large part of many generations--whence she wasborn to think herself distinguished, and to imagine a claim for theacknowledgment of distinction upon all except those of greatlyhigher rank than her own.This inborn arrogance was in some degreemodified by respect for the writers of certain books--not one ofwhom was of any regard in the eyes of the thinkers of the age.Ofany writers of power, beyond those of the Bible, either in thiscountry or another, she knew nothing.Yet she had a real instinctfor what was good in literature; and of the writers to whom I havereferred she not only liked the worthiest best, but liked best theirbest things.I need hardly say they were all religious writers; forthe keen conscience and obedient heart of the girl had made her veryearly turn herself towards the quarter where the sun ought to rise,the quarter where all night long gleams the auroral hope; butunhappily she had not gone direct to the heavenly well in earthlyground--the words of the Master himself.How could she? From verychildhood her mind had been filled with traditionary utterancesconcerning the divine character and the divine plans--the merestinventions of men far more desirous of understanding what they werenot required to understand, than of doing what they were required todo--whence their crude and false utterances concerning a God oftheir own fancy--in whom it was a good man's duty, in the name ofany possible God, to disbelieve; and just because she was true,authority had immense power over her.The very sweetness of theirnature forbids such to doubt the fitness of others.She had besides had a governess of the orthodox type, a largeproportion of whose teaching was of the worst heresy, for it waslies against him who is light, and in whom is no darkness at all;her doctrines were so many smoked glasses held up between the mindof her pupil and the glory of the living God; nor had she oncedirected her gaze to the very likeness of God, the face of JesusChrist.Had Arctura set herself to understand him the knowledge ofwhom is eternal life, she would have believed none of these falsereports of him, but she had not yet met with any one to help her tocast aside the doctrines of men, and go face to face with the Son ofMan, the visible God.First lie of all, she had been taught that shemust believe so and so before God would let her come near him orlisten to her.The old cobbler could have taught her differently;but she would have thought it improper to hold conversation withsuch a man, even if she had known him for the best man in Auchars.She was in sore and sad earnest to believe as she was told she mustbelieve; therefore instead of beginning to do what Jesus Christsaid, she tried hard to imagine herself one of the chosen, triedhard to believe herself the chief of sinners.There was no one totell her that it is only the man who sees something of the glory ofGod, the height and depth and breadth and length of his love andunselfishness, not a child dabbling in stupid doctrines, that canfeel like St.Paul.She tried to feel that she deserved to be burnedin hell for ever and ever, and that it was boundlessly good ofGod--who made her so that she could not help being a sinner--to giveher the least chance of escaping it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
