"I mean that I think He meant by 'raiment,' not clothes so much as life; what we put on or have put on to us; what each soul wears and moves in, to feel itself by and to be manifest; history, circumstance. 'Raiment,'—'garment,'—the words always stand for this, beyond their temporary and technical sense. 'He laid aside his garment,'—He gave up his own life that He might have been living,—to come and wash our feet!"
"And the people cast their garments before Him, when He rode into Jerusalem," Sylvie said presently.
"Yes; that is the way He must come into his kingdom, and lead us with Him. We are to give up our old ways, and the selfish things we lived in once, and not think about our own raiment any more. He will give it to us, as He gives it to the lilies; and the glory of it will be something that we could not in any way spin for our selves. And by and by it will come to be full and right, all through; we shall be clothed with his righteousness. What is righteousness but rightness?"
"I thought it only meant goodness. That we hadn't any goodness of our own; that we mustn't trust in it, you know?"
"But that his, by faith, is to cover us? That is the old letter-doctrine, which men didn't look through to see how graciously true it is, and how it gives them all things. For it is things they want, all the time; realities, of experience and having. They talk about an abstract 'justification by faith,' and struggle for an abstract experience; not seeing how good God is to tell them plainly that his 'justifying' is setting everything right for them, and round them, and in them: his rightness is sufficient for them; they need not go about, worrying, to establish their own. The minute they give up their wrongness, and fall into its line, it works for them as no working of their own could do. God doesn't forgive a soul ideally, and leave it a mere clean, naked consciousness; He brings forth the best robe and puts it on; a ring for the hand, and shoes for the feet. People try painfully to achieve a ghostly sort of regeneration that strips them and leaves them half dead. The Lord heals and binds up, and puts his own garment upon us; He knows that we have need," Miss Kirkbright repeated, earnestly. "Salvation is a real having; not an escape without anything, as people run for their lives from fire or flood."
Sylvie had listened with a shining face.
"You get it all from that one word,—'raiment.' Your words—the words you find out, Miss Kirkbright—are living things."
"Yes, words are living things," Miss Kirkbright answered. "God does not give us anything dead. But the life of them is his spirit, and his spirit is an instant breath. You can take them as if they were dead, if you do not inspire. Men who wrote these words, inspired. We talk about their being inspired, as if it were a passive thing; and quarrel about it, and forget to breathe ourselves. It is all there, just as live as it ever was; it is given over again every time we go for it; when we find it so, we never need trouble any more about authority. We shall only thank God that He has kept in the world the records of his talk with men; and the more we talk with Him ourselves, the deeper we shall understand their speech."
"Isn't all that about 'inner meanings,'—that words in the Bible stand for,—Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?"
"Well?" Miss Kirkbright smiled.