Lawrence fixed his eyes anxiously upon his brother, but did not interrupt him by a word.
“You said that experience is the growth of time. Lawrence, I have, then, lived an age in the last forty hours. A wide view of both heaven and earth is gained from the terrible height that I reached!”
“Common experience is the growth of time,” said the vicar; “but spiritual experience—”
“Give it in the words of inspiration,” interrupted Augustine; “I shall no longer ask you to put aside that solemn evidence, even for a moment. Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience.”
“And experience, hope;” cried the vicar. “Oh, my brother!—that blessed hope shed abroad in the heart by the knowledge that Christ died for the ungodly, that hope that alone maketh not ashamed, is it—oh! is it your own?”
Augustine silently pressed the hand that had been unconsciously extended towards him; it was his only reply to the question. Without another sentence being uttered the brothers turned their steps in the direction of the cottage. But while pacing the shingley beach, Augustine was mentally subscribing to the confession of one of the brightest geniuses of earth,—that he had hitherto been but as a child gathering pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of truth; while the vicar was raising to God, from the depths of a grateful heart, a thanksgiving for prayer answered at the very time when, and through the very trial by which his earthly happiness had appeared crushed and destroyed! He was proving, as so many saints have proved, that—
“God’s purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower!”