“And you was so religious, too; knew your Bible so well, could have done for a preacher yourself. If a parson made a mistake, or wasn’t quite sound in the doctrine, you was the man who could set him right; you was such a judge of a sermon!”
“I thought myself so,” said Bolder.
“I can’t make out the reason why God sends you all these troubles,” pursued the admiring wife, “unless it be as He let them come to Job, ’cause he was better than any one else, and God wanted to try his patience.”
“Now, wife, it’s all very well that you should think this,” said Bolder, in his peculiar tone of decision, “I was ready enough to think it myself; but when I came this evening to turn the matter over as I sat here alone, I could not look at things just in the same light as before. I found this soul of mine all full of what the parson calls Midianites; I had not noticed one of ’em when I was in health and prosperity, but when troubles came, then came they, like the birds of prey round a sick sheep as it lies in the field. Then I set to thinking what idol I could have set up when all things seemed going well with me;—no, don’t interrupt me, Miriam—I was certain there had been something wrong. And then an old anecdote came into my mind, which I’d heard many years back, but which I’d never really understood—I mean with my heart, not my head. It was about a young parson who was talking on religion to an old pious ploughman as they walked together in a field. Says the parson, ‘The hardest thing is to deny sinful self.’ ‘Nay, sir,’ said the ploughman, ‘the hardest thing, I take it, is to deny righteous self.’ Why, here, thinks I, is the key to the whole matter. Here have I been living in Wildwaste, counting myself an example to all the people around, thanking God, like the Pharisee, that I was a deal better than other men, sitting in judgment even at church, setting up a great idol of self. And so God has let the enemies come in, just to show me that I am not the saint that I took myself for, just to set me crying to Him for help, to bring me to say, what else I had never said, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
Mrs. Bolder, who had been accustomed to look up to her husband as a kind of infallible pope in his home, one whose wisdom should never be doubted, whose opinions should never be disputed, could not at once alter her long-cherished ideas, but only ventured to express dissent by a little mournful shake of the head.
“I was always ready enough to judge others,” continued Bolder, “but it was a new thing for me to judge myself. I was quick enough to see God’s justice in punishing other men, but when the rod came upon myself, then his dealings seemed hard. I could almost exult when the publican’s house was burned and he ruined, or when the poor guilty wretch was smothered in the bog;—that was righteous vengeance, said I. But when my own comfort was touched, when trouble came to my home, I could neither see mercy nor justice, and fierce, rebellious, unbelieving thoughts swept, like the Midianites, right over my soul.”
“Mr. Bolder,” said the anxious wife (she never ventured to address him by his Christian name), “I shall never like to leave you so long again, for I’m sure and certain that being alone is bad for your spirits.”
“Wife, I was no more alone than Gideon was when the angel came to him under the oak. I told you that a powerful preacher had been here, and I told you nought but the truth. The Lord has been preaching to this proud heart; and if you wish to know the text, it was this, Unless ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven. There be many mansions there, but not one for the self-righteous Pharisee. I had thought myself a long way on the road to heaven, and I found I’d to go back every step of the way, and begin at the beginning. If it had not been for what God has shown me, through sickness and trouble, of the evil lurking in my heart, I might have gone on blind and self-confident to the last, and never have had my eyes opened at all—till the terrible Day of Judgment.”
It is doubtful whether Tychicus Bolder’s words convinced his wife, but at least they silenced her, and she could feel that the change which had passed over the proud, opinionative man was a change for the better; he was more patient and resigned under suffering, and far less disposed to pass a sweeping sentence of condemnation on all his neighbours in Wildwaste. When Bolder began to judge himself, he became less ready to judge others; humility and charity are twin-sisters, and constantly walk hand-in-hand. Tychicus himself regarded that evening of quiet heart-searching as a crisis in his life; the Lord had visited his soul, and had left a blessing and a promise behind.