Playing With Fire

by Amelia E. Barr

"I am seeking Him as those who seek for life and life eternal. Through the world I will seek Him. To the last breath of this life I will call upon—perhaps—if there is a God—He may hear me."

Blind with feeling, the men went away so quietly that Mrs. Caird threw down her work and said impatiently: "There! He has sent them off without a word. How could he do it? Oh, but Scots are hard-baked men. Even those proud English would have had a 'God speed' to bless the parting, and I——"

Then Ian entered, and he said cheerfully: "We had a pleasant parting, Jessy. I am glad of it. I would have been sorry to have missed it."

"What did you say to them?"

"What I said last Sabbath—that I was going to seek Him whom my soul loveth, even if I died in the search."

"There is no 'if' in such a search. God is not a 'highly probable' God. He is a fact. He is nearer to you than breathing, closer than hands and feet. Even a pagan knew that much, Ian; all that is wanted is to become conscious of the nearness of God, and to seek God with all your heart and all your soul, and you will find Him. Not perhaps! You will find Him." And Ian was silent and troubled, and went away.

Then Jessy took her knitting again, and, as she lifted the dropped stitches, said slowly and sorrowfully: "Ah me! How many half-saved souls must come back again to learn the lesson they should have learned in this life. God may well be merciful to sinners, for they know not what they do."

On Saturday morning he went very quietly away. He had done all that could be done for the happiness of his family, and the situation had been tranquilly accepted by them. There was no haste, no irritating questions or advices, and, as soon as he was out of sight, everyone went back to the work occupying them. Yet the man they had watched away was near and dear to them, and full of a sorrow so great they hardly understood it.

He was bound for the Shetlands, because he believed he would find in their simple Kirks the height, and depth, and purity of Calvinism. But he found nothing peculiar to these strong, silent fishers. They had generally an inflexible faith in their own election, and in the ordering of their lives by a God who knew "neither variableness nor shadow of turning." They went fearlessly out on any sea a boat could live in, because, if it was not their appointed hour of death, "water could not drown them"; and in all other matters they approved of John Calvin's plan of sin and retribution, and stuck to it like grim death.

Yet he spent the whole summer in Shetland, and winter was threatening to shut in the lonely islands when he saw one morning an unusual craft fighting her way into harbor. She was a strong, handsome boat, a perfect model of what a fine fishing-smack should be, and she was flying a blue ribbon from her masthead. Evidently she was one of the mission ships serving the Deep-Sea Fishermen. Ian was instantly much interested, and soon fell into conversation with one of her surgeons, who took him on board and who talked to him all day of this great floating city of the fishing fleets—a city whose streets were made of tossing ships—a city without a woman in it—a city whose strange, winding lanes of habitations ceaselessly wander over the lonely, stormy miles of the black North Sea—a city even then of more than forty thousand inhabitants.