“I know that by experience, John. Have I not been in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps, in that lowest hell of the soul where I had no God to pray to? For how could I pray to a God so cruel that I did not dare to become a father, lest he should elect my children to damnation? a God so unjust that he loved without foresight of faith or good works, and hated because it was his pleasure to hate, and to ordain the hated to dishonor and wrath?”[[4]]
“And yet, David?”
“In my distress my soul cried out, ’God pity me! God pity me!’ And even while I so wronged him he sent from above–he sent you, John; he took me, he drew me out of many waters,–for great was his mercy toward me,–and he delivered my soul from the lowest hell.”
Confession of Faith, chap. 3, secs. v-vii; chap. 16, sec. vii.
XII
“AT LAST IT IS PEACE”
A week after this conversation David was near Lerwick. It was very early in the morning, and the sky was gray and the sea was gray, and through the vapory veiling the little town looked gray and silent as a city in a dream. During the voyage he had thought of himself always as hastening at once to Nanna’s house, but as soon as his feet touched the quay he hesitated. The town appeared to be asleep; there was only here and there a thin column of peat smoke from the chimneys, and the few people going about their simple business in the misty morning were not known to him. Probably, also, he had some unreasonable expectation, for he looked sadly around, and, sighing, said:
“To be sure, such a thing would never happen, except in a dream.”