| With intellect we gaze, Close to their hearts stole in, In a thousand tender ways. |
1 Ps. xxvii.
IX
A SACRIFICE ACCEPTED
After this the winter came on rapidly and severely. The seas were dangerous, and the fishing precarious and poor, and the fever still lingered, many cases being found as far north as Yell. Thus suffering and hard poverty and death filled the short days and made twice as long the stretched-out nights of the dark season. The old cloud gathered round David, and when the minister preached of “the will and purposes of God,” it seemed to David that they were altogether penal. The unfathomable inner side of his life was all gloom and doubt; how, then, could the material side be cheerful and confident?
The new minister, however, had conceived a strong liking for the young man; they were nearly of the same age; and he saw that David was troubled about spiritual matters, and took every opportunity to discuss them with him. But he had too much of the schools, he was too untried, and had been, in the main, too happily situated to comprehend David’s views. The very piety of the two men was different. David’s was lively, personal, and tender; it sat in the center. The minister’s was official, intellectually accepted, conscientiously practised. It was not strange, then, that any dissent David ventured to make was not conceived of as a soul-query, but rather as a challenge against impregnable truths. He was always ready to defend Calvinism, though David did not consciously attack it. To be sure, he said strange and daring things–things which came from his heart, and which often staggered his opponent; but all the more Minister Campbell put on his armor to defend his creed.
“It is a hard religion for men and for women,” said David, as they talked a stormy afternoon away on Barbara’s hearthstone; “and why God gave it, I can’t tell; for, after all, minister, the blessedness of heaven is an eternity older than the damnation of hell.”
“Men called it unto themselves, and it is not hard, David. It is a grand creed; it is a strong anchor for a weak soul; it won’t let a man drift into the deep waters of infidelity or the miserable shoals of ‘perhaps’ and ‘suppose.’ Neither will it let him float on waves of feeling like Arminianism, and be content with ‘ahs’ and ‘ohs,’ and shrink from ‘therefores.’ Calvinism makes strong men before the Lord, David, and strong men are not laid on rose-leaves and fed on pap and cream.”