John walked slowly upstairs, but he had no thought of falling. He knew that something had
happened to the Inner Man, and he wanted to steady and control him. It was not Jane's opinions; it was not public opinion, however widespread it might be. It was the blood of generations of good men and good women that roused in him a passionate protest against the destruction of their race. His private sense of injustice and disloyalty came later. Then the iron entered his soul and it was on this very bread of bitterness he had now to feed it; for on this bread only could he grow to the full stature of a man of God. His heart was bruised and torn, but his soul was unshaken, and the hidden power and strength of life revealed themselves.
First he threw all anger behind him. He thought of his wife with tenderness and pity only. He made himself recall her charm and her love. He decided that it would be better not to argue the fatal subject with her again. "No man can convince a woman," he thought. "She must be led to convince herself. I will trust her to God. He will send some teacher who cannot fail." Then he thought of the days of pleasantness they had passed together, and his heart felt as if it must break, while from behind his closed eyelids great tears rolled down his face.
This incident, though so natural, shocked him. He arrested such evident grief at once and very soon he stood up to pray. So prayed the gray fathers of the world, Terah and Abram, Lot and Jacob; and John stood at the open window with his
troubled face lifted to the starlit sky. His soul was seeking earnestly that depth in our nature where the divine and human are one, for when the brain is stupefied by the inevitable and we know not what to abandon and what to defend, that is the sanctuary where we shall find help for every hour of need.
What words, wonderful and secret, were there spoken it is not well to inquire. They were for John's wounded heart alone, and though he came from that communion weeping, it was
—as a child that cries,
But crying, knows his Father near.
Nothing was different but he sat down hushed and strengthened, and in his heart and on his lips the most triumphant words a man or woman can utter, "Thy Will be done!" Then there was a great peace. He had cast all his sorrow upon God and left it with God. He did not bring it back with him as we are so ready to do. It was not that he comprehended any more clearly why this sorrow and trial had come to darken his happy home, but Oh, what matters comprehension when there is faith! John did not make inquiries; he knew by experience that there are spiritual conditions as real as physical facts. The shadows were all gone. Nothing was different,
—yet this much he knew,
His soul stirred in its chrysalis of clay,
A strange peace filled him like a cup; he grew
Better, wiser and gladder, on that day:
This dusty, worn-out world seemed made anew,
Because God's Way, had now become his way.