Anna raised her eyes timidly to Gregory’s face with this question, and met the repose and steady confidence of it with a swift presentiment of comfort.
“No,” he answered; “I think you were simply struggling to release yourself from the meshes of the net which a mercenary conception of prayer cannot fail to throw over the soul. It was said of John Woolman, and a holier man never lived, that he offered no prayers for special personal favours. I believe the theory of prayer of your Burlington friend not only mistaken, but dangerous and misleading. Instead of such a habit of mind as she described being a ‘higher life,’ I should call it a lower one. The nearer the man comes to God, the less he prays, not the more, for definite objective things and externals; the more he rests on the great good will of God. Prayer was not designed for man to use to conform a reluctant God to his will, to get things given him, but to conform the man’s own blind and erring will to the divine. By this I do not mean to say that no prayers for temporal objects are granted. Many have been, but the soul that feeds itself on this conception of prayer as a system of practical demand and supply lives on husks.”
“But there are many promises?” Anna said with hesitation.
“Yes,” said Gregory, with the emphasis of sure conviction, crossing the space between them to stand directly before her, forgetting all his usual scruples; “but you must interpret Scripture by Scripture, by the whole tendency and purpose, not by isolated mottoes which men like to drag out for spiritual decoration, breaking off short all their roots which reach down into the solid rock of universal Truth! Look at our Lord himself—did he ask for ‘ease and rest and joys’? It is only as we enter into his spirit that our prayers are answered, and that almost means that we shall cease to pray at all for personal benefits. He prayed, often, whole nights together, but was it that he might win his own cause with the people about him? Was it not rather for the multitudes upon whom he had compassion, and that God the Father should be made manifest in himself? Ah, Sister Benigna, few of us have sounded the depths of this great subject of prayer. It is one of the deepest things of God; and, believe me, it is not until we have cast out utterly the last shred of the notion of childish coaxing of God to do what will please us, that we can catch some small perception of its meaning. But let me say just one thing more: you are too young to count any prayer unanswered. At present you see in part and interpret God’s dealings only in part. At the end of life your interpretation will be larger, calmer than it is now. We ‘change the cruel prayers we made,’ and even here live to praise God that they are broken away ‘in his broad, loving will.’”
Anna sat in silence, her eyes downcast, slowly passing in review the nature of her own most ardent prayers and the deep anguish and doubt of their non-fulfilment. Not one, she saw, could bear the high test of likeness to the mind of Christ, not one but had its admixture of selfishness, not one but seemed poor and vain in this new light. A nobler conception of the relation of her soul to God seemed to dawn within her. She looked up then, and saw upon Gregory’s face that inner illumination which belongs to the religious genius. The look of it smote her eyes as if with white and dazzling light, and they fell as if it were impossible to bear it. Then she rose, and they stood for a moment alone and in silence, while a sense of measureless content overflowed Anna’s spirit, and for an instant made time and space and human relations as if they were not. So strong upon her was the sense of uplift from the contact with the spirit of Gregory. She hardly knew at first that the incredible had happened. John Gregory had taken her hand in his, with reverent gentleness, for some seconds. He was asking her if he had been able to help her in any wise, and asking it as if he cared very much. She said “yes,” quite simply, and turned to go. Frieda was coming back, and they were lingering over long. Slowly they descended the rugged path before them, for a strange trepidation had come over Anna,—a vague, new, disturbing joy.
CHAPTER XXXII
What went ye out into the wilderness for to see?... A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings’ courts.—St. Luke’s Gospel.
Instead of the masterly good humour, and sense of power, and fertility of resource in himself; instead of those strong and learned hands, those piercing and learned eyes, that supple body, and that mighty and prevailing heart, which the father had, whom nature loved and feared, whom snow and rain, water and land, beast and fish, seemed all to know and to serve, we have now a puny, protected person, guarded by walls and curtains, stoves and down-beds, coaches, and menservants and women-servants from the earth and the sky.—R. W. Emerson.
The spring passed in Fraternia, and the summer. Not again did John Gregory and Anna come into direct personal communication. They went indeed their several ways with a steadier avoidance of this than before, from an undefined, but instinctive, sense of danger. Nevertheless, the fact that they breathed the same air and shared the same lot in life sufficed to yield in the heart of each an unfailing spring of contentment; while now and again it would happen that Anna, in her schoolroom or cottage, and Gregory, at his work, lifting their eyes at a footstep or a shadow, would be aware that the other had drawn near and passed by, and contentment would give place to nameless joy.
The poetic impulse which Anna had inherited from both parents, but the expression of which had been stifled by the deadening of her high desires which life in Fulham had brought, now developed unchecked. Many influences promoted this development: her clear child-delight in the rich life of nature about her, the release of her long-cabined spiritual energy, and the stimulation of her powers of discernment and interpretation by contact with the strong intellectual power of Gregory.