She, too, was often troubled about the state of affairs on the Flat, but her outlook was very different from Mrs. Thorpe's. She saw in these miserable homes and destitute, unfortunate people, isolated cases of suffering, and their condition she looked upon as something that only the effort of the individual concerned could remedy. By his own effort and endeavor he must extricate himself from this class and advance to one higher. This always left those who remained the same privilege as that of the one who had escaped. Mrs. Mayhew believed this to be the way of the world, and she had learned never to analyze nor to question the world's ways.
Mrs. Thorpe did not interrogate the individual nor consider the class; her mind overreached these and went directly to the overruling Law--that which has created, and which does, or should, control. What greater folly than for man to endeavor to undo what the Lord has done? An overruling, unalterable, unrelenting Law lay over and made helpless and absolutely powerless the puny efforts of man.
She would share her porridge with a hungry neighbor, yes, go hungry herself to relieve a needy one; she would divide her garments to the last shred with those who had none. But while doing so, while trying to defeat the decree of the Ruler, would she prostrate herself before him, bow down and worship him?
"It is not only on Bolton Flat that people are suffering and miserable and destitute and without a God," she said. "The world is circled with woe; the cry of suffering echoes wherever the feet of men have trod. In the still watches of the night when all was quiet and peaceful about me I have heard the moaning of children. And on the street when all was bustle and confusion I have heard the agonized cry of lost souls; and I knew that those about me heard it, yet they paid not the slightest attention, and I, too, went unheeding on my way. Yet men and women everywhere are talking of a Christ--proclaiming a message! Their voices are musical, even as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; their phraseology--long prayers in the market place; the border of their garments and the broadness of their phylacteries proclaim their devotion!"
Her words ceased, but her thoughts, which she had long held in subjection, were now beyond her control. The fire of her spirit, that had leaped within her earlier in the day, now flamed up and consumed her. Throughout the length and breadth of the land God's men and women were going to a death more horrible than even her wildest hallucinations could picture--wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth! Children were born into an environment that handicapped them at birth; women and young girls were obliged to sell their souls in order to keep the pitiful life in their bodies; men made a legal, licensed business of crazing their fellow men with drink. And those who professed to follow the world's Redeemer, comfortably housed, with rich garments and sumptuous fare, wrapped themselves in their righteousness and sang songs of praise in costly churches and gave thanks that they were not as other men.
The enormity of the thing was to her a blow straight from a powerful shoulder, a blow that staggered her and left her white with passion. And she felt that in all this world there was nothing so heartrending as the injustice of God. More to herself than to her friend, she said:
"If God is all powerful He is responsible for the conditions resulting from His creation; if He is not all powerful He is not God."
Her limitations were such that she could not know that these things which were so grievous to her were but a foul and tattered garment with which human kind has covered the great heart of God. Pride, vain-glory, uncharitableness, ostentation--from these she shrank in righteous revolt; and without the slightest realization that she had allowed them to become as a bandage about her eyes, blinding her to the overruling Love of the Creator and to the priceless thing in the hearts of her fellow men.
Something of this Mrs. Mayhew was able to understand. She felt that her friend's heresy was not so much a thing of the heart as a distortion of her too finely wrought sensibilities; and she wondered that a hand so exquisitely refined and sensitive should reach out into this bleeding world and touch and handle its ghastly sin-stained burdens.
"My dear friend," she said; "you say that if God is God He is responsible for these things, yet He may be working in a way that you and I know nothing about. It has always been a comforting thought to me that there may be a wideness and a mercy in His plans that our finite minds are not able to grasp. But be this as it may, you have thrown the responsibility back upon Him, then why do you not let it rest there? Why do you fret and worry yourself about it? My dear, I am afraid you are allowing these things to weigh upon you and make you unhappy."