"In the frustration of hopes and ambitions, in the sudden fear that for us life has no meaning, in the realisation that death is coming, and after death the judgment, God is calling to us. We have gone on for a long way in our loves and hates, our vanities and pleasures, our imaginations and our sins, and one day the road crumbles beneath us. The beloved is dead, youth is dead, pleasure is dead. Nothing matters now. Why plan for the morrow, when the only reality is death?"
Dormer paused, moved a little, and said, still more quietly, "It is true that for us this is the only reality—the death of the soul."
There was no doubt about Horatia's interest now. How was it that he knew the very horror that gripped her, the fear of death, the fear of life? She held her hands tightly together in her muff, wishing with all her heart that she had listened earlier. He went on, speaking of the ways that God uses to save a soul from death, but, because of her very anxiety to hear, his utterance, exquisite as it was, dulled for a moment or two to a mere buzz in her ears. Then her senses cleared, and she heard him say:
"And, to save us from this death, it may be that God will use, as His last weapon, loneliness. In loneliness He asks us, 'What seek ye?' In loneliness we confess that we do not know His dwelling-place; in loneliness, at last, we can no longer escape the challenge of His merciful displeasure that bids us 'Come and see.' If still we hesitate, it may be our very honesty that makes us afraid to go and see where He dwells, for if we go with Him we must admit His claim, we must acknowledge our fault, we must forgive the friend who has done us irreparable wrong, we can never be as we were before.
"But if in the Divine mercy we yield ourselves captives to His love, and loosed from sin we know Him in Whom we have believed, yet we may not rest in this, the first sight of Jesus, for, like St. John, we are called to a yet more intimate knowledge—the friendship of the Lord. And here sincerity that is to become purity will pass into singleness of heart. For if the surrender of ourselves to the Divine Will has to be made over and over again before God can be glorified in us, still our intention must be pure, our purpose must be sincere. He calls us, indeed, to communion with Himself in sacrament and prayer while as yet the work of transformation is hardly begun. And those who live with Him day by day may still be a prey to resentment and to pride, to jealousy and to ambition, and those who rest on His heart may fail to watch with Him, may even forsake Him when wicked men lay hold on Him. But if, like St. John, greatly, though dimly, desiring the Beatific Vision, they grasp the cup of His Passion, crying out that they are able to drink of it, our Lord, it may be, will take them at their word, and the power of His Cross shall do for them what the joy of His Presence could never do.
"Who are the pure in heart, and whence came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb."
(2)
Horatia emerged with her hostess between the twisted pillars of the porch into the High, to a crowd of people, and the prospect of an Oxford Sunday such as she loved. But she would have given anything to go back, alone, into the emptying church, to pray to this new Christ, who had called her—her—and to Whom she had not come. But she would come, she would come, if only she could find the way.... "Where dwellest Thou?"
"Excuse me a moment," said Mrs. Pusey, stopping to speak to someone, and Horatia, waiting in the momentary press, heard one gentleman commoner say to another, "Couldn't make anything of the sermon. Are all your Fellows as unintelligible as that?" To which his companion, evidently an Oriel man, responded, "I don't often hear them. But I can stand 'Mercy and Judgment' because he is at least short.—By Gad, there he is, with Mr. Denison!" And he capped the two Fellows as they crossed the street. Dormer was smiling as he returned the salute.
Horatia followed them with her eyes. Did he then know the friendship of the Lord, walking in sober academic garb along an Oxford street? Could people other than those in stained glass windows, dressed in reds and blues against a background of palm-tree and lake, hear His call, know His friendship, carry His cross? ...