“We learn that God requires of His servants that they shall overcome the world; and He has told us what He means by the world—‘The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.’ Whatever has become that to me, that am I to overcome, if I would reign with Christ when He cometh.”
We Protestants can hardly understand the fearful extent to which Rome binds the souls of her votaries. When she goes so far—which she rarely does—as to hold out God’s Word with one hand, she carries in the other an antidote to it which she calls the interpretation of the Church, derived from the consent of the Fathers. That the Fathers scarcely ever consent to anything does not trouble her. According to this interpretation, all human affection comes for monk or nun under the head of the lusts of the flesh. (Note 3.) A daughter’s love for her mother, a father’s for his child, is thus branded. From his cradle Earl Edmund had been taught this; was it any marvel if he found it impossible to get rid of the idea? The Prior’s eyes were less blinded. He had come straight from those Piedmontese valleys where, from time immemorial, the Word of God has not been bound, and whosoever would has been free to slake his thirst at the pure fountain of the water of life. Love was not dead in his heart, and he was not ashamed of it.
“But then, Father, you must reckon all love a thing to be left behind?” very naturally queried the Earl.
“It will not be so in Heaven,” answered the Prior; “then why should it be on earth? Left behind! Think you I left behind me the one love of my life when I became a Bonus Homo? I trow not. My Lord, forty years ago this summer, I was a young man, just entering life, and betrothed to a maiden of the Val Pellice. God laid His hand upon my hopes of earthly happiness, and said, ‘Not so!’ But must I, therefore, sweep my Adelaide’s memory out of my heart as if I had never loved her, and hold it sin against God to bear her sweet face in tender remembrance? Nay, verily, I have not so learned Christ.”
“What happened?” said the Earl.
“God sent His angels for her,” answered the Prior in a low voice.
“Ah, but she loved you!” was the response, in a tone still lower. The Earl did not know how much, in those few words, he told the Prior of Ashridge.
“My Lord,” said the Prior, “did you ever purchase a gift for one you loved, and keep it by you, carefully wrapped up, not letting him know till the day came to produce it?”
The Earl looked up as if he did not see the object of the question; but he answered in the affirmative.
“It may be,” continued the Prior, “that God our Father does the same at times. I believe that many will find gifts on their Father’s table, at the great marriage-feast of the Lamb, which they never knew they were to have, and some which they fancied were lost irrevocably on earth. And if there be anything for which our hearts cry out that is not waiting for us, surely He can and will still the craving.”