“It won’t hurt you to look for it,” was the answer.
I don’t know whether Angus looked for it, but I did as soon as I got in, and I saw that Mr Keith thought there had been too much hastiness, and perhaps a little worldly-mindedness in Mr Whitefield himself. That may be why he preaches so earnestly against it. We know so well where the slippery places are, when we have been down ourselves. And when we have been down once, we are generally very, very careful to keep off that slide for the future.
Mr Whitefield said last night that it was not true to say, as some do, “that a man may be in Christ to-day, and go to the Devil to-morrow.” Then if anybody is converted, how can he, as Angus said, “come undone”? I only see one explanation, and it is rather a terrible one: namely, that the conversion was not real, but only looked like it. And I am afraid that must be the truth. But what a pity it is that Mr Whitefield did not find it out sooner!
“Well, Helen, and how did you like the great English preacher?” I said to Flora’s nurse.
“Atweel, Miss Cary, the discourse was no that ill for a Prelatist,” was the answer.
And that was as much admiration as I could get from Helen.
There was more talk about Mr Whitefield this morning at breakfast. I cannot tell what has come to Angus. Going to hear Mr Whitefield preach at Monks’ Brae seems to have made him worse instead of better. Flora and I both liked it so much; but Angus talks of it with a kind of bitter hardness in his voice, and as if it pleased him to let us know all the bad things which had been said about the preacher. He told us that they said—(I wish they would give over saying!)—that Mr Whitefield had got his money matters into some tangle, in the business of building his Orphan House in Georgia; and “they said” he had acted fraudulently in the matter. My Uncle Drummond put this down at once, with—
“My son, never repeat a calumny against a good man. You may not know it, but you do Satan’s very work for him.”
Angus made a grimace behind his hand, which I fancy he did not mean his father to see. Then, he went on, “‘They say’ that Mr Whitefield is so fanatical and extravagant in preaching against worldliness, that he counts it sinful to smell to a rose, or to eat anything relishing.”
“Did he say so?” asked my Uncle: “or did ‘they’ say it for him?”