“I wish Mr Carter would keep away!” answered Thekla, her eyes flashing anew. “If he hath no better Gospel than this to preach to God’s tried servants, he might as well tarry at home.”
“But, hija mia (my daughter)! thou knowest God’s Word so well!—tell me an other, if there be, to say whether it is wrong to grieve and sorrow when one is troubled. I do not think God meaneth to bid us do what we cannot do; and I cannot help it.”
“Methinks, dear Mother,” said Thekla, more quietly, “that Mr Carter readeth his Bible upside down. He seemeth to read Saint Paul to say that no chastening for the present is grievous, but joyous. An unmortified will is one thing; an unfeeling heart an other. God loveth us not to try to shake off His rod like a wayward and froward child; but He forbiddeth us not to moan thereunder when the pain wringeth it from us. And it may be the moan soundeth unto other at times that which it is not. He knoweth. He shall not put our tears into the wrong bottle, nor set down the sum of our groans in the wrong column of His book. Hezekiah should scantly be told ‘I have seen thy tears,’ if he did very evil in shedding them; nor Moses twice over, ‘I have seen, I have seen the affliction of My people, and am come down to deliver them,’ if they had sinned in being afflicted. When God wipeth away all tears from our eyes, shall He do it as some do with childre—roughly, shaking the child, and bidding it have done? ‘Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord’ cometh before ‘faint not when thou art rebuked of Him.’”
“Of a truth, I never could abide to see any so use a child,” said Isoult, innocently; “but, Thekla, sweet heart, it should as little serve to run unto the further extremity, and give all that a babe should cry for.”
“Were that love at all?” said Thekla; “unless it were the mother’s love for herself, and her own ease.”
Isoult saw that Mrs Rose seemed comforted, and Thekla was well able to comfort, so she gently withdrew. But when she came down-stairs, John having now returned, she asked him and Dr Thorpe to tell her their opinions.
“My thought is,” replied Dr Thorpe, “that the fellow knoweth not his business. He must have cold blood in his veins, as a worm hath. I might search the Decalogue a great while ere I came to his two commandments—‘Thou shalt not sorrow,’ and ‘Thou shalt not love thy neighbour any better than thyself.’”
“I have little patience with such doctrines, and scantly with such men,” said John. “They would ‘make the heart of the righteous sad, whom God hath not made sad.’ They show our loving and merciful Father as an harsh, stern ruler, ‘an austere man,’ meting out to His servants no more joy nor comfort than He can help. For joy that is put on is not joy. If it arise not of itself, ’tis not worth having. Paul saith, ‘As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing;’ but that joy showeth not alway in the face: and Father Carter hath forgot the first half. I do believe (as I have said to thee, dear heart, ere now) that God taketh more pleasure to see His people joyful than sorrowful; but He never taketh pleasure, sure am I, to see them make up an hypocrite’s face, and fall to dancing, when their hearts are like to break. Why, sweeting! thou lovest rather to see Frank happy than woeful; but dost thou therefore desire her to smother her tears, and force a smile, rather than come and lodge her little troubles with thee? Nay, rather do I believe that to do such were to insult God. I could tell thee of that I have seen, where I do verily believe that pride, and naught else—that abominable sin that God hateth—kept His afflicted child up, and smirking with a false smile over the breaking heart; and no sooner was that self-righteous pride subdued, and the child brake forth into open sobbing,—crying, ‘Father, Thy rod doth hurt, and I have been a fool!’—no sooner, I say, was this confession made, than God threw away His rod, and took His humbled child to His heart. Dear heart, when God taketh His rod in hand, He meaneth us to feel it. Methinks a man that can speak to one in such trouble as Mrs Rose, as Father Carter hath spoken, hath not himself known neither much love, neither much sorrow, neither much of God.”
Bishop Ferrar was burnt in Wales on the 30th of March. Soon after this, the Queen declared her intention of restoring all the suppressed lands to the Church; nor was she content with that, but plainly intimated that she desired her nobles to follow where she had paved the way. The old Earl of Bedford had but lately died—he who said that he held his sweet Abbey of Woburn worth more than all the fatherly counsels, that could come from Rome; but comparatively few of the Lords followed her Majesty in this matter.
On the 4th of April, the Queen took her chamber at Hampton Court. The Papists made great rejoicing over the young master for whom they hoped, but the Gospellers were very sorrowful, seeing that he would take precedence of the Lady Elizabeth, in whom after God was all their hope; and also that he would unquestionably be brought up a Papist. During the last evening in April came news that a Prince was born, and through all London there were ringing of bells and bonfires. But the next day came contrary tidings. God had written next upon the Crown of England the name of Queen Elizabeth, and no power less than His own could change that label.