“Then what are the Boni-Homines?” inquired Lady Sergeaux.
“A few sinners,” answered the monk, “whose hearts God hath touched, that they have sought and found that Well of the Living Water.”
“But, Father, explain it to me!” she cried anxiously, perhaps even a little querulously. “Put it in plain words, that I can understand it. What is it to drink this Living Water?”
“To come to Christ, my daughter,” replies the monk.
“But I cannot understand you,” she objected, in the same tone. “How can I come? What mean you by coming? He is not here in this chamber, that I can rise and go to Him. Can you not use words more intelligible to me?”
“In the first place, my daughter,” softly replied the monk, “you are under a great mistake. Christ is here in this chamber, and hath heard every word that we have said. And in the second place, I cannot use words that shall be plainer to you. How can the dead understand the living? How shall a man born blind be brought to know the difference of colour between green and blue. Yet the hardship lieth not in the inaptness of the teacher, but in the inability of the taught.”
“But I am not blind, nor dead!” cried Philippa.
“Both,” answered the monk. “So, by nature, be we all.”
Philippa made no reply; she was too vexed to make any. The monk laid his hand gently upon her head.
“Take the best wish that I can make for you:—God show you how blind you are! God put life within you, that you may awake, and arise from the dead, and see the light of Christ! May He grant you that thirst which shall be satisfied with nothing short of the Living Water—which shall lead you to disregard all the roughnesses of the way, and the storms of the journey, so that you may win Christ, and be found in Him! God strip you of your own goodness!—for I fear you are over-well satisfied therewith. And no goodness shall ever have admittance into Heaven save the goodness which is of God.”