Philippa was silent.
“Is the flower so fair, that you will risk life for it?” pursued the monk. “Nay, not risk—that is a word implying doubt, and here is none. So fair, then, that you will throw life away for it? And is the Father not fair and precious in your eyes, that you are in so little haste to come to Him? Daughter, what shall it profit you, if you gain the whole world—and lose your own soul?”
“Father, you are too hard upon me!” cried Philippa in a pained tone, and resisting with some difficulty a strong inclination to shed tears. “I would come to God, but I know not how, nor do you tell me. God is afar off, and hath no leisure nor will to think on me; nor can I presume to approach Him without the holy saints to intercede for me. I have sought their intercession hundreds of times. It is not I that am unwilling to be saved; and you speak to me as if you thought it so. It is God that will not save me. I have done all I can.”
“O fool, and slow of heart to believe!” earnestly answered Guy. “Can it be God, when He cared so much for you that He sent His blessed Son down from Heaven to die for your salvation? Beware how you accuse the Lord. I tell you again, it is not His will that opposeth itself to your happiness, but your own. You have built up a wall of your own excellencies that you cannot see God; and then you cry, ‘He hath hidden Himself from me.’ Pull down your miserable mud walls, and let the light of Heaven shine in upon you. Christ will save you with no half nor quarter salvation. He will not let you lay the foundation whereon He shall build. He will not tear His fair shining robe of righteousness to patch your worthless rags. With Him, either not at all, or all in all.”
“But what would you have me do?” said Philippa, in a vexed tone.
“Believe,” replied Guy.
“Believe what?” said she.
“‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’”
“The easiest thing in the world,” answered Philippa, a little contemptuously.
“Is it so?” responded the monk, with a pitying smile. “It seems to me that you have found it since last June the hardest thing in the world. Whither go you now?” he asked, suddenly changing his tone.