“But could not God,” said Philippa, a little timidly, “have given us more grace to avoid sinning, rather than have needed thus to burn our sins out of us with hot irons?”
“Thou art soaring up into the seventh Heaven of God’s purposes, my child,” answered Isabel with a smile; “I have no wings to follow thee so far.”
“Thou thinkest, then, mother,” replied Philippa with a sigh, “that we cannot understand the matter at all.”
“We can understand only what is revealed to us,” replied Isabel; “and that, I grant, is but little; yet it is enough. ‘As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.’ ‘What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?’ How could it be otherwise? He were no wise father nor loving, who should teach his son nothing, or should forbear to rebuke him for such folly as might hereafter be his ruin.”
Isabel was silent, and Philippa’s memory went back to those old loveless days at Arundel, when for her there had been no chastening, no rebuke, only cold, lifeless apathy. That was not love. And she thought also of her half-sister Alesia, whom she had visited once since her marriage, and who brought up her children on the principle of no contradiction and unlimited indulgence; and remembering how discontented and hard to please this discipline had made them, she began to see that was not love either.
“Thou hast wrought arras, my daughter,” said Isabel again. “Thou knowest, therefore, that to turn the arras the backward way showeth not the pattern. The colours are all mixed out of proportion, as the fastenings run in and out. So our life is in this world. The arras shall only be turned the right way above, when the angels of God shall see it, and marvel at the fair proportions and beauteous colours of that which looked so rough and misshapen here below.
“Moreover, we are thus tried, methinks, not only for our own good. We are sent into this world to serve: to serve God first, and after to serve man for God’s sake. And every blow of the chisel on the stone doth but dress it for its place. God’s chisel never falleth on the wrong place, and never giveth a stroke too much. Every pang fitteth us for more service; and I think thou shouldst find, in most instances, that the higher and greater the service to which the varlet is called, the deeper the previous suffering which fitteth him therefor. And God’s greatnesses are not ours. In His eyes, a poor serving-maiden may have a loftier and more difficult task than a lord of the King’s Council, or a Marshal of the army.
“And after all, every sorrow and perplexity, be it large or small, doth but give God’s child an errand to his Father. Nothing is too little to bear to His ear, if it be not too little to distress and perplex His servant. To Him all things pertaining to this life are small—the cloth of estate no less than the blade of grass; and all things pertaining to that other and better life in His blessed Home, are great and mighty. Yet we think the first great, and the last little. And therefore things become great that belong to the first life, just in proportion as they bear upon the second. Nothing is small that becomes to thee an occasion of sin; nothing, that can be made an incentive to holiness.”
“O mother, mother!” said Philippa, with a sudden sharp shoot of pain, “to-morrow I shall be far away from you, and none will teach me any more!”
“God will teach thee Himself, my child,” said Isabel tenderly. “He can teach far better than I. Only be thou not weary of His lessons; nor refuse to learn them. Maybe thou canst not see the use of many of them till they are learned; but ‘thou shalt know hereafter.’ Thou shalt find many a thorn in the way; but remember, it is not set there in anger, if thou be Christ’s; and many a flower shall spring up under thy feet, when thou art not looking for it. Only do thou never loose thine hold on Him, who has promised never to loose His on thee. Not that thou shouldst be lost in so doing; He will have a care of that: but thou mightest find thyself in the dark, and so far as thou couldst see, alone. It is sin that hides God from man; but nothing can hide man from God.”