Eustace Marchmont: A friend of the people

by Evelyn Everett-Green

“My Ladybird, I think we can none of us rightly answer such a question, because the ways of the Almighty are past finding out, and we can by no stretch of our poor finite minds hope to understand the eternal wisdom of the Infinite. And yet, inasmuch as we have God’s own word that we are made in His image, we can just get here and there a glimpse into the workings of His mind; and I often think that a gardener at his toil gets a clearer bit of insight into His dealings than some others can do.”

“Oh, tell me how,” cried Bride, who dearly loved to listen to Abner’s deductions from the world of nature to the realm of human experience. She had been used to listening to his allegories from childhood, and always found in them food for thought and farther research.

Quietly pursuing his task, as was his way when thinking most deeply, Abner took up his parable again.

“It sometimes comes to me like this, my lady, when I am amongst my flowers and plants and seeds, and folks come to me and say, ‘Abner, why do you do this?’ and ‘Abner, why do you do that?’ Look at the little seeds as they lie on your hand—seeming so like to one another that even the best of us would be puzzled to know some kinds apart; but when they grow up, how different they appear, and how different they have to be treated! Some are hardy things, and are put out to face the biting winds and cruel snows of winter, and nothing given them for protection, whilst others are tenderly protected from the least hardship, and grow up in the soft warm air of the hot-house, watered and tended and watched over like petted children. Is it because the gardener loves one sort of seed more than another that he treats them so differently? What sort of a garden would he have when the summer came had he put the tender hot-house seeds out in the cold ground, and tried to grow the hardy seedlings in a hot-house? And then again, see how the different plants are treated as they grow up under the same gardener’s eye. Look at these great specimen heliotropes and fuchsias and petunias. How were they treated when they were young?—pinched in, trained, clipped, kept back, as it seemed, in every possible way, everything against them, everything, as one would say, taken from them, till the right stature and height and growth had been attained, and then encouraged to bud and break where it had been decided they should; and now see the beautiful graceful trees—a joy to the eye and to the heart—covered with blossom, rejoicing as it seems in their beauty, the pride of the gardener who seemed at first so cruel to them, so resolved to keep them barren and unlovely.”

Bride drew a long breath and clasped her hands together. She had asked sometimes deep down in her heart why her own life had been left so desolate by the death of her mother. Was she in some sort finding an answer now? Was it perhaps for her ultimate good and for the glory of God that she was thus heavily chastened in her youth?

Abner had made a slight pause, but now he continued, speaking in the same slow way, with the same rather remarkable choice of words for a man of his class.

“And again, look at another class of plants—look at our bulbs. Does not the gardener find a quiet nook for them in the garden where they will never be disturbed, and put them in, and let them come up year after year undisturbed and unmolested? Is it because he loves them more that he leaves them to bloom at their own time and in their own fashion, and does not even cut down their leaves when the blooming season is over? Why is he so cruel (as the ignorant folk might put it) to some of his plants, and so tender to others? Why does he treat them so differently? Why do some grow up and flourish for a season only, and are rooted up and cast away at its close, whilst others remain year by year in the ground, or are tended in warmth and luxury in the glass homes provided for them? Why such inequalities when originally all start alike from a tiny seed germ, one of which scarce differs from another? Is it because the gardener is partial or cruel? or because he knows as no untrained person can, what is best for each, and how in the end, after patient waiting and watching, the most perfect garden will arise up under his hand? And if this is so in our little world, can we not understand that it must be something the same in the great garden of God—that kingdom of Christ for which we are waiting and watching, and for which He is working in His own all-powerful and mysterious way? Ah! how often I think of that as I go about my daily toil—that reign of the Lord’s upon earth, when the wilderness shall blossom as the rose, where sorrow and pain and sin shall be done away, and we shall see the meaning of all those things which perplex and bewilder us now, and understand the love in the Father’s heart, although the discipline seemed hard to understand at the first.”

Bride raised her eyes with the light shining in them which the thought of the coming kingdom of the Lord always brought there.

“Ah! yes,” she said softly, “we shall know then—we shall understand then—we shall see face to face. O Abner, would that that day might come quickly! Ah! why does not God hear the cry of His people in their trouble and perplexities, and send forth the Great Deliverer? Are we not praying for His appearing hour by hour and day by day? Why does He tarry so long?”

Abner slowly shook his head. He understood perfectly those utterances of the girl, which from time to time filled Eustace with absolute bewilderment. One result of the awakening of spiritual perception, and of the unceasing prayer which had been offered up by all sorts and conditions of men for many years, had been a deep and earnest conviction that the Second Advent was at hand, that the French Revolution was but the commencement of the Great Apostasy of the latter days, and that the times of the end were approaching. Amongst all the confusion of prophetic interpretation stirring the minds of men and raising up countless differences of opinion and beliefs as to what was coming upon the earth, there stood out one paramount conviction which attracted multitudes to adhere to it, which was that before the final judgments were to be poured upon the earth, as foretold in the Revelation according to St. John, there would be a gathering together of the first-fruits to Christ—the dead and living saints called alike to meet Him in the air, and thus escape the horrors that were coming upon the world—the company typified in Scripture as the hundred and forty-four thousand sealed ones standing with the Lamb upon Mount Zion before the last vials of wrath are poured out, and before the resurrection of the multitude whom no man can number, who have come scathlessly through the great tribulation of the days of Antichrist.