“What two things?” asked the Duke. “I do not think I follow you.”
“I mean, papa, the spiritual and the intellectual side of our nature. You know we have a threefold nature—body, soul, and spirit; but yet it is all one, and I think people make a great mistake when they seek to try and divide the physical and the intellectual from the spiritual. Eustace does—in practice, if not in theory. He wishes to gain for the poor an improved condition of bodily comfort, and I am sure this is a kindly and a right wish. He has told me things that make my blood curdle about the awful misery and want reigning in many places. He wants to raise men intellectually, to think for themselves, to learn many things which will help in their advancement, to strive after a better standard, and to be disgusted at their present ignorance and degradation. But having done that, he stops short. He has no wish to quicken in their spirits the love of God, which would purify these other desires and hold in check the baser passions they so often arouse without that curb. Of their spirits he takes no heed—how should he, when he does not even admit that there is an inner and spiritual life—when he is content to remain in ignorance of everything beyond the limits of his own understanding, and to assert that nothing can be positively taught as truth which cannot be proved by the finite intellect of man? I may not put his case quite justly, because he does not speak of these things openly to me. He tries to pass them over in vague words, and keep the talk to ‘practical matters.’ But I have heard enough to know what he does think—to know that he has no faith in the Crucified Saviour—in an Incarnate God—in a Sanctifying Spirit; and without that faith, how can he hope to lead men aright? Ah! he will never do it!”
The Duke looked down at the girl’s face seen in profile as she half raised it towards him, and he marvelled at her, yet traced in her words the outcome of her mother’s teaching, and felt as though his wife were speaking to him through the lips of her daughter. He had always regarded his wife as something of a saint or angel—recognising in her deep spirituality a calibre of mind altogether different from his own, and in her faith, intense and vivid, a something vastly different from his own dry orthodoxy. He had often listened to her in wonder and amaze, half lifted up by her earnestness, half shrinking from following her into regions so strangely unfamiliar; but there was in Bride’s line of argument a thread of practical common-sense which aroused in him a curiosity to know more of her mind, and he said tentatively—
“You mean that you do not believe even in political reform unless it is based on the highest spiritual motives?”
“I think I mean,” answered Bride thoughtfully, “that I do not believe there can be any true reform at all that does not come from a spiritual impulse. How can I say it best? Eustace is fond of quoting the Bible to me. He bids me remember that we are called upon by Christ to love our neighbours as ourself, and goes on to point out that he is trying to work upon that principle. But he forgets that we are first bidden to love God with all our soul and mind and strength, and that the brotherly love is the outcome, the corollary of the love to God which should be the leading thought of our whole life.”
“Yes!—and what do you deduce from that?”
“Oh, papa, can you not see? Look what those men are doing who think that they can love their brothers and do them good without loving God first and best! Look what Eustace has done!—stirred up strife and discontent all round the country, landed poor Saul in a prison, provoked deeds of violence, lawlessness, and reckless wickedness—deeds that he himself would be the first to deplore and condemn, yet which are the direct outcome of his teaching. These men love their brothers, yet they stir up class hatred wherever they go—and why? It is because they forget that love of God must come first if any good is to come; it is because, though they themselves love their fellows, they cannot teach love of mankind to these more ignorant men whom they would lead. When men do not understand the sweetness of obedience to the perfect law of God, how can they ever be taught the duty of obedience to the imperfect law of man?—and yet we know that obedience to law—even when that law is sadly imperfect—is God’s will and ordinance, and that it brings its blessing with it. Oh, if men would go about teaching the people to love God with all their heart and soul and strength, to love each other in the bond of unity and peace, and to pray for their rulers and governors, that God would turn their hearts from all thought of oppression and tyranny, and make them to be just and merciful rulers of the people, then indeed might our land become a country blessed by God and relieved from the burden of her woes! If great and small would look to God for His guidance in all things, and cease warring with each other in anger and jealous hate, then would true reform begin. But when the cleverest, and often the most earnest men of the day leave God out of their thoughts and plans, and smile at the thought of working through the power of His name, then what can we expect but confusion and anarchy, and a slowly growing discontent amongst the people, which will lead at last to some terrible end? Eustace says that this movement is but the beginning of a huge wave that will sweep right over the country, and end by making the people—the masses—the rulers of the world. He looks upon that as an era of universal good to all—a Utopia, as he calls it—which is to supersede everything that has gone before—including Christianity itself—in its perfection of all human systems and the development of his gospel, ‘the greatest good to the greatest number.’ But though I think it will come—I think we can see that in the prophetic words of Scripture about the latter days—I fear it will come with more fearful misery and terror and tyranny than anything that has gone before. It is the men who practically refuse Christ—the Incarnate Son of God—though they may use the name of Christ still for an abstraction of their own, who will welcome the Antichrist coming in his own name. I think men do welcome any leader now who comes in his own name, and almost makes himself a god. Was it not so with Napoleon Buonaparte, whom some almost believed to be the Antichrist himself? It is those who come to them in the name of God whom they will not hear; for if they look to God as the Head, they must keep His laws; and men who are striving after bringing about this new era of happiness on the earth, do not want to do that. They like their own ways best.”
There was a long silence after this. Bride had paused many times for her father to speak, and had then gone on with her train of musing, almost forgetting she had an auditor. After a prolonged pause, the Duke said slowly—
“So this is why you could not bring yourself to marry Eustace?”
“Yes,” she answered softly; “I do not think there could be happiness for us, thinking so differently. He thinks now that he could give up everything for my sake—but I know him better than he knows himself. Besides, I would not wish him to give up anything for my sake; if he gives it up, it must be because he knows and feels it to be contrary to the law of God—and I do not think such an idea as that has ever entered into his head.”