“First to exhibit to you the disease, then to point out the remedy,” returned Frere.
“And if you can do this,” exclaimed Lewis—“if, remembering what I am, you can show me how I might have avoided my errors in the past, how I may do aught to retrieve them in the future, I will indeed reckon you my friend—nay, I will bless your coming as that of an angel sent from heaven to aid a desperate, well-nigh a despairing man.”
“Pray what religion do you profess?” asked Frere abruptly.
Lewis started, but recovering himself, replied coldly, “The same as you do yourself.”
“And do you believe in the truth of it?”
“Why ask such a question?” returned Lewis with a slight degree of annoyance perceivable in his tone; “whatever may have been my faults, I am no infidel.”
“I will tell you why I ask,” replied Frere; “because, though you confess with your lips the truths of Christianity, in your life you have practically denied them.”
Lewis made no answer, and Frere continued in an earnest, impressive voice, his manner becoming every moment more animated as he grew excited with his subject—
“If, as you say you do not doubt, Christianity be true, it amounts to this. The God who made and governs this world has been pleased to reveal to us His will—namely, that if we believe in Him and obey Him, He will save us from eternal misery and bestow upon us eternal happiness. To enable us to fulfil the second condition, that of obedience, He has given us a code, not so much of laws as of principles of action, by which we may become a law to ourselves. In order to demonstrate how these abstract principles are applicable to the exigencies of our mundane career, He sent His Son into the world, ‘a man subject to like passions as ourselves, only without sin,’ because he was a consistent embodiment of the doctrines he taught. Now had you taken these precepts, to which you accord an unpractical and therefore an equally senseless and useless belief, as the rule of your actions, how different a result would have followed; instead of provoking animosity by haughty looks and proud words, you would have remembered that ‘a soft answer turneth away wrath;’ instead of returning evil for evil, you would have considered the example of Him, who ‘when He was reviled, reviled not again,’ and called to mind His precepts, ‘resist not evil, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you;’ instead of seeking to avenge your own quarrel by deeds of violence, which outrage nature, and bring their own punishment with them even here, in the pangs of conscience, you would have thought of His words who hath said, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ and left your cause in His hands. Instead of attempting to do everything in your own strength, and failing thus miserably, you would have recollected that ‘God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness,’ and prayed to Him for support and assistance. Even now, instead of having recklessly determined to expose yourself to the chance of committing what you own to be a crime of such frightful magnitude, that the remorse it must entail on you would be unbearable, the question would be, not, how at any sacrifice you must vindicate your honour in the eyes of men, but ‘how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”’ He paused, then asked abruptly, “Do you admit all this?”
Lewis’s features worked convulsively, as in a hollow, broken voice he replied, “Yes I do, God help me!”