The miller laughed again, but very gently, and held out his hand to the other without a word. It was not until the blacksmith had disappeared down the lane that his friend said in a low voice:
“It beats me clean. There must be a sort of magic in the man's tongue that it works those wonders. All the time that he was telling us his story o' the woods I was making up my mind to be a better man—to have more charity at heart for my fellows—to be easier on such as cannot pay all that they have promised to pay. And now here's Hal that confesses to the same, albeit he has never gone further out of the straight track than to puff a pipe that has paid nothing to King George's purse. And the man gave no preacher's admonition to us, but only talked o' the forest and such-like wild things.... Now, how did he manage to bring Faith into such a simple discourse?... Oh, 'tis his tongue that has the magic in it! Magic, I say; for how did it come that when he spoke I found myself gazing like a child at a picture—a solid, bright picture o' woods and things?... Oh, 'tis true magic, this—true!”
CHAPTER V
Oh, that a man could speak to men in the language of the Spring!” cried Mr. Wesley, when his horse stopped unbidden and unchidden and looked over the curved green roof of the hedge across the broad green pasturage beyond. “Oh, that my lips could speak that language which every ear can understand and every heart feel! What shall it profit a man to understand if he does not feel—feel—feel? The man who understands is the one who holds in his hand the doctor's prescription. The man who feels is the one who grasps the healing herbs; and 'tis the Spring that yields these for all to gather who will.”
And then, automatically he took his feet out of the stirrups for greater ease, and his eyes gazed across the meadow-land which sloped gently upward to the woods where the sunbeams were snared among the endless network of the boughs, for the season was not advanced far enough to make the foliage dense; the leaves were still thin and transparent—shavings of translucent emerald—a shade without being shadowy.
Everything that he saw was a symbol to him. He looked straight into the face of Nature herself and saw in each of its features something of the Great Message to man with which his own heart was filled to overflowing. He was a poet whose imagination saw beneath the surface of everything. He was a physician who could put his finger upon the pulse of Nature and feel from its faintest flutter the mighty heart which throbbed through the whole creation.
What man was there that failed to understand the message of Nature as he understood it? He could not believe that any should be so dense as to misinterpret it. It was not a book written in a strange tongue; it was a book made up of an infinite number of pictures, full of colour that any child could appreciate, even though it had never learned to read. There was the meadow beyond the hedgerow. It was full of herbs, bitter as well as sweet. Could anyone doubt that these were the symbols of the Truth; herbs for the healing of the nations, and if some of them were bitter to the taste, were their curative properties the less on this account? Nay, everyone knew that the bitterest herbs were oftentimes the most healing. What a symbol of the Truth! It was not the dulcet truths that were purifying to the soul of man, but the harsh and unpalatable.
“God do so to me and more also if ever I should become an unfaithful physician and offer to the poor souls of men only those Truths that taste sweet in their mouths and that smell grateful to their nostrils!” he cried.