What, was it possible that Satan, if he acquired that secret, would allow it to be revealed, thereby losing his hold upon as many of the people of the world as became truly repentant, and there was no doubt that Pritchard had urged repentance upon the people?
It was a tangled web that Wesley found in his hand this day. No matter which end of it he began to work upon, his difficulties in untangling seemed the same. He was fearful of doing the man an injustice; but how could he, as a faithful servant, stand by and see the work with which he had been entrusted, wrecked and brought to naught?
And then another point suggested itself to him: what if this prediction became the means of calling many to repentance—true repentance—how dreadful would be his own condemnation if he were to oppose that which had been followed by blessing!
It was the flexibility and the ceaseless activity of his mind that increased the difficulties of his position. He, and he only, could look at the matter from every standpoint and appreciate it in all its bearings. If he had not had the refuge of prayer, having faith that he would receive the Divine guidance, he would have allowed the vanity—if it was vanity—of Pritchard to be counteracted in the ordinary—in what seemed to be the natural way—namely, by the ridicule which would follow the nonfulfilment of his prophecy.
He prayed.
CHAPTER XV
He had seated himself on the trunk of a fallen tree on the edge of the wood, and he had a feeling that he was not alone. The Summer ever seemed to him to be a spiritual essence—a beautiful creature of airy flashing draperies, diffusing perfumes a& she went by. He had known the joy of her companionship for several years, for no man had ampler opportunities of becoming acquainted with the seasons in all their phases.
There was the sound of abundance of life in the woods behind him, and around the boles of the scattered trees in front of him the graceful little stoats were playing. At his feet were scattered all the wild flowers of the meadow. Where the earth was brown under the trees, myriads of fairy bells were hanging in clusters, and in the meadow the yellow buttercups shone like spangles upon a garment of green velvet. He was not close enough to the brink of the cliffs to be able to see the purple and blue and pink of the flowers scattered among the coarse herbage of the rocks. But the bank of gorse that flowed like a yellow river through the meadow could not be ignored. In the sunlight it was a glory to see.