And as they did so they saw the mainyard swing, heard the wailing cries of the sailors as they trimmed the sails to the light breeze and with a sense of utter relief watched her glide off towards the open sea. Then Philip raised his beautiful voice in the grand old song of satisfaction: “O God, our help in ages past,” in which his crew joined, as was their wont, in sweetest concord. By the time she reached the beach the ship was almost hull down on the horizon and never, as far as log-books or signalling stations can tell, was she reported again.
That night there was another great family gathering of the islanders, first for equitable division of the articles bought, and next for the usual thanksgiving in that they had suffered no harm at the hands of their visitors. For even these gentle, happy children of love were suspicious of all contact with the outer world, they always feared the worst, knowing how utterly foreign to their ideas of brotherly love and unity of heart were the majority of even the few people who touched at their island. How hard it is for us, who, whether we like it or not, are bound to feel doubtful of professors of Christianity, when we realize the deeds and hear the words of so many of them, to understand the feelings of this primitive people, among whom the commandment to love one another had become an ingrained principle. Many of us with the best will in the world to believe in them find ourselves saying, “Ah well, they are exceptionally favoured by their situation and history. If they only lived as we do, among civilized heathen, professing to be Christians and yet denying the power of God to do His will among us they would be as lukewarm and half hearted as most of us are.”
Something of this kind must have entered into C. B.’s thoughts that night. For after the young ones had gone to sleep he and his father and mother sat on the stoop in front of their house discussing in their simple way the events of the day and their bearing upon what they knew of life until suddenly the young man said, “Mother, sometimes I think that it’s all very well for us to be as happy and loving and fond of God as we are here where everybody is like-minded, but what if one of us should be suddenly flung out of this among people like those we’ve seen to-day? How should we stand it, do you think? I don’t quite know how to put it, but what I mean is, are we good because we are shut in with goodness and have no temptations to be had, or are we good because we really love good and hate evil? And should we be thus good if everybody around us was bad?”
His gentle mother made answer, “Dear son, why worry your head about such things. If I understand God’s word at all it tells me that if I live for God and with Him for the present the future has nothing to do with me. But I believe that wherever He puts me He will provide me with grace to meet every form of evil. I do not find, though, that if I go voluntarily where there is evil I get any promise of being made proof against it. At any rate I know that I love God and all His ways as far as I know anything, and I can’t imagine myself happy in any other condition. And I am quite content with that, blessing Him for putting me where I am, in the midst of people who love Him also.”
Philip who had been sitting, as was usual with him when unemployed, gazing into vacancy with his thoughts far away, suddenly aroused himself and said in a dreamy voice—
“I don’t believe that all the people who don’t know God are unhappy, but I’m sure that most of them are, judging from those I’ve mixed with on my travels. And I’m quite sure that if people were taught in Christian lands as we are here, if they were brought up to look upon God as a personal Friend always near, and one that no one who knows Him could be afraid of, there would be an enormous number of people more loving Him and knowing Him than there are. I kept my eyes open and listened also while I was in America and Australia, and I went to all sorts of places where they said God was worshipped, and I got entirely bewildered.
“For it seemed to me that what they called religion was a thing which hadn’t anything to do with their lives at all. They went to church or chapel or meeting on Sundays, and said so many prayers or listened to what the preacher had to say, not at all because they loved God, but because they thought that if they didn’t do these things they would be punished for ever and ever by being in a place called hell, always burning and never burnt up. As for loving God as a man loves a good father or mother, or loving Jesus as one loves a dear elder brother who has always been our ideal man since we were toddlers, the thing didn’t seem to strike them in any way. And in some of the churches I went into I could hardly help laughing, it all seemed so funny, all a big show to please God who made all the glorious world we live in and the wonders in heaven above. When I asked them if they thought God minded how they dressed or walked or smelt (I didn’t like the smoky smelly stuff at all), they got angry and said I was an ignorant heathen, which of course didn’t hurt me a bit because I knew I wasn’t. But I did try to show them in the Bible how plainly God had said as to little toddling children that all this outward show was of no value in his sight, that it was the heart and life that really mattered. Only they said then that I was so stupid it was waste of time arguing with me.”
C. B. did not remember ever having heard his father talk for so long a time without stopping before, and he was tremendously impressed by what he had heard. Nevertheless, there was a growing, deepening desire in his mind to go and see this curious world, to test the reality of his own love of God in contact with the extraordinary conditions which his father said obtained in the great struggling masses of people who belonged to professedly Christian countries. He felt, in fact, like the inhabitant of another planet in the old story who was smitten with a strong desire to come to earth and see for himself whether what he had heard was true, and if there were even stranger things to be found in this wonderful little world than he had heard of.
No word of this growing craving escaped the young man, but daily, almost hourly, in the midst of his simple toils, he thought over the possibilities of his getting personally acquainted with the outside world, until the longing to do so was the strongest factor in his life. He grew graver, more self-centred, and all his intimates noticed it, for it was so complete a change from his previous liveliness. Still, nobody mentioned the matter to him, none felt it their business to interfere with him, more especially as he was if anything more energetic than ever in performing his share of the work, and if it may be said, where all alike were kind and unselfish, was more thoughtful of others than ever he had been.
So the days and weeks and months glided away in most uneventful fashion among the happy islanders. There were births hailed with decorous joy and earnest praise for God’s good gifts, two or three deaths, met by all as the natural termination of an earthly probation and the commencement of real life. As such these events were no occasions for wild outbursts of grief. Tears were shed of course when the bereaved ones remembered that in this life the dear companion would be seen no more, but these were speedily dried at the thought of the short time which would pass before reunion came, and then separation would be an impossibility. For these people, strange as it may seem to us, acted as if what they believed were real to them, and not some cunningly devised fable, in which they had to profess belief in order to hoodwink God into letting them into Heaven. A Heaven, by the way, which they believed to be a glorified earth wherein there should be no physical, moral, or mental evil.