“But, then, what right have we to take the good of that, however true it is, when we are not beautiful ourselves?”
“That only makes God the more beautiful—in that he will pour out the more of his beauty upon us to make us beautiful. If we care for his glory, we shall be glad to believe all this about him. But we are too anxious about feeling good ourselves, to rejoice in his perfect goodness. I think we should find that enough, my lady. For, if he be good, are not we his children, and sure of having it, not merely feeling it, some day?”
Here Margaret repeated a little poem of George Herbert’s. She had found his poems amongst Mrs. Elton’s books, who, coming upon her absorbed in it one day, had made her a present of the volume. Then indeed Margaret had found a friend.
The poem is called Dialogue:
“Sweetest Saviour, if my soul
Were but worth the having—”
“Oh, what a comfort you are to me, Margaret!” Lady Emily said, after a short silence. “Where did you learn such things?”
“From my father, and from Jesus Christ, and from God himself, showing them to me in my heart.”
“Ah! that is why, as often as you come into my room, even if I am very troubled, I feel as if the sun shone, and the wind blew, and the birds sang, and the tree-tops went waving in the wind, as they used to do before I was taken ill—I mean before they thought I must go abroad. You seem to make everything clear, and right, and plain. I wish I were you, Margaret.”
“If I were you, my lady, I would rather be what God chose to make me, than the most glorious creature that I could think of. For to have been thought about—born in God’s thoughts—and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, most precious thing in all thinking. Is it not, my lady?”
“It is,” said Lady Emily, and was silent.