“But could we love him with all our hearts if he were not altogether lovable?”
“He might not be the less to be worshipped though he seemed so to us. We must worship his justice as much as his love, his power as much as his justice.”
Arctura returned no answer; the words had fallen on her heart like an ice-berg. She was not, however, so utterly overwhelmed by them as she would have been some time before; she thought with herself, “I will ask Mr. Grant! I am sure he does not think like that! Worship power as much as love! I begin to think she does not understand what she is talking about! If I were to make a creature needing all my love to make life endurable to him, and then not be kind enough to him, should I not be cruel? Would I not be to blame? Can God be God and do anything conceivably to blame—anything that is not altogether beautiful? She tells me we cannot judge what it would be right for God to do by what it would be right for us to do: if what seems right to me is not right to God, I must wrong my conscience and be a sinner in order to serve him! Then my conscience is not the voice of God in me! How then am I made in his image? What does it mean? Ah, but that image has been defaced by the fall! So I cannot tell a bit what God is like? Then how am I to love him? I never can love him! I am very miserable! I am not God’s child!”
Thus, long after Miss Carmichael had taken a coldly sorrowful farewell of her, Arctura went round and round the old mill-horse track of her self-questioning: God was not to be trusted in until she had done something she could not do, upon which he would take her into his favour, and then she could trust him! What a God to give all her heart to, to long for, to dream of being at home with! Then she compared Miss Carmichael and Donal Grant, and thought whether Donal might not be as likely to be right as she. Oh, where was assurance, where was certainty about anything! How was she ever to know? What if the thing she came to know for certain should be—a God she could not love!
The next day was Sunday. Davie and his tutor overtook her going home from church. It came as of itself to her lips, and she said,
“Mr. Grant, how are we to know what God is like?”
“‘Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the father, and how sayest thou then, Show us the father?’”
Thus answered Donal, without a word of his own, and though the three walked side by side, it was ten minutes before another was spoken. Then at last said Arctura,
“If I could but see Christ!”
“It is not necessary to see him to know what he is like. You can read what those who knew him said he was like; that is the first step to understanding him, which is the true seeing; the second is, doing what he tells you: when you understand him—there is your God!”