With a great sigh, of which he was not aware, Blatherwick rose and walked from the kitchen, hoping he looked—not guilty, but sunk in thought. In truth he was unable to think. Oppressed and heavy-laden with the sense of a duty too unpleasant for performance, he went home to his cheerless manse, where his housekeeper was the only person he had to speak to, a woman incapable of comforting anybody. There he went straight to his study, but, kneeling, found he could not pray the simplest prayer; not a word would come, and he could not pray without words! He was dead, and in hell—so far perished that he felt nothing. He rose, and sought the open air; it brought him no restoration. He had not heeded his friend’s advice, had not entertained the thought of the one thing possible to him—had not moved, even in spirit, toward Isy! The only comfort he could now find for his guilty soul was the thought that he could do nothing, for he did not know where Isy was to be found. When he remembered the next moment that his friend Robertson must be able to find her, he soothed his conscience with the reflection that there was no coach till the next morning, and in the meantime he could write: a letter would reach him almost as soon as he could himself!
But what then would Robertson think? He might give his wife the letter to read! She might even read it of herself, for they concealed nothing from each other! So he only walked the faster, tired himself, and earned an appetite as the result of his day’s work! He ate a good dinner, although with little enjoyment, and fell fast asleep in his chair. No letter was written to Robertson that day. No letter of such sort was ever written. The spirit was not willing, and the flesh was weakness itself.
In the evening he took up a learned commentary on the Book of Job; but he never even approached the discovery of what Job wanted, received, and was satisfied withal. He never saw that what he himself needed, but did not desire, was the same thing—even a sight of God! He never discovered that, when God came to Job, Job forgot all he had intended to say to him—did not ask him a single question—knew that all was well. The student of Scripture remained blind to the fact that the very presence of the Living One, of the Father of men, proved sufficient in itself to answer every question, to still every doubt! But then James’s heart was not pure like Job’s, and therefore he could never have seen God; he did not even desire to see him, and so could see nothing as it was. He read with the blindness of the devil in his heart.
In Marlowe’s Faust, the student asks Mephistopheles—
How comes it then that thou art out of hell?
And the demon answers him—
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it;
and again—
Where we are is hell;
And where hell is there must we ever be:
... when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven;
and yet again—