“Then why should the weight of the story,” said Wingfold, “the weight of its proof, I mean, to minds like ours, coming so long after, and by their education incapacitated for believing in such things, in a time when the law of everything is searched into—-”
“And as yet very likely as far from understood as ever,” interposed but not interrupted Polwarth.
“Why should the weight of its proof, I ask, be laid upon such improbable things as miracles? That they are necessarily improbable, I presume you will admit.”
“Having premised that I believe every one recorded,” said Polwarth, “I heartily admit their improbability. But the WEIGHT of proof is not, and never was laid upon them. Our Lord did not make much of them, and did them far more for the individual concerned than for the sake of the beholders. I will not however talk to you about them now. I will merely say that it is not through the miracles you will find the Lord, though, having found him, you will find him there also. The question for you is not, Are the miracles true? but, Was Jesus true? Again I say, you must find him—the man himself. When you have found him, I may perhaps retort upon you the question—Can you believe such improbable things as the miracles, Mr. Wingfold?”
The little man showed pretty plainly by the set of his lips that he meant to say no more, and again Wingfold had, with considerable dissatisfaction and no answer, to go back to his New Testament.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE CURATE MAKES A DISCOVERY.
At length, one day, as he was working with a harmony, comparing certain passages between themselves, and as variedly given in the gospels, he fell into a half-thinking, half-dreaming mood, in which his eyes, for some time unconsciously, rested on the verse, “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life:” it mingled itself with his brooding, and by and by, though yet he was brooding rather than meditating, the form of Jesus had gathered, in the stillness of his mental quiescence, so much of reality that at length he found himself thinking of him as of a true-hearted man, mightily in earnest to help his fellows, who could not get them to mind what he told them.
“Ah!” said the curate to himself, “if I had but seen him, would not I have minded him!—would I not have haunted his steps, with question upon question, until I got at the truth!”
Again the more definite thought vanished in the seething chaos of reverie, which dured unbroken for a time,—until again suddenly rose from memory to consciousness and attention the words: “Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”