Not Under the Law

by Grace Livingston Hill

In one of her trips to the city she had discovered a Bible School of national renown, and found that she could so arrange her schedule as to make one or two evening classes a week possible. Thereafter when she was not actually busy with her school work, or doing some little helpful thing for somebody else, she could be found studying her Bible. It had become a fascination, this searching for new riches in the Book. She had always enjoyed studying it, but never before with such a hunger for it as came now. Day by day gave her new wonders, a new opening up of the revelation of God to His children.

When Professor Harrington asked her to go somewhere with him he frequently found that she had another engagement in the city. Becoming curious, she finally took him to one of her classes, with the result that he entered into a lengthy argument with her all the way home, trying to persuade her to give it up. He informed her that it was ridiculous for her to waste her fine mind being led by men who ignored the simplest principles of science, and pinned their faith to a book that was so old that no one could be sure who wrote it, or where it came from. He told her that a person was a fool to swallow whole the teachings of men who denied geology, zoölogy, science in every branch; who taught that the legends of Scripture were actual truths; and who dared to enter into the occult and profess to have spiritual relations with the Maker of the Universe; who even descended to the ridiculous and marked out the future from the mystical writings of the men they chose to call prophets.

When he reached this point Joyce sat up straight in the train, her cheeks glowing, her eyes bright, so that those sitting near must have noticed her, and said:

“Stop! I cannot listen to any more of your talk. You and I simply have nothing in common——!”

He saw that he had offended her, and sought to make his peace. He apologized and said they would speak of something else, and for the remainder of the half-hour that the late train took in dragging from station to station till it reached Silverton, he made himself most fascinating, telling in his best style of a trip he took to Switzerland the summer before.

Ordinarily Joyce would have enjoyed this with all her eager young mind, visualizing the beautiful descriptions and putting herself there almost as if she had experienced it herself. But now she only sat quietly, looking straight ahead, a withdrawal in her manner, a look in her eyes as if she saw something that others could not see; an air that showed she was thinking deeply about something, and her thoughts were not following his words.

He was piqued and mortified. He could not believe that she would not yield to the things that she had often enjoyed before in his conversation. In fact, it had been a source of much pleasure to him to tell her of rare experiences he had had in travel and watch the flush of her cheek and the glow in her eye as she enjoyed it with him. It cut him that he could not reach her, that she had withdrawn her friendliness. It mortified his pride and his sense of superiority. And most of all it hurt him in his self-love. Perhaps he would have named it love for her, for he had come during the winter to recognize that that was what he felt for this girl; and seeing that was the case, he was the more determined to mold and make her as she should be to fit his walk and station in life. Albeit, his love for any one was merely another name for self-love. He wanted her and her love merely to make himself more complete for himself, and so he was really in love with himself all the time.

For the rest of the ride Joyce was absolutely silent, and when they alighted at the station and started toward her home she said nothing, and she walked a trifle apart from him and ignored the arm he offered.

In a sudden yearning for his heart’s desire, he took her hand and drew it within his arm, holding her hand in a firm warm grasp and speaking with a new tenderness.

“Joyce, don’t you know why I have spoken to you as I have? Don’t you know that it is because I love you, because I cannot bear to see your brilliant mind filled with such twaddle, such nonsense, such rot——!”