But it is not everyone who cares for such companionship.
‘Where are my dead forefathers?’ asked the pagan Frisian of Bishop Wolfran, as he stood with one of his royal leg’s in the baptismal font.
‘In hell with all the other unbelievers,’ was the reply.
‘Mighty well!’ exclaimed Radbrod, removing his leg. ‘Then I will rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden, than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians in heaven.’
To return to Wentworth. He was disappointed, not only as regards the ministry, but as regards love, and that is a yet more awful thing. Plotinus taught that God made women beautiful that by means of them men might be drawn to love a beauty that is divine. To one capable of strong affection no blow can be more terrible than that of a disappointed love. It is vain to doubt on the subject. To all human appearances Wentworth was lost, but God never leaves a man to fall away for ever. ‘A gracious hand,’ writes the pious Wilberforce, ‘leads us in ways we know not, not only with, but against our plans and inclinations.’ Happily, this was so in Wentworth’s case. There came to him strength to reform, to conquer himself, to rise out of his dead self to something higher and better, partly from the memory of a pious home, partly by the natural working of his soul, partly by the needs of daily life, partly and chiefly by contact with an actress, who reproached him with his idleness and want of energy and aimlessness. Both were Bohemians, but the woman supported herself and her widowed mother. Both had loved and lost, both had found the ways of transgressors hard, that pleasure is not happiness, that there is no way to escape from God’s universal law, that wrongdoing, in thought or word or deed, is never without its inseparable penalty, and that is, the worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched. You may forget much, but you can never forget, if you live till the age of Methuselah, what you have done inconsistent with the native nobility of man; if you have brought dishonour on your name, betrayed the right, trifled with a woman’s heart, brought the gray hairs of father or mother to the grave with sorrow. The memory of such acts will continue, and sting and torture as long as life and though and being last. For such a one there are no waters of Lethe, cry for them as he will. A man cannot hide himself from himself. He may deceive the world; he may lead a life of pleasure; but he cannot deceive himself, however he may try to do so. Alone in the stillness of the night, in the quiet of the sick-room, in the awful presence of death, conscience will speak, and he cannot stifle its voice. ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’ is the teaching of all daily life. To be happy even in this world, as old Franklin found out, you must be virtuous. It is a false creed, that which makes us believe that man is better without God than with Him—better as a vicious than a virtuous man—better as a mild Agnostic or a gay infidel than a decent, sober Christian.
The home training in evangelical circles fifty years ago had many serious defects. It was conducted too much with reference to the future world rather than the present one. Had Wentworth been taught the beauty of work—that life was a battlefield in which the victory was to the strong—that man was here to do the best he could for himself, to enjoy the world which the good God had made beautiful—that he was to aim high, to cherish noble expectations, to do manly deeds, to be true and honest and courageous, how different would have been his life! Only the emotional part of him had been developed, and he fell an easy prey when temptation came to him and the voice of passion thundered in his ear and he fell. Why should he not, as he grew tired of sinning and repenting, he asked himself, ignore the past and find peace where peace could never be found? He would eat of the grapes of Sodom and the clusters of Gomorrah. He would sit in the seat of the scorner. There, at any rate, conscience would cease to sting. It was the old story over again. Facilis descensus Averni.
Wentworth was beginning to find this out. He had eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, as all must do—though some more than others—and he had found it fairer to the eye than pleasant to the palate. He was getting sick of worldly men and worldly things. There is a cant of the world as well as of the Church, and he had found it out. The cloud passed away, and then came to him a clearer spiritual insight than he had ever possessed before. He had lost the childish faith of his early home, and there came in its stead the grander and fuller one of a man who had put away childish things, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who had fought his fears and gathered strength, who had found peace and safety, not in the pleasant places, gay with flowers and musical with the song of birds, where we never dream of danger, but in the storm and tempest of the raging sea. Old ideas, modified by hard experience, asserted themselves; old inspirations were revived; old hopes and purposes were brought to life. He would be a preacher—but from the press, rather than from the more cramped and circumscribed pulpit. Temporal things also went better with him. Some of his writings had been republished, and had brought him fame and fortune. In the accomplished actress of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, known as Miss Howard, he had met a sympathetic friend. It was she who had originally raised him from the Slough of Despond, and had recalled him to his better self.
It is told of an Indian Prince who in prosperity was too much elevated and in adversity too much depressed, that he gave notice that on his forthcoming birthday the most acceptable present that any of his courtiers could make him would be a sentence short enough to be engraved on a ring, and suggesting a remedy for the grievance of which he complained. Many phrases were accordingly proposed, but not one was deemed satisfactory, till his daughter came forward and offered an emerald on which were engraved two Arabic words, the literal translation of which was, ‘This, too, will pass.’ Warren Hastings, who told the story, adds how the sentence cheered him when on his trial in Westminster Hall. It was thus Wentworth was upheld, and ‘This, too, will pass’ was the thought that urged him on.
CHAPTER IX.
THE OLD, OLD STORY.
Once upon a time there was a sad hubbub in the Independent Chapel at Sloville. At the monthly tea-meeting of the teachers the prettiest of the female teachers was missing, much to the grief of the young men, and to the relief of some plain but pious young women, who had been rather in the shade since she had come amongst them.