And they drive him into the foulest death—eternal—if there be, for such souls, any Eternity. On which Scott does not feel it his duty, as Dickens does, to offer you an opinion. He tells you, as Shakespeare, the facts he knows,—no more. [[255]]
There, then, you have Sir Walter’s opinion of the existing method and function of British Civil Law.
What the difference may be, and what the consequences of such difference, between this lucrative function, and the true duty of Civil Law,—namely, to fulfil and continue in all the world the first mission of the mightiest Lawgiver, and declare that on such and such conditions, written in eternal letters by the finger of God, every man’s house, or piece of Holy land, is his own,—there does not, it appears, exist at present wit enough under all the weight of curled and powdered horsehair in England, either to reflect, or to define.
In the meantime, we have to note another question beyond, and greater than this,—answered by Scott in his story.
So far as human laws have dealt with the man, this their ruined client has been destroyed in his innocence. But there is yet a Divine Law, controlling the injustice of men.
And the historian—revealing to us the full relation of private and public act—shows us that the wretch’s destruction was in his refusal of the laws of God, while he trusted in the laws of man.
Such is the entire plan of the story of Redgauntlet,—only in part conscious,—partly guided by the Fors which has rule over the heart of the noble king in his word, and of the noble scribe in his scripture, as [[256]]over the rivers of water. We will trace the detail of this story farther in next Fors; meantime, here is your own immediate lesson, reader, whoever you may be, from our to-day’s work.
The first—not the chief, but the first—piece of good work a man has to do is to find rest for himself,—a place for the sole of his foot; his house, or piece of Holy land; and to make it so holy and happy, that if by any chance he receive order to leave it, there may be bitter pain in obedience; and also that to his daughter there may yet one sorrowful sentence be spoken in her day of mirth, “Forget also thy people, and thy father’s house.”
‘But I mean to make money, and have a better and better house, every ten years.’
Yes, I know you do.