But had any man living given up more than he was called upon to surrender, he asked himself? Who among those soldiers and servants of Christ had loved a woman as beautiful, loved with a passion as fervent?
He went back to London discouraged, yet not despairing. There was still the hope, faint perhaps, that he might lead that bright spirit out of darkness into light; win her for Christ, and so win her for himself. Ah, what an ecstatic dream, what an ineffable hope! To kneel by her side at the altar, to know her among the redeemed, the chosen of God! For that end what labour could be too difficult?
But, alas! between him and that hope there came the cloud of a terrible fear. He knew the Tempter's power over senses and soul, knew that to be in Antonia's company was to forget the world present and the world to come, to remember nothing, value nothing, but her, to become a worse idolator than they of old who worshipped Moloch and gave their children to the fire.
Wesley had warned him. Should he, in defiance of that warning from the best and wisest friend he ever had, enter the house where the Tempter lay in wait to destroy him, where he must meet the Enemy of Man? Call that enemy by what name he would, Satan, or love, he knew himself incapable of resistance.
He resolved to abide by Wesley's advice. He went back to his desolate home, and resumed his work in Lambeth Marsh, where he was welcomed with an affection that touched him deeply. His many converts, the awakened and believing Christians, flocked to his chapel and his schools; but that which moved him most was the welcome of the sinners and reprobates, whom he had taught to love him, though he could not teach them to forsake sin.
Before resuming his mission work in the old district he had ascertained that Lady Kilrush no longer went there. She still ministered to the Lambeth poor by deputy, and Mrs. Sophy Potter came among them often. He was weak enough to think with rapture of conversing with Sophy, from whom he would hear of Antonia. And so in the long dark winter he took up the old drudgery, teaching and exhorting, strenuous in good works, but with a leaden heart.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
"AS A GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED."
John Wesley was not without compassion for a friend and disciple for whom he had something of a fatherly affection. He too had been called upon to renounce the woman he loved, the excellent, gifted, enthusiastic Grace Murray, whose humble origin was forgotten in the force and purity of her character. He had been her affianced husband, had thought of her for a long time as his future wife, lived in daily companionship with her on his pious pilgrimages, made her his helpmeet in good works; and yet, on the assertion of a superior claim, he had given her to another. That bitter experience enabled him to measure the pain of Stobart's renunciation. He watched his friend's course with anxious care, lest heart should fail and feet stumble on the stony road of self-sacrifice; and their intercourse, while the great itinerant remained in London, was even closer than it had been before.