David Fleming's Forgiveness

by Margaret M. Robertson

“I have not thought her very ill. I don’t know that she is worse to-day, but she is certainly no better. I suppose it depends on whether her strength holds out. She is an old woman now.”

These were anxious days to Katie; but her grandfather had more of her thoughts than her grandmother.

“And it is a wonder to me that he should be so broken down, a good man like him, even by such sore trouble. Even the loss of grannie would be but for a few days, and he has the Lord Himself in the midst of it all.”

But this was a mistake on Katie’s part. For all this time, strangely and sadly enough, he was ringing the changes on his old complaint: “Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.” He had not the Lord Himself in those days. Even when he pleaded, as he did day and night, for Davie’s life, it was the cry of despair that came out of his sore trouble, rather than the “prayer of faith” to which the promise of healing to the sick is given.

And as he bowed himself down beneath the pines, it was the same. He was in a maze of perplexity and fear. Had he been sinning against God all this time? Had he been hating not the sin, but the sinner? Had it been beneath God’s hand that he had been refusing to bow? And now was God leaving him to hardness of heart?

For he was utterly broken and spent, and in the weakness of mind which exhaustion of body caused, he had almost lost the power to discriminate or reason. He could not command his thoughts. The wind moaned in the pines above him, and the sunshine came and went, flickering and fading, and brightening again, and with the monotonous sound and the ever-changing light, there came voices and visions, and he seemed to listen as in a dream:

“It was God’s will, grandfather. God kens, and it was His will. I would fain hear you say once that you have forgiven your enemy.”

His enemy! Was Jacob Holt his enemy? And if he were, could even an enemy bring evil on him or his without permission? What had it all come to—the long pain, the persistent shrinking from this man, whom God alone might judge? Had he been hating him all this time—bringing leanness to his own soul, and darkness, and all the evil that hatred must ever bring? And where was it all to end? And what must he do, now that his sin had found him out?

For his time was short, and the end near. And then his thoughts wandered away to the old squire lying on his death-bed—the man who had declared himself willing to stand on the same platform with old David Fleming, when his time should come to be judged. And that time was close at hand now, and his own time could not be far away, and then he must stand face to face with Him whose last words were, “Father, forgive them!”—face to face with Him who had said, “Love your enemies,” “Forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you.”

Over and over the same round his thoughts went, till, worn out with anxiety and watching, and lulled unconsciously by the soft “sough” of the wind in the pines, he fell asleep. Pine-tree Hollow was all in shadow when he awoke, but when he had gone a few steps, he saw the sunlight lying on the high hills to the east. His first thoughts were of what might have been happening at home while he slept, and he quickened his steps.