Terror at times overwhelmed the henchman—panic thoughts that Satan had him; cold and awful doubts of his acceptability to his overlord. But they were not lasting; they went away like the chill mists from the face of the hills. It was incredible, it was impossible that the Lord would not see his own banner, would not recognize and succour his own liegeman! The liegeman might err and come under displeasure; good! the punishment came in agony and remorse for lukewarm zeal, in a shown sight of the evil lord to whose suzerainty he might be transferred and of that lord’s dismal and horrible demesne! Nay, more solemnly and threateningly, in an allowed vision of what a disobedient liegeman would forfeit—the heavens opening and showing the rainbow-circled throne, the seven lamps, the sea of glass, the winged beasts saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” and giving glory and honour and thanks; the four-and-twenty elders crowned with gold, falling down and worshipping Him who sat on the Throne; the streets of gold, and the twelve gates, and the temple open in heaven, and in the temple the ark of the testament. “O God,” prayed the minister, “take not my name from the book of life! Take not my name from the book of life, and I will serve thee forever and ever!”
Master Clement very truly worshipped the God whom he had seated on the throne, and was jealous for his honour and glory and solicitous for his praise among men, and would give life itself to bring all mankind under his Lord’s supremacy. As little as any man-at-war of an earthly feudal suzerain would he have hesitated to compel them to come in. Was it not to their endless, boundless good, and without was there any other thing than hell eternal and everlasting and the evil lord? If, contumaciously, they would not come in, or if being in they rebelled and broke from their allegiance, what else was to be done but to carry fire and sword—that is, to put into operation the laws of the land—against his Lord’s enemies? Had any one called his attention to the fact of how largely liegemen like himself had brought these laws into being, he would have answered, Yes; under the direction of their Suzerain’s own Word, writ down for their perpetual guidance, shortly after the making of the world!
It was not alone eager jealousy for his Lord’s glory and honour, nor anxious care that he himself prove in no wise an idle and unprofitable servant, that was felt by Master Clement. To his intense zeal and his own cries for life eternal was added a thwart love of mankind—that portion of it enclosed in the great sheepfold, and that portion who, wandering outside, lost upon the mountain-sides in the cold and darkness, yet had in them no stubbornness, but would hasten to the fold so soon as they heard the shepherd’s voice through the mist. He was eager for them, his brothers and children in the fold; eager, too, for the poor lost souls upon the mountains,—lost, yet not wilfully, stubbornly, and abandonedly lost, but capable of being found and regained, so many as were elected.
But the others, ah, the others! they who set up their own wills and professed other knowledge, or, if not knowledge, then doubt and scepticism of the liegeman’s knowledge, writing a question mark beside that which was not to be questioned—they who moved away from the fold in its completeness! Master Clement’s zeal flared downward no less than upward, to the left no less than to the right. He hated with intensity—with the greater intensity that he was so sure his hatred was disinterested. “Have I not hated Thy enemies?” But if those without were manifestly rather than invisibly of the Kingdom of Satan,—if their ill-doing was so great that it became as it were corporeal,—if the people saw them open atheists, wizards, and witches,—if their foot had slipped or their master had been negligent to cover them with his mantle of darkness,—the soul of Master Clement experienced a grim and deadly exaltation. He tightened his belt, he saw that his axe was sharp, he went forth to hew the dead and poisoned wood out of the forest of the Lord.
In his small room he sat and read by his one candle—read those portions of the Old Testament and the New which he wished to read. Had a spirit queried his choice he would have answered, “Is it not all his Word? And are not these the indicated circumstances and this very passage the Answer and Direction?” When he had finished reading he knelt and prayed long and fervently. His prayer told his God who He was, his attributes, and what was his usual and expected conduct; it told Him who were his enemies and rehearsed the nature of the ill they would do Him; then changed to a vehement petition that if it was his will He would discover his enemies and bring them to confusion—and if by means of the worm Thomas Clement—
He prayed in terrible earnest, his hands locking and unlocking, beads of sweat upon his brow, prayed for the better part of an hour. Finally he rose from his knees, and standing by the table read yet another passage, then paced the floor, then sat down, and, drawing forth the tablets upon which he had made his own notes of the examination that day, fell to studying them, the open book yet beside him.
He read over a list of questions with the answers Aderhold had given. He had not been quick to give the answers—he had fenced—he had striven to shift the ground—but at last, with a desperate quietness, he had given them.
Qu. Do you believe in God?
Ans. In my sense, yes. In your sense, no.
Qu. In God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?