“Yes,” said Colin; “but we are not all chosen for these. If I have to live, I must qualify myself the best I can for my work. I should like to be of a little use to Scotland, if that was possible. When I hear the poor people here singing their vespers——”
“Ah, Campbell! one word—let me speak,” said his friend. “Alice showed me the poem you gave her. You don’t mean it, I know; but let me beg you not to utter such sentiments. You seem to consent to the doctrine of purgatory, one of the worst delusions of the Church of Rome. There are no spirits in prison, my dear, dear friend. When I leave you, I shall be with my Saviour. Don’t give your countenance to such inventions of the devil.”
“That was not what I intended to say,” said Colin, who had no heart for argument. “I meant that to see the habit of devotion of all these people, whom we call so ignorant, and to remember how little we have of that among our own people, whom we think enlightened, goes to my heart. I should like to do a priest’s duty——”
“Again!” said Meredith. “Dear Campbell, you will be a minister; there is but one great High Priest.”
“Yes,” said Colin, “most true, and the greatest of all consolations. But yet I believe in priests inferior—priests who need be nothing more than men. I am not so much for teaching as you are, you know; I have so little to teach any man. With you who are going to the Fount of all knowledge it will be different. I can conceive, I can imagine how magnificent may be your work,” the young man said, with a faltering voice, as he laid his warm young hand upon the fingers which were almost dead.
Meredith closed his hand upon that of his friend, and looked at him with his eyes so clear and awful, enlarged and lighted up with the prescience of what was to come. “If you do your work faithfully it will be the same work,” he said. “Our Master alone knows the particulars. If I might have perhaps to supplement and complete what you do on earth!—Ah, but I must not be tempted into vain speculations! Enough that I shall know His will and see Him as He is. I desire no more.”
“Amen,” said Colin; “and, when you are in your new career, think of me sometimes, worried and vexed as I know I shall be. We shall not be able to communicate then, but I know now beforehand what I shall have to go through. You don’t know Scotland, Meredith. A man who tries for any new reformation in the Church will have to fight for trifles of detail which are not worth fighting for, and perhaps get both himself and his work degraded in consequence. You can know no such cares. Think of me sometimes when you are doing your work ‘with thunders of acclaim.’ I wonder—but you would think it a profanity if I said what I was going to say.”
“What was it?” said Meredith, who, indeed, would not have been sorry had his friend uttered a profanity which might give him occasion to speak, for perhaps the last time, “faithfully” to his soul.
“I wonder,” said Colin, whose voice was low, “whether our Master, who sees us both, though we cannot see each other, might tell you sometimes what your friend was doing. He, too, is a man. I mean no irreverence, Meredith. There were men for whom, above His tenderness for all, He had a special love. I should like to think it. I can know nothing of you; but then I am less likely to forget you, staying behind in this familiar world.”
And the two youths again clasped hands, tears filling the eyes of the living one, but no moisture in the clear orbs of him who was about to die.