'To my shame you say it.'
'Your shame! Have you forgotten that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-nine just persons? You out-Herod Calvin in his blackest moods.'
'I'll not dispute with you. It's but words, words. I only hope that by repentance He means what you do. But I greatly fear.'
'I am sure.'
'Oh, man, how often we have been sure--we two!'
'I am sure still. My friends, the General is nearer to Christ than he thinks, and Christ is nearer to him. We shall do no harm, any of us, by expressing our consciousness of sin, though at such a time as this I cannot but think that such an expression may go too far. We who are here have all of us laboured in our several ways in the Lord's vineyard. To suggest that the fruit of our endeavours has been all that it might have been would be presumption. We are but men. The best that men can do is faulty. But we have done our best, each according to his or her light. And having done that best, we are entitled to wait with a glad confidence the inspection of the Master. To suppose that He will require from us what He knows it has not been in our power to give or to do--I thank God that there is nothing in Scripture or out of it to cause any one to imagine that He is so relentless a taskmaster. And I--I have enjoyed the glad and glorious privilege of standing in His very presence. I have dared to speak to Him, to look Him in the face. I give you my personal assurance that I have not suffered for my daring, but have been filled instead with a great joy, and with an infinite content. No, General; no, my friends; the Lord has not come to us in anger, but in peace--a man like unto ourselves, knowing our infirmities, to wipe the tears out of our eyes. Do not, I beseech you, look upon Him for a moment as the dreadful being the General has depicted. The General himself, when his black mood has passed, and he finds himself indeed face to face with his Master, will be the first to perceive how contrary to truth that picture is. And in that moment he will know, once and forever, how very certain it is that the Second Coming of our Lord and Saviour is to us, His children, an occasion of great joy.'
CHAPTER XV
[THE SUPPLICANT]
There was in the house that night one person who did not attempt to sleep--its mistress, Mrs. Miriam Powell, a woman of character; a fact which was sufficiently demonstrated by the name by which she was best known to the world. For when the Christian name of a married woman is familiar to the public it is because she is a person of marked individuality.
Something of her history was notorious; not only within a large circle of acquaintance, but outside of it. It had lost nothing in the telling. An unhappy marriage; a loose-living husband--a man who was in more senses than one unclean; a final resolution on her part to live out her life alone. Out of these data she had evolved a set of opinions on sexual questions to which she endeavoured to induce anyone and everyone, in season and out of season, to listen. There were some who regarded her with sympathy, some with admiration, some with respect, and some with fatigue.