Any man may graduate in the schools of Irreligion and Mispolicy, if he have a glib tongue and a brazen forehead; with these qualities, and a small portion of that talent which is producible on demand, he may take a wrangler's degree. Such men were often met with in the common walks of society, before they became audacious enough to show themselves upon the public theatre, and aspire to form a party in the state. Peter Hopkins could listen to them just with as much indifference as he did to a Jacobite, a Nonjuror, or one to whom the memory of Oliver and the Saints in buff was precious. The Doctor, before he happily became acquainted with Mr. Bacon, held his peace when in the presence of such people, but from a different cause: for though his heart rose against their discourse, and he had an instinctive assurance that it was equally pernicious and false, he had not so stored himself with needful knowledge as to be able to confute the common places of an infidel propagandist. But it has an ill effect upon others, when a person of sounder judgment and more acquirements than themselves, remains silent in the company of such talkers; for, from whatever motive his silence may proceed, it is likely to be considered, both by the assailants of the truth, and by the listeners, as an admission of his inability to maintain the better cause. Great evil has arisen to individuals, and to the community, from allowing scoffers to go unrebuked in private life; and fallacies and falsehoods to pass uncontradicted and unexposed in those channels through which poison is conveyed to the public mind.
CHAPTER XCVII.
MR. BACON'S PARSONAGE. CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. TIME AND CHANGE. WILKIE AND THE MONK IN THE ESCURIAL.
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit,
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed.
SHAKESPEARE.
In a Scotch village the Manse is sometimes the only good house, and generally it is the best; almost, indeed, what in old times the Mansion used to be in an English one. In Mr. Bacon's parish, the vicarage, though humble as the benefice itself, was the neatest. The cottage in which he and Margaret passed their childhood had been remarkable for that comfort which is the result and the reward of order and neatness: and when the reunion which blessed them both, rendered the remembrance of those years delightful, they returned in this respect to the way in which they had been trained up, practised the economy which they had learnt there, and loved to think how entirely their course of life, in all its circumstances, would be after the heart of that person, if she could behold it, whose memory they both with equal affection cherished. After his bereavement it was one of the widower's pensive pleasures to keep every thing in the same state as when Margaret was living. Nothing was neglected that she used to do, or that she would have done. The flowers were tended as carefully as if she were still to enjoy their fragrance and their beauty; and the birds who came in winter for their crumbs, were fed as duly for her sake, as they had formerly been by her hands.
There was no superstition in this, nor weakness. Immoderate grief, if it does not exhaust itself by indulgence, easily assumes the one character, or the other, or takes a type of insanity. But he had looked for consolation, where, when sincerely sought, it is always to be found; and he had experienced that religion effects in a true believer all that philosophy professes, and more than all that mere philosophy can perform. The wounds which stoicism would cauterize, religion heals.
There is a resignation with which, it may be feared, most of us deceive ourselves. To bear what must be borne, and submit to what cannot be resisted, is no more than what the unregenerate heart is taught by the instinct of animal nature. But to acquiesce in the afflictive dispensations of Providence,—to make one's own will conform in all things to that of our Heavenly Father,—to say to Him in the sincerity of faith, when we drink of the bitter cup, “Thy will be done!”—to bless the name of the Lord as much from the heart when He takes away, as when He gives, and with a depth of feeling of which perhaps none but the afflicted heart is capable,—this is the resignation which religion teaches, this the sacrifice which it requires. This sacrifice Leonard had made, and he felt that it was accepted.