“You quarrel with Calvinism,” I said; “and seem one of the most thorough-going necessitarians I ever knew.”
“Not so,” he replied; “though my judgment cannot disprove these conclusions, my heart cannot acquiesce in them—though I see that I am as certainly the subject of laws that exist and operate independent of my will, as the dead matter around me, I feel, with a certainty quite as great, that I am a free, accountable creature. It is according to the scope of my entire reason that I should deem myself bound—it is according to the constitution of my whole nature that I should feel myself free. And in this consists the great, the fearful problem—a problem which both reason and revelation propound; but the truths which can alone solve it, seem to lie beyond the horizon of darkness—and we vex ourselves in vain. ’Tis a sort of moral asymptotes; but its lines, instead of approaching through all space without meeting, seem receding through all space, and yet meet.”
“Robert, my bairn,” said my aunt, “I fear you are wasting your strength on these mysteries to your ain hurt. Did ye no see, in the last storm, when ye staid out among the caves till cock-crow, that the bigger and stronger the wave, the mair was it broken against the rocks?—it’s just thus wi’ the pride o’ man’s understanding, when he measures it against the dark things o’ God. An’ yet it’s sae ordered, that the same wonderful truths which perplex and cast down the proud reason, should delight and comfort the humble heart. I am a lone, puir woman, Robert. Bairns an’ husband have gone down to the grave, one by one; an’ now, for twenty weary years, I have been childless an’ a widow. But trow ye that the puir lone woman wanted a guard, an’ a comforter, an’ a provider, through a’ the lang mirk nichts, an’ a’ the cauld scarce winters o’ these twenty years? No, my bairn—I kent that Himsel’ was wi’ me. I kent it by the provision He made, an’ the care He took, an’ the joy He gave. An’ how, think you, did He comfort me maist? Just by the blessed assurance that a’ my trials an’ a’ my sorrows were nae hasty chance matters, but dispensations for my guid, an’ the guid o’ those He took to Himsel’, that, in the perfect love and wisdom o’ His nature, He had ordained frae the beginning.”
“Ah, mother,” said my friend, after a pause, “you understand the doctrine far better than I do! There are, I find, no contradictions in the Calvinism of the heart.”
CHAPTER III.
“Ayr, gurgling, kissed his pebbled shore,
O’erhung with wild woods thick’ning green;
The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar
Twined, amorous, round the raptured scene;
The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,
The birds sang love on every spray—
Till, too, too soon, the glowing west
Proclaimed the speed of winged day.”
To Mary in Heaven.
We were early on the road together; the day, though somewhat gloomy, was mild and pleasant, and we walked slowly onward, neither of us in the least disposed to hasten our parting by hastening our journey. We had discussed fifty different topics, and were prepared to enter on fifty more, when we reached the ancient burgh of Ayr, where our roads separated.
“I have taken an immense liking to you, Mr. Lindsay,” said my companion, as he seated himself on the parapet of the old bridge, “and have just bethought me of a scheme through which I may enjoy your company for at least one night more. The Ayr is a lovely river, and you tell me you have never explored it. We shall explore it together this evening for about ten miles, when we shall find ourselves at the farm-house of Lochlea. You may depend on a hearty welcome from my father, whom, by the way, I wish much to introduce to you, as a man worth your knowing; and, as I have set my heart on the scheme, you are surely too good-natured to disappoint me.” Little risk of that, I thought; I had, in fact, become thoroughly enamoured of the warm-hearted benevolence and fascinating conversation of my companion, and acquiesced with the best good-will in the world.
We had threaded the course of the river for several miles. It runs through a wild pastoral valley, roughened by thickets of copse-wood, and bounded on either hand by a line of swelling, moory hills, with here and there a few irregular patches of corn, and here and there some little nest-like cottage peeping out from among the wood. The clouds, which during the morning had obscured the entire face of the heavens, were breaking up their array, and the sun was looking down, in twenty different places, through the openings, checkering the landscape with a fantastic, though lovely carpeting of light and shadow. Before us there rose a thick wood, on a jutting promontory, that looked blue and dark in the shade, as if it wore mourning; while the sunlit stream beyond shone through the trunks and branches, like a river of fire. At length the clouds seemed to have melted in the blue—for there was not a breath of wind to speed them away—and the sun, now hastening to the west, shone in unbroken effulgence over the wide extent of the dell, lighting up stream and wood, and field and cottage, in one continuous blaze of glory. We had walked on in silence for the last half hour; but I could sometimes hear my companion muttering as he went; and when, in passing through a thicket of hawthorn and honeysuckle, we started from its perch a linnet that had been filling the air with its melody, I could hear him exclaim, in a subdued tone of voice, “Bonny, bonny birdie! why hasten frae me?—I wadna skaith a feather o’ yer wing.” He turned round to me, and I could see that his eyes were swimming in moisture.