“No,” said her kindly pastor, patting her brown hair, “I am far from thinking that this little head is brainless. The trouble lies in the opposite direction. Stop thinking about things that are above the reach of the human mind,—above it, for the very reason that they are of God. Honestly, now, if we could grasp the meaning of every word in that Bible of ours, as though it were a human production, would not that, of itself, prove that it was of man? To be of God is to be inscrutable. Is not that what a fair mind should expect? Undoubtedly. But my advice to you is, not to bother your head about such subtleties. Stop thinking, and go to work. You will find that a panacea worth all the logic in the world.”
And such Mary found it to be. And her class in the Sunday-school was soon recognized as the best. And she taught the servants of her mother’s household, and read to them till they nodded again.
And so, when she went down to spend Christmas in Leicester, after a year spent in these works of charity, she had forgotten that she had ever been a doubter. Two months had passed, and she was all at sea again. She felt that her faith was slipping from beneath her feet. She repeated to herself, over and over again, the arguments of her pastor; she read and re-read his books. Their logic seemed irresistible; yet it did not give her rest. Her head was convinced,—’twas her heart that was in rebellion. And she was woman enough to know the danger of that.
Faith or love,—which should it be? One cannot serve two masters.
“Nonsense!” said the cheery Alice, one day. “I can imagine now how he will look, marching to church with your prayer-book in his hand!”
“No, it is not nonsense.”
“Pooh! we shall have him singing in the choir before you have been married six months.”
Mary laughed (for who could resist the Enchantress?); and Alice, seizing her advantage, drew picture after picture of the reclaimed Don, each more ludicrous than the other (throwing in parenthetical glimpses of her own Charley), till both girls were convulsed with merriment.
“No, Alice,” said Mary, at last, wiping the tears from her eyes, “it is a very serious matter. Do you know what would happen? He would not be saved, but I should be lost.”
That was what troubled Mary. That was why she could not laugh when her mother made merry over sceptical youths. He who had spoken so well and so strangely, down there by the Argo, was not a sceptical youth, but a man of most vehement convictions. And she felt that she would be clay in his hands. His faith, was formed; hers would be formed upon it. Formed upon it? Crushed against it, rather! For, after all, though of a deeply religious nature, as was plain, had he any religion?