"Thou dost not need to ask such things, my son,"
Paul with a grave severity replied.
"To ask them is to ask me that I judge
A fellow-servant. What am I to judge
The servant of another, I who am
Servant myself with him of the same Lord?
I will not judge my neighbor; nay, myself,
Mine own self even, I judge not; One is Judge,
He who the Master is, not I that serve.
If so be, the inspired, not sanctified,
Mere man, entrusted with the word of God—
Our human fellow in infirmity,
Remember, of like passions with ourselves—
Indeed in those old days wherein he wrote,
His enemies being the enemies of the Lord,
And speaking he as voice at once of God
And of God's chosen, His ministers to destroy
Those wicked—if so be such man, so placed,
Half conscious, half unconscious, oracle
Of utterance not his own, did in some part
That utterance make his own, profaning it,
To be his vehicle for sense not meant
By the august Supreme Inspiring Will—
Whether in truth he did, be God the judge,
Not thou, my son, nor I, but if he did—
Why, Stephen, then that psalmist—with more plea
Than thou for lenient judgment on the sin,
Thine the full light, and only twilight his,
With Christ our Sun unrisen—the selfsame fault
As thou, committed. Be both thou and he
Forgiven of Him with Whom forgiveness is—
With Whom alone, that so He may be feared!"
Abashed, rebuked, the youth in silence stood,
Musing; but what he mused divining, Paul,
With gently reassuring speech resumed,
Soon to the things unspoken in the heart
Of Stephen spoke and said: "Abidest still
Unsatisfied that anything from God,
Though even through man, should less than perfect be,
Or anywise other than incapable,
Than utterly intolerant, of abuse
To purposes profane? Consider this—
And lay thy hand upon thy mouth, nay, put
Thou mouth into the dust, before the Lord—
That God Most High hath willed it thus to be,
That thus Christ found it and pronounced it good.
Who are we, Stephen, to be more wise than God,
Who, to be holier than His Holy Son?"
"Amen! Amen! I needs must say, Amen!"
In anguish of bewilderment the youth
Cried out, almost with sobs of passionate
Submission, from rebellion passionate
Hardly to be distinguished; "yea, to God
From man, ever amen, only amen,
No other answer possible to Him!—
Who is the potter, in Whose hands the clay
Are we, helpless and choiceless, to be formed
And fashioned into vessels at His will!"
"Helpless, yea, Stephen," Paul said, "but choiceness not;
We choose, nay, even, we cannot choose but choose—
The choice our freedom, our necessity:
Free how to choose, we are to choose compelled.
We choose with God, or else against Him choose.
Which wilt thou, Stephen? Thou! With Him or
against?"
A struggle of submission shuddered down
To quiet in the bosom of the youth—
Strange contrast to the unperturbed repose,
With rapture, of obedience, that meantime,
And ever, safe within the heart of Paul
Breathed as might breathe an infant folded fast
To slumber in its mother's cradling arms!
So had Paul learned to let the peace of Christ
Rule in his heart, a fixed perpetual calm,
Like the deep sleep of ocean at his core
Of waters underneath the planes of storm.
And Stephen answered: "Oh, with God, with God!
And blesséd be His name that thus I choose!"
"Yea, verily," Paul said, "for He sole it is
Who worketh in us, both to will and work
For the good pleasure of His holy will.
As thou this fashion of obedience
Obediently acceptest at His gift,
So growest thou faithful mirror to reflect
Clear to thyself, and just, the thought of God.
Thus thou mayst hope to learn somewhat of true,
Of high and deep and broad, concerning Him,
Him and His ways inscrutable with us—
Of thy self emptied, for more room to be
From God henceforth with all His fulness filled!
"This at least learn thou now, how greatly wise
Was God, by that which was in us the lowest
To take us and uplift us higher and higher
Until those very passions, hate and wrath,
Which erst seemed right to us, as they were dear,
Become, to our changed eyes—eyes, though thus changed,
Nay, as thus changed, sore tempted to be proud—
Become forsooth unworthy symbols even
To shadow God's displeasure against sin.
To generation generation linked
In living long succession from the first,
To nation nation joined, one fellowship
Of man, through clime and clime, from sea to sea—
Thus has by slow degrees our human kind
Been brought from what we were to what we are.
Thus and no otherwise the chosen race
Was fitted to provide a welcoming home,
Such welcoming home! on earth for Him from heaven—
The only people of all peoples we
Among whom God could be Immanuel
And be in any measure understood,
Confounded not as of their idol tribes.
And we—we did not understand Him so
But that we hissed Him to be crucified!
So little were we ready, and even at last,
For the sun shining in His proper strength!
After slow-brightening twilight ages long
To fit our blinking vision for the day,
The glorious sun arising blinded us
And maddened! We smote at him in his sphere,
Loving our darkness rather than that light!"
Therewith, as for the moment lapsed and lost
In backward contemplation, with amaze
And shame and grief and joy and love and awe
And thanks commingling in one surge of thought
At what he thus in sudden transport saw,
Paul into silence passed, which his rapt look
Made vocal and more eloquent than voice.
This Stephen reverenced, but at last he said:
"O thou my teacher in the things of God,
That riddle of wisdom in divine decree
Whereof thou spakest, the linking in one chain
Together, one fast bond and consequence,
Of all the generations of mankind
And all their races for a common lot
Of evil or good, yet speak, I pray, thereof,
To make me understand it if I may.
Why should Jehovah on the children wreak
The wages of the fathers' wickedness?
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
Yea, doubtless, yea; but that—how is that right?"
"His way is in the sea," said Paul, "His path
In the great waters! Would we follow Him,
His footsteps are not known! Blesséd be God!"
"Amen! Amen! Forevermore amen!"
As one who bound himself with sacrament,
Assenting without interrupting said
Stephen, and Paul went on: "Yet this note thou:
It is not on the children, such by blood,
That God will visit the iniquity
Of fathers: the children must be such in choice
As well, in spirit, must be the fathers' like—
And there another mystery! (for deep
Sinks endless under deep, to who would sound
The bottomless abyss of God's decree)—
The children ever, prave and prone, incline
To follow where the fathers lead the way;
The children, yea, must do the fathers' deeds,
Then only share the fathers' punishment.
This, by that prophet mouth, Ezekiel, God
Taught with expostulation and appeal
Pathetically eloquent of love
With longing in our Heavenly Father's heart
That not one human creature of His hand
Be lost, but all, but all, turn and be saved.
"Nay, even from Sinai's touched and smoking top
Was the same sense of grace to men revealed.
For what said that commandment threatening wrath
Divine, in sequel of ancestral sin,
To light on generations yet to be?
Said it not, 'On the children?' Yea, but heed,
It hasted to supply in pregnant words
Description of the children thus accursed:
'On the third generation and the fourth
Of them that hate Jehovah'—wicked seed
Of wicked sires, and therefore with them well
Deserving to partake one punishment.
And now consider what stands written next.
Deterrent menace done, to fend from sin,
Allurement then, how large! to righteousness.
If first the warning filled a mighty bound,
All bound the grace succeeding overflowed.
O, limitless outpouring from a full,
An overfull, an aching, heart of love
In God our Father! Mercy to be shown,
Not to two generations or to three,
But to a thousand generations, drawn,
A bright succession, to unending date,
Of them—that 'fear and worship'? nay—that love
God for their Father and His will observe!
"But, Stephen, enough for now of such discourse.
My mind is helpless absent while we talk,
My heart being heavy with desire and prayer
And groanings from the Spirit unutterable
For Shimei in his noisome dungeon pent.
I have sung praises in worse stead than his,
Christ in me joyance and the hope of glory:
But, chafed with fetters and with manacles,
And worse bonds wearing of iniquity,
He sits unvisited of this fair light,
A midnight of no hope within his heart.
Go pray for Shimei thou, and leave me here
To pray, if haply God will touch his heart."