Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers

by William Hale White

"Robert," said Michael at last, "I have long wished to speak to you. God knows I would not do it if He did not command me, but I cannot help it. I fear you have engaged yourself with a young woman who is not one of His children."

"Who told you she was not, father?"

"Who told me? Why, Robert, it is notorious. Who told me? Is she not known to belong to the world? does she ever appear before the Lord?"

"Do you think then, father, that because she does not come to our chapel she cannot be saved?"

"No, you know I do not. The Lord has His followers doubtless in other communions besides our own, but the Shiptons are not His."

"You mean, I suppose, that they do not believe exactly what we believe, and that they go to church?"

"No, no; I mean that she has not found Him, and that she is of the world—of the world! O Robert, Robert! think what you are doing—that you will mate yourself with one who is not elect, that you may have children who will he the children of wrath. You don't know what I have gone through for you. I have wrestled and prayed before I could bring myself to do my duty and talk with you, and even now I cannot speak. What is it which chokes me? O Robert, Robert!"

But Robert, usually docile and tender, was hard and obdurate. The image of Susan rose before his eyes with her head on his shoulder, and he thought to himself that it was necessary at once to make matters quite plain and stop all further trespass on his prerogative. So it is, and so it ever has been. For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave to his wife. There comes a time when the father and mother find that they must withdraw; but it is the order of the world, and has to be accepted, like sickness or death.

"Father," said Robert, "I am not a boy, and you must allow me in these matters to judge for myself." As he spoke his spirit rose; the image of the head on his shoulder, defenceless against attack save for him, became clearer and clearer, and words escaped him which he never afterwards forgot, nor did his father forget. "And it is a shame—I say it is a shame to speak against her. You know nothing about her. Worldly! her children children of wrath, just because she is not of your way of thinking, and isn't—and isn't a humbug, as some of them are. From anybody else I wouldn't stand it," and Robert turned sharply away and went home.

Michael leant against a groyne to support himself, and looked over the water, seeing nothing. At first he was angry, and if his son had been there, he could have struck him; but presently his anger gave way to pity, to hatred of the girl who had thus seduced him, and to a fixed determination to save him, whatever it might cost. He pondered again and again over that verse of Paul's. He did not believe that he should be excused if he did evil that good might come. He knew that if he did evil, no matter what the result might be, the penalty to the uttermost farthing would be exacted. If Christ's purpose to save mankind could not prevent the Divine anger being poured out on perfect innocence, how much greater would not that anger have been if it had been necessary for Him to sin in order to make the world's salvation sure! Michael firmly believed, too, in the dreadful doctrine that a single lapse from the strait path is enough to damn a man for ever; that there is no finiteness in a crime which can be counterbalanced by finite expiation, but that sin is infinite. Monstrous, we say; and yet it is difficult to find in the strictest Calvinism anything which is not an obvious dogmatic reflection of a natural fact, a mere transference to theology of what had been pressed upon the mind of the creator of the creed as an everyday law of the world. A crime is infinite in its penalties, and the account is never really balanced, as many of us know too well, the lash being laid on us day after day, even to death, for the failings of fifty years ago.