Chapter 28

COW-LANE-CHAPEL.

By degrees Mr. Drake's mind grew quiet, and accommodated itself to the condition of the new atmosphere in which at first it was so hard for him to draw spiritual breath. He found himself again able to pray, and while he bowed his head lower before God, he lifted up his heart higher toward him. His uncle's bequest presenting no appropriative difficulties, he at once set himself to be a faithful and wise steward of the grace of God, to which holy activity the return of his peace was mainly owing. Now and then the fear would return that God had sent him the money in displeasure, that He had handed him over all his principal, and refused to be his banker any more; and the light-winged, haunting dread took from him a little even of the blameless pleasure that naturally belonged to the paying of his debts. Also he now became plainly aware of a sore fact which he had all his life dimly suspected--namely, that there was in his nature a spot of the leprosy of avarice, the desire to accumulate. Hence he grew almost afraid of his money, and his anxiety to spend it freely and right, to keep it flowing lest it should pile up its waves and drown his heart, went on steadily increasing. That he could hoard now if he pleased gave him just the opportunity of burning the very possibility out of his soul. It is those who are unaware of their proclivities, and never pray against them, that must be led into temptation, lest they should forever continue capable of evil. When a man could do a thing, then first can he abstain from doing it. Now, with his experience of both poverty and riches, the minister knew that he must make them both follow like hounds at his heel. If he were not to love money, if, even in the free use of it, he were to regard it with honor, fear its loss, forget that it came from God, and must return to God through holy channels, he must sink into a purely contemptible slave. Where would be the room for any further repentance? He would have had every chance, and failed in every trial the most opposed! He must be lord of his wealth; Mammon must be the slave, not Walter Drake. Mammon must be more than his brownie, more than his Robin Goodfellow; he must be the subject Djin of a holy spell--holier than Solomon's wisdom, more potent than the stamp of his seal. At present he almost feared him as a Caliban to whom he might not be able to play Prospero, an Ufreet half-escaped from his jar, a demon he had raised, for whom he must find work, or be torn by him into fragments. The slave must have drudgery, and the master must take heed that he never send him alone to do love's dear service.

"I am sixty," he said, to himself, "and I have learned to begin to learn." Behind him his public life looked a mere tale that is told; his faith in the things he had taught had been little better than that which hangs about an ancient legend. He had been in a measure truthful; he had endeavored to act upon what he taught; but alas! the accidents of faith had so often been uppermost with him, instead of its eternal fundamental truths! How unlike the affairs of the kingdom did all that church-business look to him now!--the rich men ruling--the poor men grumbling! In the whole assembly including himself, could he honestly say he knew more than one man that sought the kingdom of Heaven _first_? And yet he had been tolerably content, until they began to turn against himself!--What better could they have done than get rid of him? The whole history of their relation appeared now as a mess of untruth shot through with threads of light. Now, now, he would strive to enter in at the strait gate: the question was not of pushing others in. He would mortify the spirit of worldly judgments and ambitions: he would be humble as the servant of Christ.

Dorothy's heart was relieved a little. She could read her father's feelings better than most wives those of their husbands, and she knew he was happier. But she was not herself happier. She would gladly have parted with all the money for a word from any quarter that could have assured her there was a God in Heaven who _loved_. But the teaching of the curate had begun to tell upon her. She had begun to have a faint perception that if the story of Jesus Christ was true, there might be a Father to be loved, and being might be a bliss. The poorest glimmer of His loveliness gives a dawn to our belief in a God; and a small amount indeed of a genuine knowledge of Him will serve to neutralize the most confident declaration that science is against the idea of a God--an utterance absolutely false. Scientific men may be unbelievers, but it is not from the teaching of science. Science teaches that a man must not say he knows what he does not know; not that what a man does not know he may say does not exist. I will grant, however, and willingly, that true science is against Faber's idea of other people's idea of a God. I will grant also that the tendency of one who exclusively studies science is certainly to deny what no one has proved, and he is uninterested in proving; but that is the fault of the man and his lack of science, not of the science he has. If people understood better the arrogance of which they are themselves guilty, they would be less ready to imagine that a strong assertion necessarily implies knowledge. Nothing can be known except what is true. A negative may be _fact_, but can not be _known_ except by the knowledge of its opposite. I believe also that nothing can be really _believed_, except it be true. But people think they believe many things which they do not and can not in the real sense.

When, however, Dorothy came to concern herself about the will of God, in trying to help her father to do the best with their money, she began to reap a little genuine comfort, for then she found things begin to explain themselves a little. The more a man occupies himself in doing the works of the Father--the sort of thing the Father does, the easier will he find it to believe that such a Father is at work in the world.

In the curate Mr. Drake had found not only a man he could trust, but one to whom, young as he was, he could look up; and it was a trait in the minister nothing short of noble, that he did look up to the curate--perhaps without knowing it. He had by this time all but lost sight of the fact, once so monstrous, so unchristian in his eyes, that he was the paid agent of a government-church; the sight of the man's own house, built on a rock in which was a well of the water of life, had made him nearly forget it. In his turn he could give the curate much; the latter soon discovered that he knew a great deal more about Old Testament criticism, church-history, and theology--understanding by the last the records of what men had believed and argued about God--than he