The Zeit-Geist, Lily Dougall [best electronic book reader txt] 📗

shrunken, trembling, and watery-eyed, was pulling himself together with some strength that he had got from somewhere, and was standing up again ready to play a man's part. The preacher did not understand why. There seemed to him to have been nothing but failure in the interview. He made one more effort; he put the last stone in his sling. Toyner had just spoken of the sacrifice of Calvary, and to the preacher it seemed that he set it at naught, because he was claiming salvation for those who mocked as well as for those who believe.

"Think of it," he said; "you make wrong but an inferior kind of right. You take away the reason for the one great Sacrifice, and in this you are slighting Him who suffered for you."

Then he made, with all the force and eloquence he could, the personal appeal of the Christ whom he felt to be slighted.

"You have spoken of the sufferings of lost and wretched men," he went on; "think of His sufferings! You have spoken of your loneliness; think of His loneliness!"

Then suddenly Bart Toyner made a gesture as a slave might who casts off the chains of bondage. The appeal to which he was listening was not for him, but for some man whom the preacher's imagination had drawn in his place, who did not appropriate the great Sacrifice and seek to live in its power. He did not now seek to explain again that the death of Christ was to him as an altar, the point in human thought where always the fire of the divine life descends upon the soul self-offered in like sacrifice. He had tried to explain this; now he tried no more, but he held out his hands with a sign of joy and recovered strength.

"You came to help me; you have prayed for me; you have helped me; you have been given something to say. Listen: you have told me of Abraham; he was called to go out alone, quite alone. Now you have spoken to me of Another who was alone." Toyner was incoherent. "That was why _He_ bore it, that we might know that it was possible to have faith all alone because He had it. It is easy to believe in God holding us up when others do, but awfully hard all alone. He knew that, He warned them to keep together; but all the same He lived out His prayers alone."

Toyner looked at the preacher, love and reverence in his eyes. "You saved me once," he said; "you have saved me again."

But the preacher went home very sorrowful, for he did not believe that Bart Toyner was saved.


CHAPTER XVIII.

The spiritual strength that proceeds from every holy man had again flowed in life-giving stream from the preacher to Bart Toyner. The help was adequate. Toyner never became intoxicated again.

His father died; and for two years or more the mother, who had lived frugally all her life, still lived frugally, although land and money had been left to her. The mother would not trust her son, and yet gradually she began to realise that it was he who was quietly heaping into her lap all those joys of which she had been so long deprived. At length she died, the happy mother of a son who had won the respect of other men.

It was after that that Toyner wedded Ann Markham. Then, when he had the power to live a more individual life of enjoyment and effort, it began to be known little by little that these two had committed that sin against society so hard to forgive, the sin of having their own creed and their own thoughts and their own ways.

Toyner was not a preacher. It was not in him to try to change the ideas of those who were doing well with what ideas they had. All that he desired was to live so that it might be known that his God was the God of the whole wide round of human activity, a God who blessed the just and the unjust. Toyner desired to be constantly blessing both the bad and the good with the blessing of love and home which had been given to him. It was inevitable that to carry out such an idea a man must live through many mistakes and much failure. The ideal itself was an offence to society. We have all heard of such offences and how they have been punished.

One great factor in the refining of Ann's life was her lover's long neglect; for he, in the simple belief that she must know his heart and purpose and that she would not be much benefited by his companionship, left her for those years that passed before he married her wholly ignorant of his constancy. Ann was constant. Had he explained himself she would have been content and taken him more or less at his own valuation, as we all take those who talk about themselves. Having no such explanation to listen to, she watched and pondered all that he did. Before the day came in which he made his shy and hesitating offer of marriage, she had grown to be one with him in hope and desire. Together they made their mistakes and lived down their failure. They had other troubles too, for the babies lived and died one by one.

There is seen to be a marvellous alchemy in true piety. Mind and sense subject to its process become refined. Where refinement is not the result, we may believe that there is a false note in the devotion, that there is self-seeking in the effort toward God. Toyner's wealth grew with the spread of the town over the land he owned. He had the good taste to spend well the money he devoted to pleasure; yet it was not books or pictures or music, acquired late in life, that gave to him and to his wife the power to grow in harmony with their surroundings. It was the high life of prayer and effort that they lived that made it possible for God--the God of art as truly as the God of prayer--to teach them.

It is not at the best a cultured place, this backwoods town. There was many a slip in grammar, many a broad uncouth accent, heard daily in Ann's drawing-room; but what mental life the town had came to centre in that room. Gradually reflecting neighbours began to learn that there was a beneficent force other than intellectual at work there.

Young men who needed interest and pleasure, the poor who needed warmth and food, came together to that room, and met there the drunkard in his sober intervals, the gamester when he cared to play for mere pastime; yes, and others, the more evil, were made welcome there. It was not forgotten that Toyner had been a wicked man and that Ann's father had been a murderer.

It was a strange effort this, to increase virtue in the virtuous, not by separation from, but by friendship with, the unrepentant. To Toyner sin was an abhorred thing. It consisted always, yet only, in failure to tread in the foot-prints of God, as far as it was given to each man to see God's way--in obedience to the lower motive in any moment of the perpetual choice of life. For himself, his life was impassioned with the belief that it was wicked to live as if God was not the God of the whole of what we may know.

I, who have seen it, tell you that the atmosphere of that house was always sweet. There were many young girls who came to it often, and laughed and danced with men who were not righteous, and the girls lived more holy lives than before. I would say this:--do not let any one imitate the method of life which Toyner and his wife practised unless by prayer he can obtain the power of the unseen holiness to work upon the flux of circumstance; yet do not let those fear to imitate it who have learned the secret of prayer. It was a strenuous life of prayer and self-denial that these two lived until their race in this phase of things was run.

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_It is with this abrupt note of personal observation and reflection that the schoolmaster's manuscript ends. He had evidently become one of Toyner's disciples. It is well that we should know what our brothers think, feel with their hearts for an hour, if it may not be for longer._

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Publication Date: 06-08-2010

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