A Crystal Age, W. H. Hudson [most read books of all time TXT] 📗

for deep affection. To this spirit of love in you—this summer of the heart which causes it to blossom with beautiful thoughts and deeds—I attribute your success just now, when the contact of your hand produced the long-desired, refreshing slumber so necessary to the mother at this stage of her malady. I know that this is a mysterious thing; and it is commonly said that in such cases relief is caused by an emanation from the brain through the fingers. Doubtless this is so; and I also choose to believe that only a powerful spirit of love in the heart can rightly direct this subtle energy, that where such a spirit is absent the desired effect cannot be produced."

"I do not know," I replied. "Great as my love and devotion is, I cannot suppose it to equal, much less to surpass, that of others who yet failed on this occasion to give relief."

"Yes, yes; only that is looking merely at the surface of the matter, and leaving out of sight the unfathomable mysteries of a being compounded of flesh and spirit. There are among our best instruments peculiar to this house, especially those used chiefly in our harvest music, some of such finely-tempered materials, and of so delicate a construction, that the person wishing to perform on them must not only be inspired with the melodious passion, but the entire system—body and soul—must be in the proper mood, the flesh itself elevated into harmony with the exalted spirit, else he will fail to elicit the tones or to give the expression desired. This is a rough and a poor simile, when we consider how wonderful an instrument a human being is, with the body that burns with thought, and the spirit that quivers and cries with pain, and when we think how its innumerable, complex chords may be injured and untuned by suffering. The will may be ours, but something, we know not what, interposes to defeat our best efforts. That you have succeeded in producing so blessed a result, after we had failed, has served to deepen and widen in our hearts the love we already felt for you; for how much more precious is this melody of repose, this sweet interval of relief from cruel pain the mother now experiences, than many melodies from clear voices and trained hands."

In my secret heart I believed that he was taking much too lofty a view of the matter; but I had no desire to argue against so flattering a delusion, if it were one, and only wished that I could share it with him.

"She is sleeping still," he said presently, "perhaps without pain, like Yoletta here, and her sleep will now probably last for some hours."

"I pray Heaven that she may wake refreshed and free from pain," I remarked.

He seemed surprised at my words, and looked searchingly into my face. "My son," he said, "it grieves me, at a moment like the present, to have to point out a great error to you; but it is an error hurtful to yourself and painful to those who see it, and if I were to pass it over in silence, or put off speaking of it to another time, I should not be fulfilling the part of a loving father towards you."

Surprised at this speech, I begged him to tell me what I had said that was wrong.

"Do you not then know that it is unlawful to entertain such a thought as you have expressed?" he said. "In moments of supreme pain or bitterness or peril we sometimes so far forget ourselves as to cry out to Heaven to save us or to give us ease; but to make any such petition when we are in the full possession of our faculties is unworthy of a reasonable being, and an offense to the Father: for we pray to each other, and are moved by such prayers, remembering that we are fallible, and often err through haste and forgetfulness and imperfect knowledge. But he who freely gave us life and reason and all good gifts, needs not that we should remind him of anything; therefore to ask him to give us the thing we desire is to make him like ourselves, and charge him with an oversight; or worse, we attribute weakness and irresolution to him, since the petitioner thinks my importunity to incline the balance in his favor."

I was about to reply that I had always considered prayer to be an essential part of religion, and not of my form of religion only, but of all religions all over the world. Luckily I remembered in time that he probably knew more about matters "all over the world" than I did, and so held my tongue.

"Have you any doubts on the subject?" he asked, after a while.

"I must confess that I still have some doubts," I replied. "I believe that our Creator and Father desires the happiness of all his creatures and takes no pleasure in seeing us miserable; for it would be impossible not to believe it, seeing how greatly happiness overbalances misery in the world. But he does not come to us in visible form to tell us in an audible voice that to cry out to him in sore pain and distress is unlawful. How, then, do we know this thing? For a child cries to its mother, and a fledgling in the nest to its parent bird; and he is infinitely more to us than parent to child—infinitely stronger to help, and knows our griefs as no fellow-mortal can know them. May we not, then, believe, without hurt to our souls, that the cry of one of his children in affliction may reach him; that in his compassion, and by means of his sovereign power over nature, he may give ease to the racked body, and peace and joy to the desolate mind?"

"You ask me, How, then, do we know this thing? and you answer the question yourself, yet fail to perceive that you answer it, when you say that although he does not come in a visible form to teach us this thing and that thing, yet we know that he desires our happiness; and to this you might have added a thousand or ten thousand other things which we know. If the reason he gave us to start with makes it unnecessary that he should come to tell us in an audible voice that he desires our happiness, it must also surely suffice to tell us which are lawful and which unlawful of all the thoughts continually rising in our hearts. That any one should question so evident and universally accepted a truth, the foundation of all religion, seems very surprising to me. If it had consisted with his plan to make these delicate mortal bodies capable of every agreeable sensation in the highest degree, yet not liable to accident, and not subject to misery and pain, he would surely have done this for all of us. But reason and nature show us that such an end did not consist with his plan; therefore to ask him to suspend the operations of nature for the benefit of any individual sufferer, however poignant and unmerited the sufferings may be, is to shut our eyes to the only light he has given us. All our highest and sweetest feelings unite with reason to tell us with one voice that he loves us; and our knowledge of nature shows us plainly enough that he also loves all the creatures inferior to man. To us he has given reason for a guide, and