The Vicar's Daughter - George MacDonald (read dune txt) 📗

you. Still, it can’t be wrong to wish that you tried a good deal more to do what he wants of you. Why should his children not be his friends? If you would but give yourselves up to him, you would find his yoke so easy, his burden so light! But you do it half only, and some of you not at all.

“Now, however, that we have got a lesson from a false gospel, we may as well get one from the true.”

As she spoke, she turned to her New Testament which lay beside her. But Jarvis interrupted her.

“Where did you get that stuff you was a readin’ of to us, grannie?” he asked.

“The chapter I read to you,” she answered, “is part of a pretended gospel, called, ‘The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ.’ I can’t tell you who wrote it, or how it came to be written. All I can say is, that, very early in the history of the church, there were people who indulged themselves in inventing things about Jesus, and seemed to have had no idea of the importance of keeping to facts, or, in other words, of speaking and writing only the truth. All they seemed to have cared about was the gratifying of their own feelings of love and veneration; and so they made up tales about him, in his honor as they supposed, no doubt, just as if he had been a false god of the Greeks or Romans. It is long before some people learn to speak the truth, even after they know it is wicked to lie. Perhaps, however, they did not expect their stories to be received as facts, intending them only as a sort of recognized fiction about him,—amazing presumption at the best.”

“Did anybody, then, ever believe the likes of that, grannie?” asked Jarvis.

“Yes: what I read to you seems to have been believed within a hundred years after the death of the apostles. There are several such writings, with a great deal of nonsense in them, which were generally accepted by Christian people for many hundreds of years.”

“I can’t imagine how anybody could go inwentuating such things!” said the blind man.

“It is hard for us to imagine. They could not have seen how their inventions would, in later times, be judged any thing but honoring to him in whose honor they wrote them. Nothing, be it ever so well invented, can be so good as the bare truth. Perhaps, however, no one in particular invented some of them, but the stories grew, just as a report often does amongst yourselves. Although everybody fancies he or she is only telling just what was told to him or her, yet, by degrees, the pin’s-point of a fact is covered over with lies upon lies, almost everybody adding something, until the report has grown to be a mighty falsehood. Why, you had such a story yourselves, not so very long ago, about one of your best friends! One comfort is, such a story is sure not to be consistent with itself; it is sure to show its own falsehood to any one who is good enough to doubt it, and who will look into it, and examine it well. You don’t, for instance, want any other proof than the things themselves to show you that what I have just read to you can’t be true.”

“But then it puzzles me to think how anybody could believe them,” said the blind man.

“Many of the early Christians were so childishly simple that they would believe almost any thing that was told them. In a time when such nonsense could be written, it is no great wonder there should be many who could believe it.”

“Then, what was their faith worth,” said the blind man, “if they believed false and true all the same?”

“Worth no end to them,” answered Marion with eagerness; “for all the false things they might believe about him could not destroy the true ones, or prevent them from believing in Jesus himself, and bettering their ways for his sake. And as they grew better and better, by doing what he told them, they would gradually come to disbelieve this and that foolish or bad thing.”

“But wouldn’t that make them stop believing in him altogether?”

“On the contrary, it would make them hold the firmer to all that they saw to be true about him. There are many people, I presume, in other countries, who believe those stories still; but all the Christians I know have cast aside every one of those writings, and keep only to those we call the Gospels. To throw away what is not true, because it is not true, will always help the heart to be truer; will make it the more anxious to cleave to what it sees must be true. Jesus remonstrated with the Jews that they would not of themselves judge what was right; and the man who lets God teach him is made abler to judge what is right a thousand-fold.”

“Then don’t you think it likely this much is true, grannie,”—said Jarvis, probably interested in the question, in part at least, from the fact that he was himself a carpenter,—“that he worked with his father, and helped him in his trade?”

“I do, indeed,” answered Marion. “I believe that is the one germ of truth in the whole story. It is possible even that some incidents of that part of his life may have been handed down a little way, at length losing all their shape, however, and turning into the kind of thing I read to you. Not to mention that they called him the carpenter, is it likely he who came down for the express purpose of being a true man would see his father toiling to feed him and his mother and his brothers and sisters, and go idling about, instead of putting to his hand to help him? Would that have been like him?”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Jarvis.

But a doubtful murmur came from the blind man, which speedily took shape in the following remark:—

“I can’t help thinkin’, grannie, of one time—you read it to us not long ago—when he laid down in the boat and went fast asleep, takin’ no more heed o’ them a slavin’ o’ theirselves to death at their oars, than if they’d been all comfortable like hisself; that wasn’t much like takin’ of his share—was it now?”

“John Evans,” returned Marion with severity, “it is quite right to put any number of questions, and express any number of doubts you honestly feel; but you have no right to make remarks you would not make if you were anxious to be as fair to another as you would have another be to you. Have you considered that he had been working hard all day long, and was, in fact, worn out? You don’t think what hard work it is, and how exhausting, to speak for hours to great multitudes, and in the open air too, where your voice has no help to make it heard. And that’s not all; for he had most likely been healing many as well; and I believe every time the power went out of him to cure, he suffered in the relief he gave; it left him weakened,—with so much the less of strength to support his labors,—so that, even in his very body, he took our iniquities and bare our infirmities. Would you, then, blame a weary man, whose perfect faith in God rendered it impossible for him to fear any thing, that he lay down to rest in God’s name, and left his friends to do their part for the redemption of the world in rowing him to the other side of the lake,—a thing they were doing every other day of their lives? You ought to consider before you make such remarks, Mr. Evans. And you forget also that the moment they called him, he rose to help them.”

“And find fault with them,” interposed Evans, rather viciously I thought.

“Yes; for they were to blame for their own trouble, and ought to send it away.”

“What! To blame for the storm? How could they send that away?”

“Was it the storm that troubled them then? It was their own fear of it. The storm could not have troubled them if they had had faith in their Father in heaven.”

“They had good cause to be afraid of it, anyhow.”

“He judged they had not, for he was not afraid himself. You judge they had, because you would have been afraid.”

“He could help himself, you see.”

“And they couldn’t trust either him or his Father, notwithstanding all he had done to manifest himself and his Father to them. Therefore he saw that the storm about them was not the thing that most required rebuke.”

“I never pretended to much o’ the sort,” growled Evans. “Quite the contrairy.”

“And why? Because, like an honest man, you wouldn’t pretend to what you hadn’t got. But, if you carried your honesty far enough, you would have taken pains to understand our Lord first. Like his other judges, you condemn him beforehand. You will not call that honesty?”

“I don’t see what right you’ve got to badger me like this before a congregation o’ people,” said the blind man, rising in indignation. “If I ain’t got my heyesight, I ha’ got my feelin’s.”

“And do you think he has no feelings, Mr. Evans? You have spoken evil of him: I have spoken but the truth of you!”

“Come, come, grannie,” said the blind man, quailing a little; “don’t talk squash. I’m a livin’ man afore the heyes o’ this here company, an’ he ain’t nowheres. Bless you, he don’t mind!”

“He minds so much,” returned Marion, in a subdued voice, which seemed to tremble with coming tears, “that he will never rest until you think fairly of him. And he is here now; for he said, ‘I am with you alway, to the end of the world;’ and he has heard every word you have been saying against him. He isn’t angry like me; but your words may well make him feel sad—for your sake, John Evans—that you should be so unfair.”

She leaned her forehead on her hand, and was silent. A subdued murmur arose. The blind man, having stood irresolute for a moment, began to make for the door, saying,—

“I think I’d better go. I ain’t wanted here.”

“If you are an honest man, Mr. Evans,” returned Marion, rising, “you will sit down and hear the case out.”

With a waving, fin-like motion of both his hands, Evans sank into his seat, and spoke no word.

After but a moment’s silence, she resumed as if there had been no interruption.

“That he should sleep, then, during the storm was a very different thing from declining to assist his father in his workshop; just as the rebuking of the sea was a very different thing from hiding up his father’s bad work in miracles. Had that father been in danger, he might perhaps have aided him as he did the disciples. But”—

“Why do you say perhaps, grannie?” interrupted a bright-eyed boy who sat on the hob of the empty grate. “Wouldn’t he help his father as soon as his disciples?”

“Certainly, if it was good for his father; certainly not, if it was not good for him: therefore I say perhaps. But now,” she went on, turning to the joiner, “Mr. Jarvis, will you tell me whether you think the work of the carpenter’s son would have been in any way distinguishable from that of another man?”

“Well, I don’t know, grannie. He wouldn’t want to be putting of a private mark upon it. He wouldn’t want to be showing of it