CHAPTER XXXVI.
‘MY DEAREST MARY,—I have lived through many wonderful scenes since Isaw you last; my life has been so adventurous that I scarcely knowmyself when I think of it. But it is not of _that_ I am going now towrite; I have written all that to mother, and she will show it to you:but since I parted from you there has been another history going onwithin me, and _that_ is what I wish to make you understand if I can.
‘It seems to me that I have been a changed man from that afternoonwhen I came to your window where we parted. I have never forgotten howyou looked then, nor what you said; nothing in my life ever had suchan effect on me. I thought that I loved you before; but I went awayfeeling that _love_ was something so deep, and high, and sacred, that_I_ was not worthy to name it to you; I cannot think of the man in theworld that _is_ worthy of what you said you felt for me. From _that_hour there was a new purpose in my soul—a purpose which has led meupward ever since.
‘I thought to myself in this way, “There is some secret source fromwhence this inner life springs;” and I knew that it was connectedwith the Bible which you gave me, and so I thought I would read itcarefully and deliberately, to see what I could make of it. I beganwith the beginning; it impressed me with a sense of something quaintand strange—something rather fragmentary; and yet there were spots allalong that went right to the heart of a man who has to deal with lifeand things as I did.
‘Now I must say that the Doctor’s preaching, as I told you, neverimpressed me much in any way. I could not make any connection betweenit and the men I had to manage, and the things I had to do in my dailylife. But there were things in the Bible that struck me otherwise;there was _one_ passage in particular, and that was where Jacob startedoff from all his friends, to go off and seek his fortune in a strangecountry, and lay down to sleep all alone in the field, with only astone for his pillow. It seemed to me exactly the image of what everyyoung man is like when he leaves his home, and goes out to shift forhimself in this hard world. I tell you, Mary, that _one man alone_ onthe great ocean of life feels himself a very weak thing: we are heldup by each other more than we know, till we go off by ourselves intothis great experiment. Well, there he was, as lonesome as _I_ upon thedeck of my ship; and so lying with this stone under his head, he sawa ladder in his sleep between him and heaven, and angels going up anddown. That was a sight which came to the very point of his necessities;he saw that there was a way between him and God, and that there werethose above who did care for him, and who could come to him to help him.
‘Well, so the next morning he got up, and set up the stone to mark theplace; and it says “Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me,and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eatand raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house inpeace, _then_ shall the Lord be my God.” Now there was something thatlooked to me like a tangible foundation to begin on.
‘If I understand Dr. Hopkins, I believe he would have called thatall selfishness. At first sight it does look a little so, but then Ithought of it in this way. Here he was, all alone; God was entirelyinvisible to him, and how could he feel certain that He really existedunless he could come into some kind of connection with Him? The pointthat he wanted to be sure of was more than merely to know that therewas a God who made the world; he wanted to know whether He caredanything about men, and would do anything to help them. And so, infact, it was saying “If there is a God who interests himself at all inme, and will be my friend and protector, I will obey Him so far as Ican find out His will.”
‘I thought to myself, “This is the great experiment, and I will tryit.” I made in my heart exactly the same resolution, and just quietlyresolved to assume for a while, as a fact, that there _was_ such a God,and whenever I came to a place where I could not help myself, just toask His help honestly in so many words, and see what would come of it.
‘Well, as I went on reading through the Old Testament, I was moreand more convinced that all the men of those times had tried thisexperiment, and found that it would bear them; and, in fact, I didbegin to find in my own experience a great many things happening soremarkably that I could not but think that somebody did attend evento my prayers: I began to feel a trembling faith that _somebody_ wasguiding me, and that the events of my life were not happening byaccident, but working themselves out by His will.
‘Well, as I went on in this way there were other and higher thoughtskept rising in my mind. I wanted to be better than I was; I had asense of a life much nobler and purer than anything I had ever lived,that I wanted to come up to. But in the world of men, as I found it,such feelings are always laughed down as romantic and impracticableand impossible. But about this time I began to read the New Testament,and then the idea came to me that the same Power that helped me in thelower sphere of life would help me carry out these higher aspirations.Perhaps the Gospels would not have interested me so much if I had begunwith them first; but my Old Testament life seemed to have schooled me,and brought me to a place where I wanted, something higher, and I beganto notice that my prayers now were more that I might be noble, andpatient, and self-denying, and constant in my duty, than for any otherkind of help. And then I understood what met me in the very first ofMatthew, “He shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people fromtheir sins.”
‘I began now to live a new life, a life in which I felt myself cominginto sympathy with you; for, Mary, when I began to read the gospels Itook knowledge of you, that you had been with Jesus.
‘The crisis of my life was that dreadful night of the shipwreck. Itwas as dreadful as the day of judgment. No words of mine can describeto you what I felt when I knew that our rudder was gone, and saw thosehopeless rocks before us—what I felt for our poor men!—but in the midstof it all the words came into my mind, “And Jesus was in the hinderpart of the vessel asleep on a pillow,” and at once I felt He _was_there; and when the ship struck, I was only conscious of an intensegoing out of my soul to Him, like Peter’s when he threw himself fromthe ship to meet Him in the waters.
‘I will not recapitulate what I have already written—the wonderfulmanner in which I was saved, and in which friends, and help, andprosperity, and worldly success came to me again after life had seemedall lost, but now I am ready to return to my country, and I feel asJacob did when he said, “With my staff I passed over this Jordan, butnow am I become two bands.” I do not need any arguments now to convinceme that the Bible is from above. There is a great deal in it that Icannot understand—a great deal that seems to me inexplicable; but allI can say is, that I have tried its directions, and find that in mycase they do work; that it is a book that I can _live_ by, and that isenough for me.
‘And now, Mary, I am coming home again quite another man from what Iwent out; with a whole new world of thought and feeling in my heart,and a new purpose, by which, please God, I mean to shape my life. Allthis, under God, I owe to you; and if you will let me devote my wholelife to you, it will be a small return for what you have done for me.
‘You know I left you wholly free: others must have seen your lovelinessand felt your worth, and you may have learnt to love some better manthan I; but I know not what hope tells me that this will not be, and Ishall find true what the Bible says of love, that “many waters cannotquench it, nor floods drown.” In any case I shall be always from myvery heart yours, and yours only, till death.
‘JAMES MARVYN.’
Mary rose after reading this letter wrapped into a divine state ofexaltation,—the pure joy in contemplating an infinite good to another,in which the question of self was utterly forgotten. He was then whatshe had always hoped and prayed he would be, and she pressed thethought triumphantly to her heart. He was that true and victoriousman; that Christian able to subdue life, and to show in a perfectand healthy manly nature a reflection of the image of the superhumanexcellence. Her prayers that night were aspirations and praises; andshe felt how possible it might be so to appropriate the good, and thejoy,
and the nobleness of others, so as to have in them an eternal andsatisfying pleasure. And with this came the dearer thought that she inher weakness and solitude had been permitted to put her hand to thebeginning of a work so noble. The consciousness of good done to animmortal spirit is wealth that neither life nor death can take away.
And so, having prayed, she lay down with that sleep which God giveth toHis beloved.