Story of Chester Lawrence

CHAPTER XII.

It was ev­ident that, notwith­stand­ing the good in­ten­tions which all per­sons con­cerned had of not over­reach­ing in the sight-​see­ing busi­ness, Lucy, at least, was feel­ing its ef­fects. That she would have to re­main qui­et for some days was the ver­dict of the physi­cian which her fa­ther called. There was no im­me­di­ate dan­ger, said he to Chester, but the heart ac­tion was fee­ble. A week of ab­so­lute rest would rem­edy that.

Chester was packed off to Switzer­land alone, con­trary to the pro­gram he had looked for­ward to. Un­cle Gilbert did not care to go. Mr. Strong would have to re­main with Lucy, so if Chester was to see Switzer­land, he would have to try it alone. When Chester heard of the ar­range­ment, he de­murred; but when Lucy's fa­ther sug­gest­ed to him that per­haps it would be best for her, he said no more.

Af­ter Chester's de­par­ture, the three set­tled down to the busi­ness at hand, that of rest­ing. That was easy enough for Lucy and her fa­ther, but Un­cle Gilbert was hale and hearty, so he con­tin­ued to make short dai­ly ex­cur­sions to points of in­ter­est. They had pleas­ant quar­ters, not too near the noise of the city. The se­mi-​pri­vate ho­tel had but few guests, so the back gar­den in which din­ner was usu­al­ly served, proved a de­sir­able loung­ing-​place.

Un­cle Gilbert was away that af­ter­noon. Lucy was rest­ing in her room. The Rev. Mr. Strong paced ner­vous­ly back and forth in the gar­den for a time, then dropped heav­ily in­to an easy chair. The French maid, step­ping qui­et­ly about placed a pil­low un­der his head, which kind­ness he ac­cept­ed grate­ful­ly. The gar­den was still. There were no sharp near-​nois­es, the city's ac­tiv­ity com­ing mere­ly as a faint dis­tant hum.

The min­is­ter closed his eyes, but he did not go to sleep. His mind was too ac­tive for that, his nerves were tin­gling again. The bright, gay life about him did not ex­ist for him. That af­ter­noon he lived in the past. He mar­shalled for re­view con­tend­ing thoughts, that had for many years fought for suprema­cy. Out of the chaos of con­flict no or­der had yet come. He was get­ting old be­fore his years jus­ti­fied it.

Why should he, a min­is­ter of the word of God, be so eas­ily moved by strange re­li­gious ideas? Faint­ly as if from some dis­tant, most­ly for­got­ten past, there came to him this idea, that the truth, the whole, clean, sim­ple truth as it ex­ists in Christ Je­sus had been told him, and he had re­ject­ed it. Why he had done this was not clear to him. He seemed to have lived in pe­ri­ods of al­ter­nat­ing dark­ness and light. Then lat­er, he had come in con­tact with so-​called “Mor­monism.” Strange to say, its teach­ings had the same ring as that which he had heard be­fore; but this time he re­ject­ed it be­cause of its evil name. Once again, a lit­tle lat­er, these same doc­trines had come to him, but they were not wel­comed when he learned that those who taught them and lived them were sim­ple, oft­times un­ed­ucat­ed peo­ple, usu­al­ly called the “scum” of the earth.

The Rev. Mr. Strong had ac­tu­al­ly giv­en up his pas­tor­ship in two places, mov­ing west­ward un­til he reached Kansas City.--Here for a num­ber of years, he had ex­pe­ri­enced peace, a sort of in­dif­fer­ent peace, he ad­mit­ted, due more to cal­lous­ness of soul than to any­thing else. Then came Lucy's ad­ven­ture with the “Mor­mon” el­ders on the streets, and her vis­it to “Mor­mon” meet­ings. She had brought “Mor­mon” lit­er­ature home, and he had read it, read it all. He had asked her to bring more. He had of­ten sat up till mid­night to fin­ish a book, then had railed at Lucy for bring­ing it in­to the house. And now the con­flict was on again, hard­er than ev­er. He closed his eyes, say­ing, “No, no;” then opened them again to the beau­ti­ful light. He stopped his ears, cry­ing, “I will not hear;” then lis­tened to the sweet mu­sic. With all the force of his life's train­ing, he railed against the doc­trine; then in si­lence con­tem­plat­ed its glo­ri­ous truths. He drove the thought of it out of his mind; then wel­comed it ea­ger­ly back. Back and forth, in and out, in doubt and fear, in faith and hope his soul had suf­fered and wrought.

What was the out­come to be? Ev­ident­ly, the end was not yet; for had he not pur­pose­ly tak­en this trip abroad, to get away from some of these things, and had he not run hard against that which he had hoped to es­cape. And in what form had it now come? In that of his son, his on­ly son, the child of his younger days! Sure­ly God was in this thing. “Yes,” the man mut­tered, “God is watch­ing me. I can­not es­cape. His hand is over me. '_If I take the wings of the morn­ing and dwell in the ut­ter­most parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me!_'”

Un­cle Gilbert came in, hum­ming light­ly a tune he had caught from the band in the cafe. He stopped when he saw his broth­er ap­par­ent­ly asleep. He was about to re­treat when his broth­er, open­ing his eyes, called:

“Don't go; come here. I want to talk with you. I want your opin­ion on a mat­ter.”

Un­cle Gilbert seat­ed him­self to lis­ten.

“You might think it a strange thing for me to ask you about doc­trines of re­li­gion,” be­gan the broth­er, “but some­times a lay­man has a clear­er, more un­bi­ased view than one who has stud­ied one sys­tem, and--and has made his liv­ing from preach­ing it.”

“I fear, broth­er, you are wor­ry­ing too much about such things”--

“Not at all--not too much. It's nec­es­sary to wor­ry some­times. I sup­pose that's God's way of arous­ing peo­ple. I am wor­ry­ing--have been wor­ry­ing for many years--just now I want some­one to talk to--I want you to lis­ten.”

“I'll do that, if that will help you,” said the broth­er as he placed his hat and stick on a ta­ble and shift­ed him­self in­to a com­fort­able po­si­tion. The maid peeped in, but see­ing the two men, re­tired again.

“I have preached hun­dreds of ser­mons on the be­ing and na­ture of God,” said the min­is­ter, now sit­ting erect and look­ing at his broth­er. “I have spo­ken of Him as a Fa­ther, our Fa­ther, and all the time He has been out in time and space, form­less, home­less, un­think­able. He has nev­er ap­pealed to heart or brain. Will God ev­er be more to me than a force in and through all na­ture? Shall we ev­er see His face? Shall we ev­er feel the cares of His hand and hear His voice, not in a fig­ura­tive sense, but in re­al­ity.”

“Now broth­er”--said Un­cle Gilbert again.

"Don't in­ter­rupt. You do not need to an­swer my ques­tions--you couldn't if you want­ed to. Lis­ten. What do you think of this: God is our Fa­ther, in re­al­ity as we nat­ural­ly un­der­stand it--Fa­ther of our spir­its. We are, there­fore, His chil­dren. That is our re­la­tion­ship. Con­se­quent­ly we are of a fam­ily of Gods. Ad­mit that our Fa­ther is God, and that we are His chil­dren, the con­clu­sion is ab­so­lute. We are not worms of the dust, on­ly so far as we de­grade our di­vine na­ture to that low­ness.

"This Fa­ther of ours has in the past eter­ni­ties trod through time and space, learn­ing,--yes, suf­fer­ing, over­com­ing, con­quer­ing, be­com­ing per­fect, un­til now He sits in the midst of glo­ry, pow­er, and eter­nal lives. In might and majesty per­fect, He can and does hold us all as in the hol­low of His hand. This lit­tle earth of ours, and all the shin­ing worlds on high are His work­man­ship. He holds them al­so by His all­wise pow­er. And yet, my broth­er, come back to this sim­ple propo­si­tion, we are that great Be­ing's sons and daugh­ters, and if we walk in the way in which He walked, we are heirs to all that He has! I am one of a great fam­ily, so are you,--all of us. Our Fa­ther has but gone be­fore and we fol­low. The dif­fer­ence be­tween us is on­ly in de­gree of de­vel­op­ment and not in kind.

"'O God, I think thy thoughts af­ter Thee,' said Ke­pler, and thoughts lead to deeds.

“Again, the Son, whom we know as Je­sus Christ, came to re­veal to us this Fa­ther. He was in 'the form of God.' He was the 'im­age of the in­vis­ible God.' Fur­ther, this Son was in the ex­press im­age of the Fa­ther's per­son. Je­sus Christ was a man like un­to us as far as out­ward form is con­cerned. He is one of this great fam­ily, the first-​born and fore­most of the chil­dren, it is true, yet one of us--He ac­knowl­edged us as His brethren. Now, then lis­ten: Je­sus fol­lows His Fa­ther. 'The Son can do noth­ing of Him­self, but what He seeth the Fa­ther do: for what things so­ev­er He doeth, these al­so doeth the Son like­wise.' Al­so, this Son said: 'My Fa­ther wor­keth hith­er­to, and I work.' Now, if we fol­low in the steps of the Son, as He has com­mand­ed us to do, and that Son fol­lows in the steps of His Fa­ther, where is our fi­nal des­ti­na­tion?”

The broth­er lis­tened in won­der. The doc­trine was, in­deed, strange, but it was too clear and log­ical to be the re­sult of a weak mind. The min­is­ter saw the per­plex­ity in his lis­ten­er's face and said:

"No, broth­er, I am not crazy. My mind has nev­er been clear­er. I feel fine now. I tell you, there is man­na for a hun­gry soul in these things.

“And now again: This life is a school. From the puny, help­less in­fant to old age, life is a de­vel­op­ment of the at­tributes with which we come in­to the world. We get all our ed­uca­tion through our sens­es. No fac­ul­ty of mind or body is use­less. The per­fect man has these all per­fect­ly de­vel­oped. We have at least one ex­am­ple of a per­fect man, the res­ur­rect­ed Son of God. What was He like? When He ap­peared to His dis­ci­ples He said, 'Han­dle me and see; for a spir­it hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.' He al­so ate with His brethren. Here, then, we have, one of us, car­ry­ing with Him in­to the ce­les­tial world His body of flesh and bone. And, mind you, He is the pat­tern. If we fol­low Him, we al­so shall take with us these bod­ies, changed, purged, and glo­ri­fied of course, but yet bod­ies in ev­ery sense. Will not the eye then see per­fect­ly, the ear hear ev­ery sound in the ce­les­tial key? Not on­ly ev­ery at­tribute of the mind, but ev­ery or­gan of the body will be pre­fect in its op­er­ation. Think what that will mean!”

The speak­er paused as if to let his lis­ten­er ar­rive at the in­evitable con­clu­sion in his own mind.

“What will it mean?” he asked again.

“I don't know,” replied Un­cle Gilbert.

“It will mean fa­ther­hood--eter­nal, ce­les­tial­ized fa­ther­hood. We shall be like Him our Fa­ther, not on­ly to beget, but to _fa­ther_ a race! Think of that! Did you ev­er think of that? No, of course not--and I--musn't--I who--have nev­er yet made a be­gin­ning--how can I ex­pect”--

The head fell back on the pil­low as Un­cle Gilbert quick­ly came to his broth­er's side. The min­is­ter's face was pale, his eyes were closed for a mo­ment. Then he opened them, sat up­right, ran his hand over his face, and smiled at his broth­er.

“Don't be alarmed,” he said, “it was noth­ing. I'm all right.”

He walked about while the maid came in and set the ta­ble for din­ner. The min­is­ter linked his arm in­to his broth­er's. “Say, broth­er,” he asked, “would you not be lone­some up in heav­en with­out Aunt Sarah?”

Un­cle Gilbert was se­ri­ous­ly alarmed. He had in mind to call Lucy, when, prov­iden­tial­ly she came to them.

“I think your fa­ther's not well, Lucy?” said Un­cle Gilbert, as she took her fa­ther's oth­er arm.

“What's the mat­ter, pa­pa?” she asked.

“I am well,” protest­ed the fa­ther--“as well as I ev­er was. I've just been telling broth­er here some things--some gospel truths in fact, and I guess they're be­yond you yet,” he said to his broth­er.

“Well,” replied Un­cle Gilbert, “I'll ad­mit I've nev­er heard you talk like that be­fore.”

“Why, I've preached these things scores of times from the pul­pit, and my con­gre­ga­tions have thought them fine. I didn't tell, how­ev­er, where my in­spi­ra­tion came from.”

“Where did it come from?” asked Lucy.

“From your books, my dear.”

“My books?”

“Yes; from your books on 'Mor­monism'.”

Had not din­ner just then been an­nounced, it is hard to say what would have be­come of Un­cle Gilbert's as­ton­ish­ment. Across the ta­ble he saw Lucy's re­as­sur­ing smile from which he him­self took courage that all was well.