“Oh that I knew where I might find Him!”
When George Stratton returned with David to the Castle, he found that his parents had already retired to rest. This was only what he expected and wished; he therefore himself cheerfully accompanied his uncle to the chamber which had been prepared for him, where he waited upon him with a respect and attention that evidenced something more than the mere desire to discharge the duties of hospitality towards a guest beneath his father’s roof, and that guest his father’s brother. We usually conceive a liking for any one for whom we exert ourselves to do a kindness; and in this way, perhaps, it happened that George was disposed to regard his uncle’s character from a more favorable point of view that night than he had ever done before. Besides, the attitude of fearless independence which David had assumed was not entirely without its charms in his eyes, little as he found to admire in the feelings that had, in the first instance, inspired his resistance to the prior’s covetous demand.
During their walk they had scarcely interchanged a word, but as they stood together before parting for the night, David remarked, with a laugh, “I doot but you Sir William, the Capellan, ‘ill come here sae soon as I’m awa’ and sprinkle the chalmer wi’ holy water, for fear I might chance to leave the tail o’ the prior’s curse behind me.”
George laughed also as he answered, “Sir William maim just bide yer presence, as he has to bide many a thing he likes scarce as weel.”
“Ye’re daffing, lad. I thocht ye were a’ good Christians.”
“But we’re not dumb; an’ if a chance word against the priests is to earn a man the name of heretic, there’ll be mair in it than you, uncle.”
David turned, and gave George the benefit of one of the keenest glances of his keen blue eyes. Had the lad more in him than he had ever given him credit for? Was he, in spite of his “book Lear,” neither coward nor fool? Resolved at least to test him a little further, he told him his opinion of the kirkmen in general, and of Patrick Hepburn in particular, using language much too plain and forcible to be transferred to these pages.
George listened in silence to this angry diatribe; and, when he had finished, allowed a few moments to elapse before he attempted an answer. Then he said, in tones unusually quiet and gentle, “When our blessed Lord was here on earth, he said many things of the wicked priests and Pharisees of his time that, to my thinking, are owre true yet.”
“Ay, did he?” asked David, with a look of interest. He had the vaguest possible ideas of the time of which his nephew spoke, and, we fear we may add, of the Person whom he named with such reverence; but he was glad to hear that any one had told hard truths of “thae greedy loons, the priests.”
“Wad ye like to hear what he said?” continued George.
“Unco weel,” answered David, eagerly enough.
George drew his New Testament from the sleeve of his doublet, opened it at the 23rd of St. Matthew, and began to read. “Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying, The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.”
“Eh, but that’s nae guid ava’,” interrupted David, angrily.
“Bide a wee, uncle, and have patience,” said the reader, and he went on: “But do not ye after their works, for they say and do not”
David was all attention now, nor did he again interrupt until George cattle to the words, “Ye devout widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers, therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation, “when he could no longer contain his delight.” You’s the brawest sermon I hae heard in a’ my life,” he cried; “it’s a’ true, but the lang prayers. Our priests dinna fash theirsels owre muckle wi’ them, I’m thinking.”
George was too intent upon another and very different object to waste the precious moments in discussing this point; though he certainly thought that the frequent masses, and many of the other services of the Church, might be not inaptly described as “long prayers made for a pretence.” He read on, therefore, without note or comment, to the close of the chapter.
“Is that a’?” asked David, quickly. “Does he tell us naething o’ the proud bishops and priors, and a’ the lave? But aiblins they werena sae bad in those times as they be the noo.”
“They did not use the same names to call them by,” said George; “but ye see, uncle, they were bad enough, and to spare.”
“Did they curse honest folk, and drive them frae the Kirk, naebut for standing on their right, and no letting theirsels be fleeced like sae mony puir feckless bits of sheep? And what did the Saint — I mean our blessed Lord (and he crossed himself) — say to sic cantrips?”
“They did worse than all that, uncle; they cursed good and honest men, cast them out of the Kirk, ay, and killed them an they could, gif they dared to confess that Jesus was the Christ, or to say they believed in him,” — and a dark shadow passed across young Lauriston’s face. Perhaps he was thinking of a scene he had witnessed, not so many months before, at St. Andrews — the death by fire of “ane Henry Forrest, a young man born in Linlithgow,” “for none other cause but because he had ane New Testament in Englis,” and that he constantly affirmed “that Maister Patrick Hamilton was a martyr, and that his articles were true, and not hereticall”
But he only said, “I can give you, from my book, a true history of one they cast out.” And then he half read, half repeated, the story of the man blind from his birth, whose eyes the Savior opened, and who afterwards confessed his name so boldly before the Pharisees.
David Stratton did not, by word or sign, evidence either interest or impatience. He stood still, leaning against the casement, and looking out upon the moonlit castle-yard, and the pasture-lands beyond, with rows of stately trees. Ever afterwards with that scene was associated in his mind the first hearing of those marvelous words, “I am the light of the world,” and the vague awe, and wonder, and sense of mystery they awoke within him.
At last George read, “Thou roast altogether born in sins, and dolt thou teach us? and they cast him out.”
“That’s just like me,” said David, emphatically, turning towards him, again. “Na, na,” he added, in a lower voice, “they cast him out because he told them the truth anent our Lord’s wonderfu’ wank; I’ve nae done like that.”
George went on quietly: “Jesus heard that they had excommunicate him; and as soon as he had found him he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, And who is it, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and he it is that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And worshipped Him.” Then, without a word of comment, he closed the book and restored it to its hiding-place.
David’s eyes followed it wistfully. “It’s a brave thing ye hae got book lean, Geordie,” he said.
George was naturally not displeased at this unwonted admission on his uncle’s part. “And there’s no book like this book,” he answered; “God’s ain hand has written every line and letter in it.”
“But can ye mak’ the meaning out, callant? For I misdoot that’s unto hard.”
“Whiles,” said the youth humbly; “and I pray God day by day to teach me more and better. But the hour is late, and your foot is aye early in the stirrup, uncle, so that I should not tarry.”
Good-nights were then exchanged, and without further conversation George left the room.
David Stratton stood long at the lancet window — how long he never knew. Strange new thoughts filled his mind, and for the first time for weeks even the Prior of St. Andrews and the Vicar of Ecclescreig were forgotten. For he did not, as might be imagined, amuse and gratify himself by applying the fiery denunciations he had just heard to these his personal enemies. They had indeed impressed and delighted him at the time; but what be afterwards heard almost swept them from his memory. Unaccustomed to abstract thought, though full of practical shrewdness, a mere exposition of doctrine would perhaps hardly have left a clearer impression on him, when delivered in his native tongue, than if it had been couched in Latin; but his mind was quick to grasp and strong to retain the circumstances of a story. Nor did he only retain them passively: he was accustomed to reflect, after a fashion, upon his own doings and those of other men’; and to his imagination the blind man of the gospel was as real, and not more distant, than if he had lived or was living then in Edinburgh or St. Andrews. For what did he know or care about those fifteen long weary centuries that lay between? The restoration of sight to the blind — that was very wonderful, to be sure. He knew a blind man, who piled to sit at the door of St. Mary’s Abbey Kirk in Dundee, and to whom he had many a time given an alms as he passed. He wondered what would old Simon think if someone were to come one day and open his eyes. And who was that someone whose word, whose touch, had such power? It was Jesus, the Son of God. How good it was of him to do it — and to do it for a poor unknown man, a blind beggar, no better than old Simon Hackett! And, moreover, he did not send one of the holy apostles to him, though that would have been marvelously kind and condescending — he did much more. He himself spoke to him, and touched him.
Here it will be observed that the goodness of the act impressed David far more than its greatness. There was a reason for this. It is the tendency of all spurious imitations to lower the value of the thing imitated in the popular mind. Thus, Rome’s lying legends had, as it were, cheapened miracles in the eyes of men. They were accustomed to hear, and to believe, stories of wonderful works, which, as mere exhibitions of superhuman power, apart from wisdom’ or goodness, are to the calm and dignified narratives of the gospel as the blaze of an illuminated city to the pale and distant, but enduring, glories of the starry heavens. A hundred blind men or a thousand, restored to sight, would not have astonished David beyond measure, or too sorely taxed his faith. But the personal human kindness with which that awful Being, the Son of God (of whom, when he thought at all, he thought with vague terror as the Judge of mankind), stooped to deal with this one poor blind man, surprised and touched him deeply. Little wonder, he thought, that the man spoke up so bravely before the Pharisees (David called them the Bishops) to bear witness to his goodness. And very like them to cast him out for it!
But how did the poor man feel when he found himself an outcast, cursed by the kirkmen, abandoned by all his friends, and in danger of worse harm to follow, belike both to soul and body? Probably he was sore perplexed and terrified. Ay, but then “Jesus found him.” Found him, was it, or met him — which did Geordie say? Found him; he was sure of it. “It wasna that he forgathered wi’ him by chance in the highway, but he speered after him, for he heard that they had excommunicated him.” And he spoke to him so gently and kindly, and gave him, no doubt, a short and clean shrift from all his sins, better than all the bishops in that country could do. Would, oh would that he were alive now! However distant he might be, David Stratton would go to him, were it twice as far as the shrine of St. James of Compostella — twice as far even as that Hierusalem whither Friar Scott had travelled lately — he cared not. Had he to go the whole “gait” on foot, he cared not, if so be that at the end he might throw himself at the feet of that great and good One, and say to him, “Lord, I too am cast out of the Kirk by these wicked, covetous bishops; wilt thou not let me confess my sins to thee, and give me thy pardon?”
But the Lord Jesus was not to be found at compos, tella, nor yet in Hierusalem — he knew that It would be a good thing, doubtless, for a man to pray in these holy places, or to bring back relics of wonderful virtue, as Friar Scott had done — fragments of stone from the pillar to which Christ was bound, and such like; but to meet our Lord himself personally, and to speak with him, that was another matter clearly. Friar Scott, with all his bragging, had never bragged of that; nor would he have believed him if he had. Yet nothing less would do for him, in his present sore distress and difficulty — for such he now confessed it to be. And then he remembered that the Lord was not on earth at all, in any place — he was in heaven at God’s right hand. Could he not pray to him there?
This was the first glimmering perception of the real purpose and meaning of prayer that dawned upon the mind of David Stratton. Hitherto he had always thought of it as a meritorious action, by means of which good things might be obtained and evil ones averted, through the assistance and mediation of the Virgin and the saints, to whom by far the greater part of the prayers he knew were addressed. Now he began to think it might possibly be a way of communication between this world and the other, by which he might actually succeed in conveying a request about which he was very much in earnest to the ear of the great Son of God himself His prayer, if prayer it may be called, was couched in words like these: “Lord, they hae cast me out. I wad find thee an I could; but sin’ I canna do that, I ask thee to find me. And gie me, thysel, shrift and pardon for a’ my sins; for ye ken I canna get it frae the kirk-men, and I’m a muckle sinner in thy sight the day — God help me. Amen.”
Such were some of the thoughts that filled the mind of David Stratton during the silent hours of that night, to him forever memorable. What he felt cannot be traced so easily as what he thought. There is a sanctuary in almost every soul into which no other human soul can penetrate. None but He who has searched and knoweth the hearts he made, could understand the strange, new-born impulse which brought David Stratton, in his trouble and danger, to the feet of the merciful Savior, of whose grace he had heard that night for the first time. “He is great, he can help me — he is good, perhaps he will.” Thus much could be expressed in words; but not so the strong sense of his goodness, and the first dawnings of love and trust in the heart that was ignorantly and half unconsciously, yet really, turning towards Him.