“So take and use Thy work,
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim.
My times be in Thy hand;
Perfect the cup as planned;
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.”
THAT segment of a human Life which can be severed from its antecedents and its results, and laid bare for inspection by the hand of a chronicler, must needs be only a part, perhaps it is a very subordinate part, of the whole. Life is not over when the vicissitudes of a stormy youth have passed, and the man that these have trained and disciplined sets his face steadily, though it may be silently, to the toils and cares of a busy manhood. If the banquet be of God’s spreading, assuredly the best wine will be kept for the last; the blessings of the sultry noon will abound above the morning’s glow and glory; and when in its appointed season noon gives place to evening, and evening again to night, still His law of progress will hold good, and night itself prove the morning of a brighter and better day.
Never yet was home or heart which twenty years passed over and left no trace behind. Long before such an interval as this had glided by, Raymond’s dwelling place had ceased to be in sunny Languedoc, the land of his boyish dreams. We may visit him once again in the home he has chosen, a German home, amongst men and women who speak a German tongue, and look at him with kind, frank, German oyes, blue as their own sky. It is on the Bohemian side of the romantic mountain range which separates that country from Saxony. There, in a secluded village, a colony of “United Brethren” have found shelter and refuge from persecution amidst “the strength of the hills.” Raymond is their pastor, but he is much more besides, he is the preceptor, guide, and counselor of a chosen band of young men, who have come to him from all parts of the land to be educated for the ministry of the Church of “Reformers before the Reformation.”
Is it one of these who stands before him now―a fine athletic, dark-eyed young man, who looks reverently and inquiringly into the pastor’s thoughtful face? Not so; that is Raymond’s eldest son, Theodore Chalcondyles, and Theodore will be no pastor, the familiar beaten paths of home not always proving the most attractive to young eager feet. Moreover, another influence has been at work upon him; but it is an influence not antagonistic to his father’s, and His father is content.
“There is no reason why you should not take out your degree at Montpellier,” Raymond is saying to his son. “Whatever you do afterward will be done the better by you as a duly licensed physician.”
“Father,” said the young man, “you taught Greek at Montpellier for several years; they remember you there, and with honor. Why did you leave it?”
Raymond smiled, took a large and heavy volume of MS. from one of his bookshelves and laid it on the table. “That did it,” he said.
“You have often told as how you found it, and how precious it is to you, my father. But why should it so change all the circumstances of your life?”
“The New Testament in the old Provencal language sent me back to the study of the original Greek; and to that study I owe the opening out before me of new worlds of thought and knowledge. I had already a dim but real love for the Word of God, and for Him of whom it testifies, thanks to one whose name I have ever taught you to honor.”
“Giulio Morgagna. Do you know, father, where he is now?”
“I last heard of him as the instructor of a company of glass makers in the mountains of Foix. He is likely to teach them much more than the mysteries of their craft. If indeed he escape I taught many things out of that book to the students at Montpellier. I sought to make them ‘Grecians,’ not so much after the manner of Plato as after that of Apollos, or rather of those who expounded unto Apollos the way of the Lord more perfectly. But as I learned more and more of that way myself, many things perplexed and disquieted me. My position was becoming every day more difficult and painful, when God sent me the guidance I was longing for. A deputation from the Evangelical Church of the United Brethren was passing noiselessly up and down through the great evil world of Christendom; searching everywhere, if perchance any might be found who had understanding and sought after God, and whose souls, touched by Divine truth, revolted against a religion of empty forms and ceremonies. To me their scriptural creed, their simple worship, their apostolic life offered just what my soul desired, and therefore I accompanied them when they returned here. To my mother the change was made easy by the connection between the Bohemian Churches and those of the East, whence their Christianity was originally derived.
To my aged friend and servant Manuel, already near his departure, it seemed, as he said, like going home to die amongst his own people. For he chose to consider the Calixtines true orthodox believers, and great was his joy when, first with them and afterward with us, he drank of the Cup to which they have so bravely vindicated the right of all the faithful. To my children too this has been a happy home; although the elder are now pluming their wings for flight, you towards the West, and my young artist Raymond― since he must needs be a sculptor― towards that sweet southern dime where my own boyhood was spent. Still, wherever you roam, the faith learned here will be treasured in your hearts. We are a small, despised, persecuted remnant; yet, Theodore, we are sons of the morning. I think the future of the world is with us, or with such as we are.”
“And,” said Theodore, “with the men of science, who explore nature.”
“I deny it not. ‘In the beginning was the Word. . . all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.’ Therefore, all created things are God’s utterance, the expression of His thought. Go then, my son, read what He has said in that great book of which the leaves are earth and ocean, and the letters stars and flowers and living things without number. I keep to this” (he laid his hand on the Bible) “as my work and my joy, and my meditation day and night. I believe that in both there are wondrous things―treasures yet undreamed of―which He is keeping to reward the earnest seeker.”
“So says Dr. Theodore. About that world beyond the Western wave, he is more and more assured every day, he and his friend, the great navigator Christopher Columbus.”
“Theodore, I trust utterly the man after whom I named you; and whom, from my boyhood upwards, I have loved as a brother. Of the affection he has shown you and the benefits you have received from him we need not speak, both of us know them well. And since, long years ago, I learned from his own lips that his heart acknowledged Jesus of Nazareth as his Messiah and his Saviour, mine has been at rest about him. I have always wished you to regard him in the light of a second father. Therefore, if it be his desire that you should go with him to the ends of the earth, and if it be the desire of your own soul algo, God forbid that I should say you nay.”
Theodore’s eyes sparkled. “It is his desire,” he said, “and mine. He is now aiding Columbus by every means in his power to bring his projects of discovery before some prince or commonwealth able to translate dreams into deeds. For, as I have said, he believes, with Columbus, that there is beyond the Western Sea a great undiscovered land (connected no doubt with India), and his determination is fixed to go and see it before he dies. Father, it is to that land he would have me go with him.”
“Then go, and God prosper thee and him. Go, far as you will, on the wings of the morning; and, whithersoever you go, may His hand lead you, His right hand hold you.”
THE END.