Bitter-Sweet | Page 6

to the
Christian scheme
That which the scheme was made to kill, or cure.
David.
Yet they do save some very awkward words,
That limp to make
apology for God,
And, while they justify Him, half confess
The
adverse verdict of appearances.
I am ashamed that in this Christian
age
The pious throng still hug the fallacy
That this dear world of
ours was not ordained
The theater of evil; for no law
Declared of
God from all eternity
Can live a moment save by lease of pain.
Law
cannot live, e'en in God's inmost thought,
Save by the side of evil.
What were law
But a weak jest without its penalty?
Never a law
was born that did not fly
Forth from the bosom of Omnipotence

Matched, wing-and-wing, with evil and with good,
Avenger and
rewarder--both of God.
Ruth.
I face your thought and give it audience;
But I cannot embrace it till it
come
With some of truth's credentials in its hands--
The fruits of
gracious ministries.
David.

Does he
Who, driven to labor by the threatening weeds,
And forced
to give his acres light and air
And traps for dew and reservoirs for
rain,
Till, in the smoky light of harvest time,
The ragged husks
reveal the golden corn,
Ask truth's credentials of the weeds? Does he

Who prunes the orchard boughs, or tills the field,
Or fells the
forests, or pursues their prey,
Until the gnarly muscles of his limbs

And the free blood that thrills in all his veins
Betray the health that
toil alone secures,
Ask truth's credentials at the hand of toil?
Do
you ask truth's credentials of the storm
Which, while we entertain
communion here,
Makes better music for our huddling hearts
Than
choirs of stars can sing in fairest nights?
Yet weeds are evils--evils
toil and storm.
We may suspect the fair, smooth face of good;
But
evil, that assails us undisguised,
Bears evermore God's warrant in its
hands.
Israel.
I fear these silver sophistries of yours.
If my poor judgment gives
them honest weight,
Far less than thirty will betray your Lord.
You
call that evil which is good, and good
That which is evil. You
apologize
For that which God must hate, and justify
The life and
perpetuity of that
Which sets itself against His holiness,
And sends
its discords through the universe.
David.
I sorrow if I shock you, for I seek
To comfort and inspire. I see
around
A silent company of doubtful souls;
But I may challenge
any one of them
To quote the meanest blessing of its life,
And
prove that evil did not make the gift,
Or bear it from the giver to its
hands.
The great salvation wrought by Jesus Christ--
That sank an
Adam to reveal a God--

Had never come, but at the call of sin.
No
risen Lord could eat the feast of love
Here on the earth, or yonder in
the sky,
Had He not lain within the sepulcher.
'Tis not the lightly

laden heart of man
That loves the best the hand that blesses all;
But
that which, groaning with its weight of sin,
Meets with the mercy that
forgiveth much.
God never fails in an experiment,
Nor tries
experiment upon a race
But to educe its highest style of life,
And
sublimate its issues. Thus to me
Evil is not a mystery, but a means

Selected from the infinite resource
To make the most of me.
Ruth.
Thank God for light!
These truths are slowly dawning on my soul,

And take position in the firmament
That spans my thought, like stars
that know their place.
Dear Lord! what visions crowd before my
eyes--
Visions drawn forth from memory's mysteries
By the sweet
shining of these holy lights!
I see a girl, once lightest in the dance,

And maddest with the gayety of life,
Grow pale and pulseless,
wasting day by day,
While death lies idly dreaming in her breast,

Blighting her breath, and poisoning her blood.
I see her frantic with a
fearful thought
That haunts and horrifies her shrinking soul,
And
bursts in sighs and sobs and feverish prayers;
And now, at last, the
awful struggle ends,
A sweet smile sits upon her angel face,
And
peace, with downy bosom, nestles close
Where her worn heart throbs
faintly; closer still
As the death shadows gather; closer still,
As, on
white wings, the outward-going soul
Flies to a home it never would
have sought,
Had a great evil failed to point the way.
I see a youth
whom God has crowned with power,
And cursed with poverty. With
bravest heart
He struggles with his lot, through toilsome years,--

Kept to his task by daily want of bread,
And kept to virtue by his
daily task,--
Till, gaining manhood in the manly strife,--
The fire
that fills him smitten from a flint--

The strength that arms him
wrested from a fiend--
He stands, at last, a master of himself,
And,
in that grace, a master of his kind.
David.

Familiar visions these, but ever full
Of inspiration and significance.

Now that your eyes are opened and you see,
Your heart should take
swift cognizance, and feel.
How do these visions move you?
Ruth.
Like the hand
Of a strong angel on my shoulder laid,
Touching the
secret of the spirit's wings.
My heart grows brave. I'm ready now to
work--
To work with God, and suffer with His Christ;
Adopt His
measures, and