Bitter-Sweet | Page 5

I love the girl and love her Lord,?And seek to vindicate His love to her?And waken hers for Him. Be this my plea:?God is almighty--all-benevolent;?And naught exists save by His loving will.?Evil, or what we reckon such, exists,?And not against His will; else the Supreme?Is subject, and we have in place of God?A phantom nothing, with a phantom name.?Therefore I care not whether He ordain?That evil live, or whether He permit;?Therefore I ask not why, in either case,?As if He meant to curse me, but I ask?What He would have this evil do for me??What is its mission? what its ministry??What golden fruit lies hidden in its husk??How shall it nurse my virtue, nerve my will,?Chasten my passions, purify my love,?And make me in some goodly sense like Him?Who bore the cross of evil while He lived,?Who hung and bled upon it when He died,?And now, in glory, wears the victor's crown?
Israel.
If evil, then, have privilege and part?In the economy of holiness,?Why came the Christ to save us from its power,?And bring us restoration of the bliss?Lost in the lapse of Eden?
David.
And would you?Or Ruth 'have restoration of that bliss,?And welcome transplantation to the state?Associate with it?
Ruth.
Would I? Would I not!?Oh, I have dreamed of it a thousand times,?Sleeping and waking, since the torch of thought?Flashed into flame at Revelation's touch,?And filled my spirit with its quenchless fire.?Most envious dreams of innocence and joy?Have haunted me,--dreams that were born in sin,?Yet swathed in stainless snow. I've dreamed, and dreamed, Of wondrous trees, crowned with perennial green,?Whose soft still shadows gleamed with golden lamps?Of pensile fruitage, or were flushed with life?Radiant and tuneful when broad flocks of birds?Swept in and out like sheets of living flame.?I've dreamed of aisles tufted with velvet grass,?And bordered with the strange intelligence?Of myriad loving eyes among the flowers,?That watched me with a curious, calm delight,?As rows of wayside cherubim may watch?A new soul, walking into Paradise.?I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun supine?Lay rocking on the ocean like a god,?And threw his weary arms far up the sky,?And with vermilion-tinted fingers toyed?With the long tresses of the evening star.?I've dreamed of dreams more beautiful than all--?Dreams that were music, perfume, vision, bliss,--?Blent and sublimed, till I have stood inwrapped?In the thick essence of an atmosphere?That made me tremble to unclose my eyes?Lest I should look on God. And I have dreamed?Of sinless men and maids, mated in heaven,?Ere yet their souls had sought for beauteous forms?To give them human sense and residence,?Moving through all this realm of choice delights?For ever and for aye; with hands and hearts?Immaculate as light; without a thought?Of evil, and without a name for fear.?Oh, when I wake from happy dreams like these,?To the old consciousness that I must die,?To the old presence of a guilty heart,?To the old fear that haunts me night and day,?Why should I not deplore the graceless fall?That makes me what I am, and shuts me out?From a condition and society?As much above a sinful maiden's dreams?As Eden blest surpasses Eden curst?
David.
So you would be another Eve, and so--?Fall with the first temptation, like herself!?God seeks for virtue; you for innocence.?You'll find it in the cradle--nowhere else--?Save in your dreams, among the grown-up babes?That dwelt in Eden--powerless, pulpy souls?That showed a dimple for each touch of sin.?God seeks for virtue, and, that it may live,?It must resist, and that which it resists?Must live. Believe me, God has other thought?Than restoration of our fallen race?To its primeval innocence and bliss.?If Jesus Christ--as we are taught--was slain?From the foundation of the world, it was?Because our evil lived in essence then--?Coeval with the great, mysterious fact.?And He was slain that we might be transformed,--?Not into Adam's sweet similitude--?But the more glorious image of Himself,?A resolution of our destiny?As high transcending Eden's life and lot?As He surpasses Eden's fallen lord.
Ruth.
You're very bold, my brother, very bold.?Did I not know you for an earnest man,?When sacred themes move you to utterance,?I'd chide you for those most irreverent words?Which make essential 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