Dr Heidenhoffs Process | Page 3

certain
amount of pride in it. Nothing is more disheartening for him than to
have to keep on with a job with which he must be disgusted every time
he returns to it, every time his eye glances it over. Do I make my
meaning clear? I felt like that beaten crew in last week's regatta, which,
when it saw itself hopelessly distanced at the very outset, had no pluck
to row out the race, but just pulled ashore and went home.
"Why, I remember when I was a little boy in school, and one day made

a big blot on the very first page of my new copybook, that I didn't have
the heart to go on any further, and I recollect well how I teased my
father to buy me a new book, and cried and sulked until he finally took
his knife and neatly cut out the blotted page. Then I was comforted and
took heart, and I believe I finished that copybook so well that the
teacher gave me the prize.
"Now you see, don't you," he continued, the ghost of a smile
glimmering about his eyes, "how it was that after my disgrace I couldn't
seem to take an interest any more in anything? Then came the revival,
and that gave me a notion that religion might help me. I bad heard,
from a child, that the blood of Christ had a power to wash away sins
and to leave one white and spotless with a sense of being new and clean
every whit. That was what I wanted, just what I wanted. I am sure that
you never had a more sincere, more dead-in-earnest convert than I
was."
He paused a moment, as if in mental contemplation, and then the words
dropped slowly from his lips, as a dim self-pitying smile rested on his
haggard face.
"I really think you would be sorry for me if you knew how very bitter
was my disappointment when I found that, these bright promises were
only figurative expressions which I had taken literally. Doubtless I
should not have fallen into such a ridiculous mistake if my great need
had not made my wishes fathers to my thoughts. Nobody was at all to
blame but myself; nobody at all. I'm blaming no one. Forgiving sins, I
should have known, is not blotting, them out. The blood of Christ only
turns them red instead of black. It leaves them in the record. It leaves
them in the memory. That day when I blotted my copybook at school,
to have had the teacher forgive me ever so kindly would not have made
me feel the least bit better so long as the blot was there. It wasn't any
penalty from without, but the hurt to my own pride which the spot
made, that I wanted taken away, so I might get heart to go on.
Supposing one of you--and you'll excuse me for asking you to put
yourself a moment in my place--had picked a pocket. Would it make a
great deal of difference in your state of mind that the person whose

pocket you had picked kindly forgave you, and declined to prosecute?
Your offence against him was trifling, and easily repaired. Your chief
offence was against yourself, and that was irreparable. No other person
with his forgiveness can mediate between you and yourself. Until you
have been in such a fix, you can't imagine, perhaps, how curiously
impertinent it sounds to hear talk about somebody else forgiving you
for ruining yourself. It is like mocking."
The nine o'clock bell pealed out from the mill tower.
"I am trespassing on your kindness, but I have only a few more words
to say. The ancients had a beautiful fable about the water of Lethe, in
which the soul that was bathed straightway forgot all that was sad and
evil in its previous life; the most stained, disgraced, and mournful of
souls coming forth fresh, blithe, and bright as a baby's. I suppose my
absurd misunderstanding arose from a vague notion that the blood of
Christ had in it something like this virtue of Lethe water. Just think
how blessed a thing for men it would be if such were indeed the case, if
their memories could be cleansed and disinfected at the same time their
hearts were purified! Then the most disgraced and ashamed might live
good and happy lives again. Men would be redeemed from their sins in
fact, and not merely in name. The figurative promises of the Gospel
would become literally true. But this is idle dreaming. I will not keep
you," and, checking himself abruptly, he sat down.
The moment he did so, Mr. Lewis rose and pronounced the benediction,
dismissing the meeting without the usual closing hymn.