Love Eternal | Page 8

Samuel's nephew became rector of
Monk's Acre.
Such appointments, like marriages, are made in Heaven--at least that
seems to be the doctrine of the English Church, which is content to act
thereon. In this particular instance the results were quite good. The Rev.
Mr. Knight, the nephew of the opulent Sir Samuel, proved to be an
excellent and hard-working clergyman. He was low-church, and narrow
almost to the point of Calvinism, but intensely earnest and
conscientious; one who looked upon the world as a place of sin and
woe through which we must labour and pass on, a difficult path beset
with rocks and thorns, leading to the unmeasured plains of Heaven.
Also he was an educated man who had taken high degrees at college,
and really learned in his way. While he was a curate, working very hard
in a great seaport town, he had married the daughter of another
clergyman of the city, who died in a sudden fashion as the result of an
accident, leaving the girl an orphan. She was not pure English as her
mother had been a Dane, but on both sides her descent was high, as
indeed was that of Mr. Knight himself.
This union, contracted on the husband's part largely from motives that
might be called charitable, since he had promised his deceased

colleague on his death bed to befriend the daughter, was but moderately
successful. The wife had the characteristics of her race; largeness and
liberality of view, high aspirations for humanity, considerable
intelligence, and a certain tendency towards mysticism of the
Swedenborgian type, qualities that her husband neither shared nor
could appreciate. It was perhaps as well, therefore that she died at the
birth of her only son, Godfrey, three years after her marriage.
Mr. Knight never married again. Matrimony was not a state which
appealed to his somewhat shrunken nature. Although he admitted its
necessity to the human race, of it in his heart he did not approve, nor
would he ever have undertaken it at all had it not been for a sense of
obligation. This attitude, because it made for virtue as he understood it,
he set down to virtue, as we are all apt to do, a sacrifice of the things of
earth and of the flesh to the things of heaven, and of the spirit. In fact, it
was nothing of the sort, but only the outcome of individual physical
and mental conditions. Towards female society, however hallowed and
approved its form, he had no leanings. Also the child was a difficulty,
so great indeed that at times almost he regretted that a wise Providence
had not thought fit to take it straight to the joys of heaven with its
mother, though afterwards, as the boy's intelligence unfolded, he
developed interest in him. This, however, he was careful to keep in
check, lest he should fall into the sin of inordinate affection, denounced
by St. Paul in common with other errors.
Finally, he found an elderly widow, named Parsons, who acted as his
housekeeper, and took charge of his son. Fortunately for Godfrey her
sense of parenthood was more pronounced than that of his father, and
she, who had lost two children of her own, played the part of mother to
him with a warm and loyal heart. From the first she loved him, and he
loved her; it was an affection that continued throughout their lives.
When Godfrey was about nine his father's health broke down. He was
still a curate in his seaport town, for good, as goodness is understood,
and hard-working as he was, no promotion had come his way. Perhaps
this was because the bishop and his other superiors, recognising his
lack of sympathy and his narrowness of outlook, did not think him a

suitable man to put in charge of a parish. At any rate, so it happened.
Thus arose his appeal to his wealthy and powerful relative, Sir Samuel,
and his final nomination to a country benefice, for in the country the
doctor said that he must live--unless he wished to die. Convinced
though he was of the enormous advantages of Heaven over an earth
which he knew to be extremely sinful, the Rev. Mr. Knight, like the
rest of the world, shrank from the second alternative, which, as he
stated in a letter of thanks to Sir Samuel, however much it might
benefit him personally, would cut short his period of terrestrial
usefulness to others. So he accepted the rectorship of Monk's Acre with
gratitude.
In one way there was not much for which to be grateful, seeing that in
those days of depreciated tithes the living was not worth more than
£250 a year and his own resources, which came from his wife's small
fortune, were very limited. It