Thomas Wingfold, Curate, vol 2 | Page 5

every stroke of every letter the hand of the
dearest disciple had formed! Nearly eighteen hundred years--and there
it lay!--and there WAS a man who DID hear the Master say the words,
and did set them down! I stood motionless, and my soul seemed to
wind itself among the leaves, while my body stood like a pillar of salt,
lost in its own gaze. At last, with sudden daring, I made a step towards
the table, and, bending with awe, stretched out my hand to lay it upon
the book. But ere my hand reached it, another hand, from the opposite
side of the table, appeared upon it--an old, blue-veined, but powerful
hand. I looked up. There stood the beloved disciple! His countenance
was as a mirror which shone back the face of the Master. Slowly he
lifted the book, and turned away. Then first I saw behind him as it were
an altar whereon a fire of wood was burning, and a pang of dismay shot
to my heart, for I knew what he was about to do. He laid the book on
the burning wood, and regarded it with a smile as it shrunk and
shrivelled and smouldered to ashes. Then he turned to me and said,
while a perfect heaven of peace shone in his eyes: 'Son of man, the
Word of God liveth and abideth for ever, not in the volume of the book,
but in the heart of the man that in love obeyeth him. And therewith I
awoke weeping, but with the lesson of my dream."
A deep silence fell on the little company. Then said Wingfold,
"I trust I have the lesson too."
He rose, shook hands with them, and, without another word, went
home.

CHAPTER III

.
ANOTHER SERMON.

It often seems to those in earnest about the right as if all things
conspired to prevent their progress. This of course is but an appearance,
arising in part from this, that the pilgrim must be headed back from the
side paths into which he is constantly wandering. To Wingfold,
however, it seemed that all things fell in to further his quest, which will
not be so surprising if we remember that his was no intermittent
repentant seeking, but the struggle of his whole energy. And there are
those who, in their very first seeking of it, are nearer to the kingdom of
heaven than many who have for years believed themselves of it.
In the former there is more of the mind of Jesus, and when he calls
them they recognize him at once and go after him; while the others
examine him from head to foot, and, finding him not sufficiently like
the Jesus of their conception, turn their backs, and go to church, or
chapel, or chamber, to kneel before a vague form mingled of tradition
and fancy. But the first shall be last, and the last first; and there are
from whom, be it penny or be it pound, what they have must be taken
away because with them it lies useless.
For Wingfold, he soon found that his nature was being stirred to depths
unsuspected before. Hitherto nothing had ever roused him to genuine
activity: his history not very happy; his life not very interesting, his
work not congenial, and paying itself in no satisfaction, his pleasures of
a cold and common intellectual sort,--he had dragged along, sustained,
without the sense of its sustentation, by the germ within him of a
slowly developing honesty. But now that Conscience had got up into
the guard's seat, and Will had taken the reins, he found all his
intellectual faculties in full play, keeping well together, heads up and
traces tight, while the outrider Imagination, with his spotted dog Fancy,
was always far ahead, but never beyond the sound of the guard's horn;
and ever as they went, object after object hitherto beyond the radius of
his interest, rose on the horizon of question, and began to glimmer in
the dawn of human relation.
His first sermon is enough to show that he had begun to have thoughts
of his own--a very different thing from the entertaining of the thoughts
of others, however well we may feed and lodge them--thoughts which

came to him not as things which sought an entrance, but as things that
sought an exit--cried for forms of embodiment that they might pass out
of the infinite, and by incarnation become communicable.
The news of that strange first sermon had of course spread through the
town, and the people came to church the next Sunday in crowds-- twice
as many as the usual assembly--some who went seldom, some who
went nowhere, some who belonged to other congregations and
communities--mostly bent on witnessing whatever eccentricity the very
peculiar young