Prisoners of Conscience

David listened with a reserved acceptance. It was in a measure a new Scripture to him. It appeared partial. When John read, with a kind of triumph, that the Lord “is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance,” David made a slight movement of dissent; and John asked:

“Is not that a noble love? Thee believes in it, David?”

“No.”

The word was softly but positively uttered.

“What then, David?”

“‘Some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.’” And David quoted these words from the Confession of Faith with such confidence and despair that John trembled at them.

“David! David!” he cried. “Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the lost.”

“It is impossible for the lost to be saved,” answered David, with a somber confidence; “only the elect, predestined to salvation.”

“And the rest of mankind, David? what of them?”

“God has been pleased to ordain them to wrath, that his justice may be satisfied and glorified.”

“David, who made thee such a God as this? Where did thee learn about him? How can thee love him?”

“It is in the Confession of Faith. And, oh, John Priestly, I do love him! Yes, I love him, though he has hid his face from me and, I fear, cast me off forever.”

“Dear heart,” said John, “thee is wronging thy best Friend.”

“If I could think so! Oh, if I could think so!”

“Well, then, as we are inquiring after God, and nothing less, is it not fair to take him at his own word?”

David looked inquiringly at John, but made no answer.

“I mean, will it not be more just to believe what God says of himself than to believe what men,–priests,–long ago dead, have said about him?”

“I think that.”

Then, one after another, the golden verses, full of God’s love, dropped from John’s lips in a gracious shower. And David was amazed, and withal a little troubled. John was breaking up all his foundations for time and for eternity. He was using the Scriptures to grind to powder the whole visible church as David understood it. It was a kind of spiritual shipwreck. His slow nature took fire gradually, and then burned fiercely. Weak as he was, he could not sit still. John Priestly was either a voice in the wilderness crying “Peace!” and “Blessing!” to him, or he was the voice of a false prophet crying “Peace!” where there was no peace. He looked into the face of this new preacher, frank and glowing as it was, with inquiry not unmixed with suspicion.

“Well, then,” he cried, “if these things be so, let God speak to me. Bring me a Bible with large letters. I want to see these words with my eyes, and touch them with my fingers.”

The conversation thus begun was constantly continued, and David searched the Scriptures from morning to night. Often, as the spring grew fairer and warmer, the two young men sat in the garden with the Bible between them; and while the sunshine fell brightly on its pages they reasoned together of fate and free will, and of that divine mercy which is from everlasting to everlasting. For where young men have leisure spiritual things employ them much more frequently than is supposed. Indeed, it is the young who are most earnestly troubled about the next life; the middle-aged are too busy with this one, and the aged do not speculate, because they will soon know.

Thus, daily, little by little, through inlets and broader ways known only to God and himself, the light grew and grew unto perfect day, and flooded not only the great hills and promontories of his soul, but also shone into all its secret caves and gloomy valleys and lonely places. Then David knew how blind and ignorant he had been; then he was penetrated with loving amazement, and humbled to the dust with a sense of the wrong he had done the Father of his spirit; and he locked himself in his room, and fell down on his face before his God. But into that awful communion, in which so much was confessed and so much forgiven, it is not lawful to inquire.

XI

THE LOWEST HELL

After this the thought of Nanna became an irresistible longing. He could not be happy until she sat in the sunshine of God’s love with him. He went into the garden and tested his strength, and as soon as he was in the open air he was smitten with a homesickness not to be controlled. He wanted the sea; he wanted the great North Sea; he longed to feel the cradling of its salt waves under him; and the idea of a schooner reefed down closely, and charging along over the stormy waters, took possession of him. Then he remembered the fishermen he used to know–the fishermen who peopled the desolate places of the Shetland seas.

“I must go home!” he said with a soft, eager passion. “I must go home to Shetland.” And there was in his voice and accent that pride and tenderness with which one’s home should be mentioned in a strange land.

When he saw John next he told him so, and they began to talk of his life there. John had never asked him of his past. He knew him to be a child of God, however far away from his Father, and he had accepted his spiritual brotherhood with trustfulness. He understood that it was David’s modesty that had made him reticent. But when David was ready to leave he also felt that John had a right to know what manner of man he had befriended. So, as they sat together that night, David began his history.

“I was in the boats at six years old,” he said; “for there was always something I could do. During the night-fishing, unless I went with father, I was alone; and I had hours of such awful terrors that I am sad only to remember them; it was better to freeze out on the sea, if father would let me go with him. I was often hungry and often weary; I had toothaches and earaches that I never spoke of; I was frequently so sleepy that I fell down in the boat. And I had no mother to kiss me or pity me, and the neighbors were shy and far off. Father was not cross or unkind; he just did not understand. Even in those days I wondered why God made little lads to be so miserable and to suffer so much.”

He spoke then in a very guarded way about that revelation in the boat, for he felt rebuked for his want of faith in it; and he said sorrowfully, as he left the subject, “Why, then, should God send angels to men? They are feared of them while they are present, and they doubt them when they are gone away. He sent one to comfort me, and I denied it to my own heart; yes, even though I sorely needed the comfort.”

Then he took John to Shetland with him. He showed him, in strong, simple words, the old Norse town, with its gray skies and its gray seas, and its fishing-smacks hanging to the rushing sides of foaming mountains. He described the hoary cliffs and their world of sea-birds, the glorious auroras, the heavenly summers, and the deadly chillness of the winter fogs as one drift after another passed in dim and desolate majesty over the sea and land.

Slowly and with some hesitation he got to Nanna in her little stone hut, braiding her straw and nursing her crippled baby. The tears came into his eyes, he clasped his knees with his hands as if to steady himself, while he spoke rapidly of her marriage with Nicol Sinclair, the drowning of her father and brothers, the cruelty of her husband, his desertion, his return, Nanna’s terror of losing Vala, the fatal typhus, her desolation, and her spiritual anguish about Vala’s condition. All these things he told John with that powerful eloquence which is born of living, intense feeling.

John was greatly moved by the whole simple, tragic story, but he spoke only on the last topic, for it seemed to him to dwarf all other sorrow. It roused his indignation, and he said it was a just and holy anger. He wondered how men, and especially mothers, could worship a God who was supposed to damn little children before they were born. He vowed that neither Moloch nor Baal, nor any pagan deity, had been so brutal. He was amazed that ministers believing such a doctrine dared to marry. What special right had they to believe their children would all be elect? And if there was a shadow of doubt on this subject, how awful was their responsibility! Nanna’s scruples, he said, were the only possible outcome of a conscientious, unselfish soul believing the devilish doctrine. And he cried out with enthusiasm:

“Nanna is to be honored! Oh, for a conscience as tender and void of offense toward God! I will go to Shetland and kiss the hem of her garment! She is a woman in ten thousand!”

“Well, then,” said David, softly, “I shall take comfort to her.”

“To think,” said John, who was still moved by a holy anger, “to think that God should have created this beautiful world as a nursery for hell! that he should have made such a woman as Nanna to suckle devils! No, no, David!” he said, suddenly calming himself; “thee could never believe such things of thy God.”

“I was taught them early and late. I can say the Confession of Faith backward, I am sure.”

“Let no man-made creed impose itself on thee, David–enter into thee, and possess thee, and take the place of thy soul. The voice that spoke from Sinai and from Bethlehem is still speaking. And man’s own soul is an oracle, if he will only listen to it–the inward, instant sense of a present God, and of his honorable, true, and only Son Christ Jesus.”

“I will listen, if God will speak.”

“Never thee mind catechisms and creeds and confessions. The Word of God was before them, and the Word will be the Word when catechisms and confessions are cast into the dusty museums of ancient things, with all the other shackles of the world in bondage. David, there is in every good man a spiritual center, answering to a higher spiritual center in the universe. All controversies come back to this.”

“I wish, John Priestly, that you could see Nanna, and speak comfort to her heart.”

“That must be thy message, David. And be sure that thee knows well the children’s portion in the Scriptures. Thee must show Nanna that theirs is the kingdom. What we win through great tribulation they inherit through the love of the Father. Theirs is the kingdom; and there is no distinction of elect or non-elect, as I read the title.”

“I count the hours now until I am able to travel. I long for the sea that stretches nor’ard to the ice, and the summer days, when the sunset brightens the midnight. No need to egg me on. I am all the time thinking of the old town growing out of the mist, and I know how I shall feel when I stand on the pier again among the fishers, when I hurry through the clean, quiet streets, while the kind people nod and smile, and call to each other, ‘Here is David Borson come back again.’”

“And Nanna?”

“She is the heart of my longing.”

“And thee is taking her glad tidings of great joy.”

“I am that. So there is great hurry in my heart, for I like not to sit in the sunshine and know that Nanna is weeping in the dark.”

“Thee must not be discouraged if she be at first unable to believe thy report.”

“The hour will come. Nanna was ever a seeker after God. She will listen joyfully. She will take the cup of salvation, and drink it with thanksgiving. We shall stand together in the light, loving God and fearing God, but not afraid of him. Faith in Christ will set her free.”

“But lean hard upon God’s Word, David. There is light enough and help enough for every strait of life in it. Let thy creed lie at rest. There are many doors to scientific divinity, but there is only one door to heaven. And I will tell thee this thing, David: if men had to be good theologians before they were good Christians, the blessed heaven would be empty.”

“Yet, John, my theology was part of my very life. Nothing to me was once more certain than that men and women were in God’s hand as clay in the potter’s. And as some vessels are made to honor, and some to dishonor, so some men were made for salvation and honor, and others for rejection and dishonor.”

“Clay in the potter’s hand! And some for honor, and some for dishonor! We will even grant that much; but tell me, David, does the potter ever make his vessels for the express purpose of breaking them? No, no, David! He is not willing that any should perish. Christ is not going to lose what he has bought with his blood. The righteous are planted as trees by the watercourses, but God does not plant any tree for fuel.”

“He is a good God, and his name is Love.”

“So, then, thee is going back to Shetland with glad tidings for many a soul. What will thy hands find to do for thy daily bread?”

“I shall go back to the boats and the nets and lines.”

“Would thee like to have a less dangerous way of earning thy bread? My father has a great business in the city, and thee could drive one of the big drays that go to the docks.”

“I could not. I can carry a ship through any sea a ship can live in; I could not drive a Shetland shelty down an empty street. I am only a simple sea-dog. I love the sea. Men say for sure it is in my heart and my blood. I must live on the sea. When my hour comes to die, I hope the sea will keep my body in one of her clean, cool graves. If God gives me Nanna, and we have sons and daughters, they shall have a happy childhood and a good schooling. Then I will put all the boys in the boats, and the girls shall learn to grow like their mother, and, if it please God, they shall marry good men and good fishers.”

“It seems to me that the life of a fisher is a very hard one, and withal that it hath but small returns.”

“Fishers have their good and their bad seasons. They take their food direct from the hand of God; so, then, good or bad, it is all right. Fishers have their loves and joys and sorrows; birth and marriage and death come to them as to others. They have the same share of God’s love, the same Bible, the same hope of eternal life, that the richest men and women have. It is enough.”

“And hard lives have their compensations, David. Doubtless the fisherman’s life has its peculiar blessings?”

“It has. The fisher’s life is as free from temptation as a life can be. He has to trust God a great deal; if he did not he would very seldom go into the boats at all.”

“Yet he holds the ocean ‘in the hollow of his hand.’”

“That is true. I never feel so surely held in the hollow of his hand as when the waves are as high as my masthead, and my boat smashes into the black pit below. There is none but God then. Thank you, Friend John, but I shall live and die a fisherman.”

“Would thee care to change Shetland for some warmer and less stormy climate?”

“Would a man care to change his own father and mother for any other father and mother? Stern and hard was my poor father, and he knew not how to love; but his memory is dear to me, and I would not break the tie between us–no, not to be the son of a king! My native land is a poor land, but I have thought of her green and purple moors among gardens full of roses. Shetland is my home, and home is sweet and fair and dear.”

“Traveling Zionward, David, we have often to walk in the wilderness. Thee hast dwelt in Skye and in Shetland; what other lands hast thee seen?”

“I have been east as far as Smyrna. I sat there and read the message of ‘the First and the Last’ to its church. And I went to Athens, and stood where St. Paul had once stood. And I have seen Rome and Naples and Genoa and Marseilles, and many of the Spanish and French ports. I have pulled oranges from the trees, and great purple grapes from the vines, and even while I was eating them longed for the oat-cakes and fresh fish of Shetland.”

“Rome and Naples and Athens! Then, David, thee hast seen the fairest cities on the earth.”

“And yet, Friend John, what hells I saw in them! I was taken through great buildings where men and women die of dreadful pain. I saw other buildings where men and women could eat and sleep, and could not think or love or know. I saw drinking-hells and gambling-hells. I saw men in dark and awful prisons, men living in poverty and filth and blasphemy, without hope for this world or the next. I saw men die on the scaffold. And, John, I have often wondered if this world were hell. Are we put here in low, or lower, or lowest hell to work out our salvation, and so at last, through great tribulation, win our weary way back to heaven?”

John Priestly was silent a few moments ere he answered: “If that were even so, there is still comfort, David. For if we make our bed in any of such hells,–mind, we make it,–even there we are not beyond the love and the pity of the Infinite One. For when the sorrows of hell compassed David of old, he cried unto God, and he delivered him from his strong enemy, and brought him forth into a large place. So, then, David, though good men may get into hell, they do not need to stay there.”

“I know that by experience, John. Have I not been in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps, in that lowest hell of the soul where I had no God to pray to? For how could I pray to a God so cruel that I did not dare to become a father, lest he should elect my children to damnation? a God so unjust that he loved without foresight of faith or good works, and hated because it was his pleasure to hate, and to ordain the hated to dishonor and wrath?”4

“And yet, David?”

“In my distress my soul cried out, ’God pity me! God pity me!’ And even while I so wronged him he sent from above–he sent you, John; he took me, he drew me out of many waters,–for great was his mercy toward me,–and he delivered my soul from the lowest hell.”

XII

“AT LAST IT IS PEACE”

A week after this conversation David was near Lerwick. It was very early in the morning, and the sky was gray and the sea was gray, and through the vapory veiling the little town looked gray and silent as a city in a dream. During the voyage he had thought of himself always as hastening at once to Nanna’s house, but as soon as his feet touched the quay he hesitated. The town appeared to be asleep; there was only here and there a thin column of peat smoke from the chimneys, and the few people going about their simple business in the misty morning were not known to him. Probably, also, he had some unreasonable expectation, for he looked sadly around, and, sighing, said:

“To be sure, such a thing would never happen, except in a dream.”

After all, it seemed best that he should go first to Barbara Traill’s. She would give him a cup of tea, and while he drank it he could send one of Glumm’s little lads with a message to Nanna. There was nothing of cowardice in this determination; it was rather that access of reverential love which, as it draws nearer, puts its own desire and will at the feet of the beloved one.

Barbara’s door stood open, and she was putting fresh fuel under the hanging tea-kettle. The smell of the peat smoke was homely and pleasant to David; he sniffed it eagerly as he called out:

“Well, then, mother, good morning!”

She raised herself quickly, and turned her broad, kind face to him. A strange shadow crossed it when she saw David, but she answered affectionately:

“Well, then, David, here we meet again!”

Then she hastened the morning meal, and as she did so asked question after question about his welfare and adventures, until David said a little impatiently:

“There is enough of this talk, mother. Speak to me now of Nanna Sinclair. Is she well?”

“Your aunt Sabiston is dead. There was a great funeral, I can tell you that. She has left all her money to the kirk and the societies; and a white stone as high as two men has come from Aberdeen for her grave. Well, so it is. And you must know, also, that my son has married himself, and not to my liking, and so he has gone from me; and your room is empty and ready, if you wish it so; and–”

“Yes, yes, Barbara! Keep your room for me, and I will pay the price of it.”

“I will do that gladly; and as for the price, we shall have no words about that.”

“All this is well enough, but, mother! mother! what is there to hide from me? Speak with a straight tongue. Where is Nanna?”

Then Barbara said plainly, “Nanna is dead.”

With a cry of amazed anguish David leaped to his feet, instinctively covering his ears with his hands, for he could not bear such words to enter them. “Dead!” he whispered; and Barbara saw him reeling and swaying like a tottering pillar. She pushed a chair toward him, and was thankful that he had strength left to take its support. But she made no outcry, and called in none of the neighbors. Quietly she stood a little way off, while David, in a death-like silence, fought away the swooning, drowning wave which was making his heart stand still and his limbs fail him. For she knew the nature of the suffering man–knew that when he came to himself there would be none but God could intermeddle in his heart’s bitterness and loss.

After a sharp struggle David opened his eyes, and Barbara gave him a drink of cold water; but she offered neither advice nor consolation. Only when David said, “I am sick, mother, and I will go to my room and lie down on my bed,” she answered:

“My dear lad, that is the right way. Sleep, if sleep you can.”

About sunsetting David asked Barbara for food; and as she prepared it he sat by the open window, silent and stupefied, dominated by the somber inertia of hopeless sorrow. When he began to eat, Barbara took from a china jar two papers, and gave them to him.

“I promised Nanna to put them into your hands,” she said.

“When did she die?”

“Last December, the fourteenth day.”

“Did you see her on that day?”

“I was there early in the morning, for I saw there was snow to fall. She was dead at the noon hour.”

“You saw her go away?”

“No; I was afraid of the storm. I left her at ten o’clock. She could not then speak, but she gave me the papers. We had talked of them before.”

“Then did she die alone?”

“She did not. I went into the next cottage and told Christine Yell that it was the last hour with Nanna; and she said, ‘I will go to her,’ and so she did.”

“You should have stayed, mother.”

“My lad, the snow was already falling, and I had to hasten across the moor, as there was very good reason to do.”

Then David went out, and Barbara watched him take the road that led to Nanna’s empty cottage. The door opened readily to the lifted latch, and he entered the forsaken room. The peat fire had long ago burned itself to ashes. The rose-plant, which had been Nanna’s delight, had withered away on its little shelf by the window. But the neighbors had swept the floor and put the simple furniture in order. David drew the bolt across the door, and opened the papers which Nanna had left for him. The first was a bequest to him of the cottage and all within it; the second was but a little slip on which the dying woman had written her last sad messages to him:

Oh, my love! my love! Farewell forever! I am come to the end of my life. I am going away, and I know not where to. All is dark. But I have cast myself at His feet, and said, “Thy will be done!”

I am still alive, David. I have been alone all night, and every breath has been a death-pang. How can His eternal purpose need my bitter suffering? Oh, that God would pity me! His will be done!

My love, it is nearly over. I have seen Vala! At last it is peace–peace! His will be done! Mercy–mercy–mercy–

These pitiful despairs and farewells were written in a large, childish hand, and on a poor sheet of paper. David spread this paper upon Vala’s couch, and, kneeling down, covered it with tears and kisses; but anon he lifted it up toward heaven, and prayed as men pray when they feel prayer to be an immediate and veritable thing–when they detain God, and clasp his feet, and cling to his robe, and will not let him go until he bless them.

Christine Yell had seen David enter the cottage, and after an hour had passed she went to the door intending to speak to him; but she heard the solemn, mysterious voice of the man praying, and she went away and called her neighbors, Margaret Jarl and Elga Fae and Thora Thorson. And they talked of David a little, and then Magnus Thorson, the father-in-law of Thora, being a very old man, went alone into Nanna’s cottage to see David. And after a while the women were called, and Christine took with her a plate of fish and bread which she had prepared; and David was glad of their sympathy.