Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 1 of 3

But Wentworth had seen in the rottenness of the surface gaiety, in the bitterness of its Dead Sea apples, in the hideousness of that laughter which is as the crackling of thorns under a pot, that it was not in that round of drunken revelry that happiness was to be found, or that man was to be elevated to his true sphere. The longer he lived in it the more intolerable it seemed. In his despair he became a cynic and a pessimist. With what bitterness did he write against society and the world! It was all out of joint, he said, as writers of his class ever will, forgetting that it was he who was out of joint. But one day there came to him a change; he thought in his wretchedness – for a man of pleasure is always wretched – of the prodigal son. The parable seemed to have a new meaning for him – to open his eyes to the fact that God is a God of love, full of pity for the sinner, ready to save to the utmost, and that in the person of Jesus Christ we have a revelation and a realization of Divine love and power. The call, ‘Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden,’ sounded to his ear like that of a brother. Old Bunyan writes how when Christian escaped out of the Slough of Despond there came to him a man named Help, who drew him out. It was the great God Himself to whom Wentworth owed his escape. As the scales left his eyes, he saw in the heaven above, not an angry Jehovah, but a God of love – a Father, not a Judge. So it was with the great American preacher Ward Beecher, who, though studying for the ministry, was for awhile in doubt, in difficulty and despair. ‘I think,’ he writes, ‘when I stand in Zion and before God, the brightest thing I shall look back upon will be that blessed morning in May when it pleased God to reveal to my wondering soul that it was His nature to love a man in his sins for the sake of helping him out of them. He did not do it out of compliment to Christ, to a law or plan of salvation, but from the fulness of His great heart. That He was not made angry by sin, but sorry; that He was not furious with wrath toward the sinner, but pitied him; in short, that He felt toward me as my mother felt toward me, to whose eyes my wrong-doing brought tears, who never pressed me so close to her as when I had done wrong, and who would fain with her yearning heart lift me out of trouble.’ And the change was as beautiful as sudden. All earth seemed fresher to Wentworth, the sun more bright, the earth more green, the flowers more fair, the songs of birds more musical, and life infinitely more great and grand. How hard and distasteful seemed his old idea of religion! how cold and dry and apart from ordinary life and daily duty! A mere matter of words, a performance to be carried on on Sunday, and chiefly by unpleasant men and women who held that the world was a waste, howling wilderness given over to the devil, and that heaven was only for the elect, as they deemed themselves to be. They said God would set aside the laws of nature – the laws He had made – and work miracles on their behalf; that they would prosper and become fat if they made a profession of religion. It was their intense selfishness which alienated him. Hell-fire was the lot of the sinners, and they became religious, not that they had the least idea of a God of mercy and love, but that they might not be sent to hell. Their religion was a kind of fire-escape, that was all. He hated such blasphemy and such selfishness. When they sang,

 ‘Lord, what a wretched land this isThat yields us no supplies!’

or,

 My thoughts on awful subjects roll,Damnation and the soul;’

or,

Planted and made peculiar ground,he was alike distressed and shocked.’

Once upon a time an old divine met Dr. Doddridge, of pious memory, as he was going to preach.

‘I wish for you the presence of God in the chapel,’ said the good doctor in his unctuous style.

‘My dear doctor,’ said the old divine, ‘we have always the presence of God everywhere.’

That was the feeling that came at length to Wentworth – that God is everywhere present with us as a Father and a Friend. It was that that filled his heart with joy. It was enough for him that he was there to pity and succour and bless.

It was in a similar spirit that the actress had learned to realize the Divine presence and power.

And once more they are under the stars as he sees her to her comfortable home, where an aged mother with a bright smile awaits her coming. That walk of theirs under the stars had been the turning-point of their lives. It was the girl trembling and sorrowful by his side who had helped to recall him to his better self. She had achieved success, and so had he. Outcasts as they were in the eyes of the Church, they were children crying, and not in vain, for the light.

END OF VOL. I