Every one who works without believing that God is doing the best, the absolute good for them, is, must be, more or less, thwarting God.He would take the poor out of God's hands.For others, as for ourselves, we must trust him.If we could thoroughly understand anything, that would be enough to prove it undivine; and that which is but one step beyond our understanding must be in some of its relations as mysterious as if it were a hundred.But through all this darkness about the poor, at least I can see wonderful veins and fields of light, and with the help of this partial vision, I trust for the rest.The only and the greatest thing man is capable of is Trust in God.'
'What then is a man to do for the poor? How is he to work with God?' I asked.
'He must be a man amongst them--a man breathing the air of a higher life, and therefore in all natural ways fulfilling his endless human relations to them.Whatever you do for them, let your own being, that is you in relation to them, be the background, that so you may be a link between them and God, or rather I should say, between them and the knowledge of God.'
While Falconer spoke, his face grew grander and grander, till at last it absolutely shone.I felt that I walked with a man whose faith was his genius.
'Of one thing I am pretty sure,' he resumed, 'that the same recipe Goethe gave for the enjoyment of life, applies equally to all work:
"Do the thing that lies next you." That is all our business.
Hurried results are worse than none.We must force nothing, but be partakers of the divine patience.How long it took to make the cradle! and we fret that the baby Humanity is not reading Euclid and Plato, even that it is not understanding the Gospel of St.John! If there is one thing evident in the world's history, it is that God hasteneth not.All haste implies weakness.Time is as cheap as space and matter.What they call the church militant is only at drill yet, and a good many of the officers too not out of the awkward squad.I am sure I, for a private, am not.In the drill a man has to conquer himself, and move with the rest by individual attention to his own duty: to what mighty battlefields the recruit may yet be led, he does not know.Meantime he has nearly enough to do with his goose-step, while there is plenty of single combat, skirmish, and light cavalry work generally, to get him ready for whatever is to follow.I beg your pardon: I am preaching.'
'Eloquently,' I answered.
Of some of the places into which Falconer led me that night I will attempt no description--places blazing with lights and mirrors, crowded with dancers, billowing with music, close and hot, and full of the saddest of all sights, the uninteresting faces of commonplace women.
'There is a passion,' I said, as we came out of one of these dreadful places, 'that lingers about the heart like the odour of violets, like a glimmering twilight on the borders of moonrise; and there is a passion that wraps itself in the vapours of patchouli and coffins, and streams from the eyes like gaslight from a tavern.And yet the line is ill to draw between them.It is very dreadful.
These are women.'
'They are in God's hands,' answered Falconer.'He hasn't done with them yet.Shall it take less time to make a woman than to make a world? Is not the woman the greater? She may have her ages of chaos, her centuries of crawling slime, yet rise a woman at last.'
'How much alike all those women were!'
'A family likeness, alas! which always strikes you first.'
'Some of them looked quite modest.'
'There are great differences.I do not know anything more touching than to see how a woman will sometimes wrap around her the last remnants of a soiled and ragged modesty.It has moved me almost to tears to see such a one hanging her head in shame during the singing of a detestable song.That poor thing's shame was precious in the eyes of the Master, surely.'
'Could nothing be done for her?'
'I contrived to let her know where she would find a friend if she wanted to be good: that is all you can do in such cases.If the horrors of their life do not drive them out at such an open door, you can do nothing else, I fear--for the time.'
'Where are you going now, may I ask?'
'Into the city--on business,' he added with a smile.
'There will be nobody there so late.'
'Nobody! One would think you were the beadle of a city church, Mr.
Gordon.'
We came into a very narrow, dirty street.I do not know where it is.A slatternly woman advanced from an open door, and said,'Mr.Falconer.'
He looked at her for a moment.
'Why, Sarah, have you come to this already?' he said.
'Never mind me, sir.It's no more than you told me to expect.You knowed him better than I did.Leastways I'm an honest woman.'
'Stick to that, Sarah; and be good-tempered.'
'I'll have a try anyhow, sir.But there's a poor cretur a dyin'
up-stairs; and I'm afeard it'll go hard with her, for she throwed a Bible out o' window this very morning, sir.'
'Would she like to see me? I'm afraid not.'
'She's got Lilywhite, what's a sort of a reader, readin' that same Bible to her now.'
'There can be no great harm in just looking in,' he said, turning to me.
'I shall be happy to follow you--anywhere,' I returned.
'She's awful ill, sir; cholerer or summat,' said Sarah, as she led the way up the creaking stair.
We half entered the room softly.Two or three women sat by the chimney, and another by a low bed, covered with a torn patchwork counterpane, spelling out a chapter in the Bible.We paused for a moment to hear what she was reading.Had the book been opened by chance, or by design? It was the story of David and Bathsheba.
Moans came from the bed, but the candle in a bottle, by which the woman was reading, was so placed that we could not see the sufferer.
We stood still and did not interrupt the reading.
'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed a coarse voice from the side of the chimney:
'the saint, you see, was no better than some of the rest of us!'
'I think he was a good deal worse just then,' said Falconer, stepping forward.
'Gracious! there's Mr.Falconer,' said another woman, rising, and speaking in a flattering tone.