Andrew got up and walked about the room.And Robert only then arose from his knees.
'And there's my mother,' he said.
Andrew did not reply; but Robert saw when he turned next towards the light, that the sweat was standing in beads on his forehead.
'Father,' he said, going up to him.
The old man stopped in his walk, turned, and faced his son.
'Father,' repeated Robert, 'you've go to repent; and God won't let you off; and you needn't think it.You'll have to repent some day.'
'In hell, Robert,' said Andrew, looking him full in the eyes, as he had never looked at him before.It seemed as if even so much acknowledgment of the truth had already made him bolder and honester.
'Yes.Either on earth or in hell.Would it not be better on earth?'
'But it will be no use in hell,' he murmured.
In those few words lay the germ of the preference for hell of poor souls, enfeebled by wickedness.They will not have to do anything there--only to moan and cry and suffer for ever, they think.It is effort, the out-going of the living will that they dread.The sorrow, the remorse of repentance, they do not so much regard: it is the action it involves; it is the having to turn, be different, and do differently, that they shrink from; and they have been taught to believe that this will not be required of them there--in that awful refuge of the will-less.I do not say they think thus: I only say their dim, vague, feeble feelings are such as, if they grew into thought, would take this form.But tell them that the fire of God without and within them will compel them to bethink themselves; that the vision of an open door beyond the smoke and the flames will ever urge them to call up the ice-bound will, that it may obey; that the torturing spirit of God in them will keep their consciences awake, not to remind them of what they ought to have done, but to tell them what they must do now, and hell will no longer fascinate them.Tell them that there is no refuge from the compelling Love of God, save that Love itself--that He is in hell too, and that if they make their bed in hell they shall not escape him, and then, perhaps, they will have some true presentiment of the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched.
'Father, it will be of use in hell,' said Robert.'God will give you no rest even there.You will have to repent some day, I do believe--if not now under the sunshine of heaven, then in the torture of the awful world where there is no light but that of the conscience.Would it not be better and easier to repent now, with your wife waiting for you in heaven, and your mother waiting for you on earth?'
Will it be credible to my reader, that Andrew interrupted his son with the words,'Robert, it is dreadful to hear you talk like that.Why, you don't believe in the Bible!'
His words will be startling to one who has never heard the lips of a hoary old sinner drivel out religion.To me they are not so startling as the words of Christian women and bishops of the Church of England, when they say that the doctrine of the everlasting happiness of the righteous stands or falls with the doctrine of the hopeless damnation of the wicked.Can it be that to such the word is everything, the spirit nothing? No.It is only that the devil is playing a very wicked prank, not with them, but in them: they are pluming themselves on being selfish after a godly sort.
'I do believe the Bible, father,' returned Robert, 'and have ordered my life by it.If I had not believed the Bible, I fear I should never have looked for you.But I won't dispute about it.I only say I believe that you will be compelled to repent some day, and that now is the best time.Then, you will not only have to repent, but to repent that you did not repent now.And I tell you, father, that you shall go to my grandmother.'