THE VANISHING.
They came to see me the very evening of their arrival.As to Andrew's progress there could be no longer any doubt.All that was necessary for conviction on the point was to have seen him before and to see him now.The very grasp of his hand was changed.But not yet would Robert leave him alone.
It will naturally occur to my reader that his goodness was not much yet.It was not.It may have been greater than we could be sure of, though.But if any one object that such a conversion, even if it were perfected, was poor, inasmuch as the man's free will was intromitted with, I answer: 'The development of the free will was the one object.Hitherto it was not free.' I ask the man who says so: 'Where would your free will have been if at some period of your life you could have had everything you wanted?' If he says it is nobler in a man to do with less help, I answer, 'Andrew was not noble: was he therefore to be forsaken? The prodigal was not left without the help of the swine and their husks, at once to keep him alive and disgust him with the life.Is the less help a man has from God the better?' According to you, the grandest thing of all would be for a man sunk in the absolute abysses of sensuality all at once to resolve to be pure as the empyrean, and be so, without help from God or man.But is the thing possible? As well might a hyena say: I will be a man, and become one.That would be to create.
Andrew must be kept from the evil long enough to let him at least see the good, before he was let alone.But when would we be let alone? For a man to be fit to be let alone, is for a man not to need God, but to be able to live without him.Our hearts cry out, 'To have God is to live.We want God.Without him no life of ours is worth living.We are not then even human, for that is but the lower form of the divine.We are immortal, eternal: fill us, OFather, with thyself.Then only all is well.' More: I heartily believe, though I cannot understand the boundaries of will and inspiration, that what God will do for us at last is infinitely beyond any greatness we could gain, even if we could will ourselves from the lowest we could be, into the highest we can imagine.It is essential divine life we want; and there is grand truth, however incomplete or perverted, in the aspiration of the Brahmin.He is wrong, but he wants something right.If the man had the power in his pollution to will himself into the right without God, the fact that he was in that pollution with such power, must damn him there for ever.And if God must help ere a man can be saved, can the help of man go too far towards the same end? Let God solve the mystery--for he made it.One thing is sure: We are his, and he will do his part, which is no part but the all in all.If man could do what in his wildest self-worship he can imagine, the grand result would be that he would be his own God, which is the Hell of Hells.
For some time I had to give Falconer what aid I could in being with his father while he arranged matters in prospect of their voyage to India.Sometimes he took him with him when he went amongst his people, as he called the poor he visited.Sometimes, when he wanted to go alone, I had to take him to Miss St.John, who would play and sing as I had never heard any one play or sing before.Andrew on such occasions carried his flute with him, and the result of the two was something exquisite.How Miss St.John did lay herself out to please the old man! And pleased he was.I think her kindness did more than anything else to make him feel like a gentleman again.
And in his condition that was much.
At length Falconer would sometimes leave him with Miss St.John, till he or I should go for him: he knew she could keep him safe.He knew that she would keep him if necessary.
One evening when I went to see Falconer, I found him alone.It was one of these occasions.