Part 28
Faith is the quicksilver of heaven placed in the hearts of God’s children. When it is low or weak, rains and storms are brewing, difficulties are ahead; and when it is high and strong, then peace and joy may be expected. Unsteady Christians will do well to change their quarters.
Every glass of intoxicating drink given by parents to their children may have pleasure swimming upon the surface, but at the bottom there will be dregs of groans, and cries that will be hurled back by the children with vengeance and retorts upon the names and tombs of their parents as they lie smouldering in their coffins.
The benevolent actions of earth become at death the flowers of heaven.
The heavenly influences of God’s children in life become at death the fragrance of eternity.
As the light-giving rays of the sun appear as darkness to mortals with weak eyes and contracted vision, so in like manner do the searching and light-giving rays of God’s Word appear as darkness to those whose mind and mental powers have become weakened through looking into the lovely system of heaven with narrow, preconceived ideas and notions.
Tears are the dewdrops of sorrow; if of heavenly sorrow, they will be the means, as they drop to the earth, of watering seeds that will produce a crop of heavenly joy.
In every cup of sorrow given to us by God to drink there are mixed up in the ingredients fine precious seeds of a higher life, greater joy, and abiding peace to bloom everlastingly in heaven.
Those who dabble in sin stain their hands with indelible ink, which nothing but grace can remove.
Prayer is a pump-handle, and faith the rods and bucket that lift the clear spring of heavenly truth into our earthly vessels to refresh us on the way to Zion.
Hot-tempered and fiery-tempered Christians often expose the nakedness of their souls.
Those people who think that they can go to heaven by indulging in worldly pleasure and sin are travelling in a balloon of their own manufacture, which may carry them high up in the opinion of worldlings, but in reality they are soaring into the freezing atmosphere of God’s wrath, to come down with a terrible crash.
A man with a large heart, broad sympathy, but under the influence of a short temper, often burns his fingers; while the man with a narrow soul and an envious disposition has a fire within that will blister his tongue and singe the hair off his head.
Sacred poems and hymns are the million silver steps leading to the heavenly city from every quarter of the globe; and the tunes set to them are the lovely seraphs from the angel-land taking us by the hand to lead us onward and upward to the golden doors studded with diamonds and other precious stones, which are opened to all who have been sanctified and made ready for the indescribable kingdom within.
Death is the postman from the unknown land—except to those who have seen it by the eye of faith—knocking at our door.
* * * * *
Once or twice we passed several men with shovels in their hands and dressed in garbs that only required a very slight stretch of imagination to make us believe that they were in the Arctic regions searching for the bodies of Sir John Franklin and his noble crew. Suddenly we dropped upon Carlisle, and for a few minutes we pulled ourselves together. As there were no sandwiches to be got, I dined off a penny bun and a sour orange, the rind of which, owing to my benumbed fingers, sorely tried my patience, and in retaliation I set to it with my teeth in a most savage manner, and cast the remnants to the wind to perish in the mud.
We duly arrived at St. Boswell’s Station. I felt nearly “done up,” and at this place I slipped, rolled, and tumbled into an hotel for a warm rest and a feed. When it was dark I turned out again and made my way by train to Kelso, the place of fame, and noted for its public spirit. As I drew near to the town I could have said with Alfred Miles, in _Young England_, 1880—
“Louder blew the winds and fiercer, The night was drawing nigh.”
From the station to the town was a most miserable half-hour’s journey. The snow was in heaps, and travellers had to clutch the arms of friends or foes to enable them to “steer a steady course.” The snow whistled and squeaked under the pressure of the soles of my feet; for by this time I did not seem to have any other soul. Sometimes I seemed to take one step forward to two backward, till at last a ’busman picked me up and set me down within a hundred yards of the Temperance Hotel door—Mr. Slight’s—which was the nearest he could get me to without risk to life and limb, owing to the great depth of snow. I felt faint, and the full force of what Marianne Farningham says in the _Christian World_—
“O God, the way is very long, And the storms are rough and wild.”
Men working in snow, in the blackness of night, beneath the dull, flickering lamps, and with a heavy, foggy atmosphere overhead, present a most curious and interesting spectacle, such as might call forth from nervous, sensitive minds a thousand ghostly wild conjectures about gipsies, witches, &c.
During the evening “mine host” invited me, with some three commercial travellers, to a little family party he was having, numbering altogether some six gentlemen and eight young ladies.
Of the gentlemen I will say nothing except that they were very gentlemanly; but of the young ladies I will say that they were of the usual agreeable mixture. One was charming, another sweet, another was lively, another was delightful, another was pretty, another was pleasant, another was full of grace, and so on. Of course, each had her own peculiar special graces, figure, and colour of hair. Singing, playing, lively and interesting conversation whiled the evening hours away. Notwithstanding these enchanting proceedings, I did not feel happy. I tried hard to put a smile upon my face, but imagined I was not successful, for the company often had to try to “liven me up.” The trials and hardships of the day, and my work on the morrow, weighted me heavily with anxiety and sorrow.
I retired to my chamber pensive, sad, and cold. My bed was like ice, and all the clothes, rugs, &c., I had would not make me warm. The night was shiveringly cold, and my heart ached for the poor gipsies out in the snow. I dozed, winked, and blinked. I got out of bed again and again; and, to while away the long hours of the night, I jotted some of the following aphorisms down, by the side of the dying embers of a _little_ fire:—
Sunday-schools are God’s flower-beds, upon which He sends more gleams of sunshine and spring showers than upon the rest of the world. Some Sunday-school children are the little roses, pinks, mignonette, &c. There are other Sunday-school children very modest and very good, but with little show; these are the thyme, ladslove, &c. The naughty children are the sour and poisonous weeds.
When a Christian leaves the prospect hill for the marshes and swamps of despondency and gloom, he will soon discover—or ought to do—that he is in the neighbourhood of hellish fogs and mists, which will lead him into worse than the Roman’s “shepherd’s race,” maze, or labyrinth, and from thence to gloomy thoughts and hazy notions of God and His works.
Infidels are the rats of society, puddling and muddling the rippling streams of pure truth that run through our land.
Cold places of worship, with a shivering minister as doorkeeper, are the places to turn warm Christians into freezing saints.
A drunken Christian minister is a toppled-over guide-post with the bottom rotted off, owing to its having being set in too much water.
Hope is the second—love the first—greatest moral force in the world. When a man is down in the gutter it lifts him up; when he is in darkness it puts light in his face and fire in his eyes. It enters the breast of a child; it fills the heart, and is seen in every action of man; it is in the soul of kings, governs empires, and rules destinies; and it lifts human beings, populating all worlds, from earth and hell to heaven. Oh! bliss-inspiring hope!
Hope is the father of ambition and the earthly companion of the soul; they join together till they come to the edge of the river, whence the soul takes its flight into eternity, and hope becomes the life of the fame left behind, and ends with fame’s death.
Despair is the wastrel daughter of ambition forsaken by her father, and her mother, hope and pride. She drags all who touch her to poverty, ruin, degradation, misery, and death. When she creeps do you run.
Elevating natural parental love buds in time and blooms through eternity. It turns a mud cottage or gipsy wigwam into a palace, a desert into a garden, a waste into an earthly paradise. It causes the birds and variegated songsters to chirp and sing round your dwelling, the trees to laugh, the stones to shout, the cat to purr upon the hearth, and the children to kiss and fondle upon your knees. It sends whole families where love dwells off to bed in good humour, and causes the cock to crow early in the morning at your door, telling you that a DIVINER LOVE is about to enter your family circle with a fragrance excelling that of the rose, and its effects more lovely to behold than that of the lily.
The soil of earth is the brain of nature.
Children with good hearts and lovable dispositions, under the fostering care of a good, kind, Christian mother, will become God’s pretty little singing birds, to beautify and enliven His heavenly garden; while naughty, disobedient, bad children will become worse than rotten eggs, not even fit for manure.
As bells are placed upon the necks of leading wether sheep to give out a sound of danger and guidance, so in like manner is the word of God placed upon the necks of His ministers, to give out words of consolation, counsel, reproof, and warning, and woe be to those who give out an uncertain sound.
Gipsies, vagrants, tramps, and vagabonds are the corns and bunions of society.
Every kind, benevolent act of a Christian, full of love to God and man, is a cask of heavenly oil poured upon the troubled waters of life, and those who go down deep into human misery will find, by looking upward, as the oil of paradise swims upon the waves of woe, the beautiful light of heaven reflected upon their every movement to raise fallen humanity.
The love of God in the heart of man produces a smoothness upon the surface of his face and body that eases his way to heaven through the chilling billows of selfishness, deceit, and fraud.
A cruel retort from an ungrateful son opens a parent’s eyes to his sins and follies more than the advice of one hundred friends.
To mount the highest hill of God’s favour upon the alternate steps of prayer and good works, with faith as a handrail, is to see the indescribable beauties of heaven and the unsurpassed splendour of earth as no other mortal can; and by climbing higher still we can see more and more, till we find ourselves lost in love and wonder.
The transparent dewdrops of heaven to be seen, by the light of the bright morning sun, resting and twinkling into rainbow colours upon the flowers and blades of grass on the green, mossy carpet, are the lively, sweet, innocent little children whom God sends to cheer and beautify our path for awhile before He calls them to heaven by the absorbing rays of Divine love.
To a good man dark moments are the harbingers of bright days, and to a bad man light moments of excitement are the precursors of long, dark days of sorrow.
Love is the greatest moral force in the world. With the birth of a child it has a beginning, and it is the right hand companion of the soul; and with the death of the body it is transferred with its redeemed chief to paradise, to be the singing, joyful companion of the soul through endless ages and never-ending delights and pleasures.
Divine love is the celestial life of heaven dwelling in man’s breast, purifying his heart, enlivening his soul, transforming his affection to such an extent that he can sing in the midst of a burning, sandy, waterless, parching desert, “Oh! that will be joyful.” It transforms the black demon face of a gipsy, or a child of hell, into the lovable, smiling face of a child of God. Its possessor can jump ditches, bound over fences, and scale battlements as easily as if they were level green, mossy carpets. It makes life happy, and opens heaven to our view.
* * * * *
After I had passed through this ordeal, I tried pacing the room with no better results. Notwithstanding these things, I felt as the Rev. Richard Wilton felt when he penned the following lines for _Hand and Heart_, June, 1880:
“Sufferings are gifts, accept for my sake, And from earth’s sighs heaven’s music shall wake.”
Morning dawned and found me with wakeful eyes ready to receive it. After breakfast I began to prepare for my journey through deep snow which had fallen evenly upon the ground to the height of the stone walls. I found that the postman with his cart had begun to prepare for the journey, and he calculated that if all were straight it would take him five hours to “do the eight miles.” “Mine host” would not consent to this arrangement, and the next best thing was to hire a horse and trap. So through the deep snow we started. I had not got very far before my muffler was frozen and icicles hung round my beard like little diamonds. A few carts and waggons had been pulled over the snow in places by the farmers, and had left a few tracks. Notwithstanding these our old hunter was not long before he began to “puff and blow.” My gigman said, “I don’t know whether we shall be able to get through to Yetholm, but we will go as far as we can. We can but turn back if we can get no further.”
Our steed did not require pulling up to stop him. Of his own instinct he stopped pretty frequently. I said to the man, “Our horse seems to be short of ‘puff.’” “Yes,” said the gigman; “his wind is touched a little, but nothing to hurt. He will be all right if we can once pull through.” Sometimes we went into the ditches. How deep they were before the snow fell I don’t know. I should think some of them were pretty deep. Thanks to the Almighty, the bottom of our gig would not let us topple over. Many times I began to wonder where we should find a resting-place for the night. I said to my gigman as we went ploughing through the snow in one of the ditches, “In case we get stuck fast, what shall we do next?” “Well,” said the gigman, “we shall have to leave the trap behind and return to Kelso as best we can. We shall both have to get upon the horse’s back, and if he will not carry us we must take turn and turn about. It won’t do to stop on the road to perish.” I began to “pump” my gigman in order to know whether I was in the hands of one who understood his business. I wanted my fears settling upon this point.
I said, “How long have you been a coachman?” “Between twenty and thirty years,” he said. “And have you ever had a ‘spill’ or been stuck fast?” “I have only had one ‘pitch in’ and never a ‘spill.’” This news gave me confidence in my man, and on we kept ploughing away. A strong contrast presented itself to our view close to a cottage just off the roadside. There was a fine dark woman with a bright scarlet hood and cloak on her big body, doing something upon one of the hedges. It struck me that she was bird-liming, for the London markets, the poor linnets that choose to be caged rather than to perish.
The sights along the road were most lively, and I shall never forget it as long as the breath is in my body. The excitement “on the road,” the bubbling sympathy within my breast for the poor perishing rabbits, hares, partridges, and crows upon our path, the dangers of the way, and the magnificent grandeur of the scenery, were of such a nature as to cause me to forget the biting cold at work benumbing my nose, fingers, and toes. The Scotch firs in the dales and vales along our path and on the hillsides never appeared more grand and beautiful. They were artistically touched by the hand of God. The pure white lovely prismatic children of the clouds and cold boundless space had descended softly from heaven, as if loth to leave their pure abode for a resting-place in the mud; but before doing so they appeared anxious to adorn the trees of nature with the beauties of ethereal space, and in such a manner as to cause one’s heart to glow with gratitude towards God, the Giver of all good. The boughs were bent downwards, heavily laden with the angelic snowflakes; the whole trees presenting a spiral sight, leading your eyes and mind upwards toward heaven. At the extreme tips of the branches the snow had formed a kind of white clapperless bells. As I passed under the heavily-laden trees I felt that I should like to have helped them to bear their burden, and also to keep the prismatic children of the clouds and infinitude from settling into their dirty resting-places. Nature seemed to speak through the beautiful snow-adorned trees, and wintry-capped hills and covered valleys with a warm loving tenderness that I had never experienced before.
Upon the fences the snow had come softly and stealthily down, apparently as if in gentle wavelets, which presented the appearance of fold upon fold, overhanging waves upon waves in beautiful round and soft designs; and as I beheld it I felt for a few minutes that it would be a real pleasure, with joy and gladness running through my bones, and smiles forcing themselves upon my face, to roll, plunge, tumble, and fluster under its overhanging laps and waved folds, which seemed to speak invitingly, and with open arms, to those who cast a sympathetic glance at them. Never in this world did snow appear more to be like the downs of heaven than upon this occasion, notwithstanding the _biting_ cold day. On this journey the live things seemed to be dying, while the dead things seemed to be living.
We had now been on the road ploughing away over two hours among the snow, and still we were not at the end of our journey. We had had many escapes of a spill, with the consolation that we should not have been hurt, except in case the iron heels of our beast had come sharply in contact with our almost frost-bitten noses. As we topped the hills and neared Yetholm it was manifest that the rude hand of storm and tempest had been busily at work among the trees at some not very remote period. Hundreds had been uprooted, some of which were left to tell the tale. Not a public-house was to be seen on the way. There was a kind of cabin a little off the roadside, on which was stuck a piece of board, showing that tea, tobacco, coffee, and snuff were sold there. Among the hills in the distance Yetholm was observed. The thought that had run freely through my mind, that I might not reach Yetholm, had now vanished.
The veritable gipsy town was in sight, and our steed pricked up his ears and quickened his pace. The blood which had imperceptibly been freezing in my veins seemed to glow again. The use of my hands and feet seemed to be coming round, and into a public-house I stumbled at half past one to get a cup of tea, “a cheer up,” and thorough warming. After which I set out with my bag in one hand loaded with Testaments, supplied to me by a friend and the Christian Knowledge Society; picture cards, supplied to me by the Religious Tract Society; and _Our Boys and Girls_, supplied to me by the Wesleyan Sunday-School Union; while in the other hand I carried a quantity of oranges and tobacco, purchased from Mr. Laidlaw’s, a tradesman in the place. With this “stock-in-trade” for the big and little gipsies at Kirk Yetholm I started my tramp.
The nestling and nuzzling of the gipsy hypocrites beneath the walls of the church at Kirk Yetholm, when they first landed in this country and for centuries onward, is only in accord with their first appearance in many parts of England. There can be no doubt that when the gipsies came from the Continent they came as hypocritical, religious, popish pilgrims, and succeeded well for a time in inveigling themselves into the good graces and pockets of the well-to-do English men and women, so that many of them were able to dress in scarlet and gold till they were found out, as I have shown elsewhere.
Kirk Yetholm, the gipsy town, is about half a mile from Town Yetholm.
[Picture: Gipsy Winter quarters, Yetholm]
By the time I had arrived at the gipsy quarters, owing to my loads, the deep snow, and the slippery nature of the roads in some places, I was ready for a rest.
At the entrance to the village I met a number of little half-starved, dirty, ragged gipsy children, who, to say the least, would require a deal of “straightening up” before they were ready for angelic robes. One little fellow with fine lips, but a mouth almost extending from ear to ear, accosted me in such a manner as to satisfy me that I was, without doubt, in the land of gipsydom. With the exception of the fine old church and one or two houses, the whole presented a miserable appearance. The gipsy dwellings were one story high, and of a dirty dingy white.
Leydon’s opinion of the Yetholm gipsies in his day was not very high, for he says—
“On Yeta’s banks the vagrant gipsies place Their turf-built cots. A sunburnt swarthy race, From Nubian realms their tawny line they bring, And their brown chieftain vaunts the name of king. With loitering steps from town to town they pass, Their lazy dames rock’d on the panier’d ass, From pilfer’d roots or nauseous carrion fed, By hedgerows green they strew their leafy bed; While scarce the cloak of tawdry red conceals The fine-turned limbs which every breeze reveals. Their bright black eyes through silken lashes shine, Around their necks their raven tresses twine; But chilling damps and dews of night impair Its soft sleek gloss and tan the bosom bare. Adroit the lines of palmistry to trace, Her horded silver store they charm away, A pleasing debt for promised wealth to pay.”