CHAPTER V.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

It was evening when we entered the old town of Kidderminster. As we rode along the street to Aunt Dorothy's house, many of the casements were open to let in cool summer evening air; and from one and another, as we passed, rose the music of the psalm sung at the family-worship, the voices of the little ones softly blending with the deeper tones of the father and mother, or the trembling treble of age.

It was a heavenly welcome; and, by an irresistible impulse, I dismounted, for, wearied as I was with the journey, I felt it a kind of irreverence not to walk. It was like going up the aisle of a great church. The whole town seemed a house of prayer.

None of these sweet musical sounds, however, came out of Aunt Dorothy's windows as, at length, we stopped at her door; although the casements were open. But, as we paused before trying to enter, I heard the cadences of a soft voice reading in an upper chamber. I tried the latch, found it open, and, softly mounting the stairs, through a bedroom door, which stood slightly ajar, I saw a grave man, habited like a minister, with a broad collar, and closely-fitting cap on his head, sitting at a table with an open Bible before him. By his side stood a little serving-maiden, whom at the moment he was questioning in simple language, in a calm, persuasive voice and with a remarkably clear utterance, while she answered without fear. His form was slight, and his gait slightly stooping; his face worn and grave, yet not unfrequently "tending to a smile," and always lighted up by his dark, keen, observant eyes. This, I felt, could be no other than Mr. Baxter. Altogether the face made me think of portraits of saintly monks, worn with fasting and prayer, save that the eyes were quick and piercing rather than contemplative; as if he saw, not dreams and visions of Christendom in general, but just the little bit of it he had to do with at the moment, in the person of Aunt Dorothy's little maid. When the little maid had answered, he turned with a look of approval to some one out of sight, whom I knew must be Aunt Dorothy. Judging from the fact of the catechizing being held in her chamber, that she would be equal to seeing me, and that therefore I had better appear in an ordinary way, I crept softly down-stairs again, and knocked at the house-door.

Aunt Dorothy was much moved at my coming; although in words she only vouchsafed a grave remonstrance. And I was no less moved to see how feeble and shrunken she looked. She had been much enfeebled by an attack of low fever and although professing to make little of it, like most people unaccustomed to illness she believed herself much worse than she really was, and had, dear soul, gone in spirit pathetically through her own funeral, with the effect so solemn an event might be hoped to have on the hearts of her misguided kinsmen and kinswomen.

"Olive, my dear," she said to me, on the morning after our arrival, after directing me where to find her will, and a letter she had written, "thou wilt find I had not forgotten thy babes, nor indeed any of my kindred, unnatural as no doubt they think me. I wish the letter to be given to your father at once, immediately after all is over. My example and arguments have had little weight; but it may be otherwise then. I have no physician but good Mr. Baxter, who is physician both for body and soul to his people. He hath endeavoured to reassure me; but I know what that means. And yesterday he gave me his 'Saint's Rest,' which, of course, is only a considerate way of preparing me for the end."

All through that week Aunt Dorothy continued marvellously meek and gentle, her grave eyes moistening tenderly as she looked on the babes. She commended Annis as a maiden of a modest countenance and lowly carriage. (I had not ventured to inform her of Annis's peculiar belief.) She spoke tenderly of every one, and agreed as far as possible with everything; which last symptom I did feel alarming.

The kindness and sympathy of the neighbours were so great, that it seemed to me their evening psalm was only the musical Amen to the psalm they had lived all day. One brought us possets, another dainty meats, another confections for the babes; others would watch in the sick-chamber at night; another sent for the babes to play with her own, to keep the house quiet. If we gave thanks, they said Mr. Baxter "thought nothing of godliness which did not show itself in goodness." Another told us how Aunt Dorothy had been borne on their hearts at the Thursday prayer-meeting at Mr. Baxter's; and more than one came to "repeat to us Mr. Baxter's last Sunday sermon;" repeating Mr. Baxter's sermon (he only preached one on Sunday) being a great ordinance at Kidderminster. Never before did I understand so fully what the meaning of the word church is, or the meaning of the word pastor. Before I came to Kidderminster I had thought of Mr. Baxter as a godly man, rather fond of debate, and very unjust to Oliver Cromwell (as I still hold him to have been). After staying there that week, I learned that if the joys of fighting (syllogistically) were his favourite recreation (which, in spite of all his protestations, I think they were, for a true Ironsides' soul dwelt in that slight and suffering body); his work was teaching little children, seeking the lost, bringing back the wandering, supporting the weak,--all that is meant by being "shepherd" and "ensample" to the flock; going before them in every good and generous work, going after them into every depth of misery, if only he could bring them home.

As I sat by the window of the sick-chamber where I could see Mr. Baxter's house on the opposite side of the street, with the people going in to consult him, the poor patients sometimes waiting by twenty at a time at his door, and a pleasant stir of welcome all down the street when his "thin and lean and weak" figure passed out and along, Aunt Dorothy loved to discourse to me of him. She told me how in his childhood he had lived in a village called Eaton Constantine, near the Wrekin Hill, in a rustical region, where Ave Marys still lingered with paternosters in the peasants' prayers; where the clergyman, being about eighty years of age, with failing eye-sight, and having two churches, twenty miles distant, under his charge, used to say the Common Prayer without book; and got "one year a thresher, or common day-labourer, another a tailor, and after that a kinsman of his, who was a stage-player and gamester, to read the psalms and chapters." Mr. Baxter's father, "having been addicted to gaming, had entangled his freehold estate; but it pleased God to instruct and change him by the bare reading of the Scriptures in private, without either preaching or godly company, or any other books, so that his serious speeches of God and the life to come very _early possessed his son with a fear of sinning_." For reading the Scripture on the Sundays, when others were dancing, by royal order, round the May-pole, he was called a "Puritan."

Good books were the means of Richard Baxter's early teaching, though when his "sincere conversion" began he was never able to say. One of these books (to Aunt Dorothy's perplexity) was by a Jesuit; another was "Sibbes' Bruised Reed," brought by a poor pedler and ballad-seller to the door; another was a "little piece" of Mr. Perkin's works, which a servant in the house had. For all that while (Mr. Baxter had told her) neither he nor his father had acquaintance with any that "had understanding in matters of religion, nor ever heard any pray extempore." Their prayers were chiefly the Confession in the Prayer-book, and one of Bradford, the martyr's, prayers.

But Mr. Baxter deemed his own sicknesses and infirmities to have been among the chief means of grace to him. "The calls of approaching death on one side, and the questioning of a doubtful conscience on the other hand, kept his soul awake."

His doubts were many; for instance, "whether a base fear did not move him more than a son's love to God," and "because his grief and humiliation were no greater;" until, at last, he understood that "_God breaketh not all men's hearts alike_; that the change of our heart from sin to God is true repentance; and that he that had rather leave his sin than have leave to keep it, and that had rather be the most holy, than _have leave_ to be unholy or _less_ holy, is neither without repentance nor the love of God."

His diseases were more than his doubts, and his physicians more (and belike more dangerous) than his diseases. He had thirty-six physicians, by whose orders he took drugs without number, which, said he, "God thought not fit to make successful;" whereupon at last he forsook the physicians altogether. Under which circumstances he had doubtless reason to count it among his mercies (as he did) that he was never overwhelmed with "real melancholy." "For years," as he said, "rarely a quarter of an hour's ease, yet (through God's mercy) never an hour's melancholy, nor many hours in the week disabled from work."

Mr. Baxter's being so much indebted to good books as his teachers and comforters, was perhaps partly the reason why he wrote so many. Of his "Saint's Rest" he himself said: "Whilst I was in health I had not the least thought of writing books, or of serving God in any more public way than preaching; but when I was weakened with great bleeding, and left solitary in my chamber at Sir John Cook's in Derbyshire, without any acquaintance but my servant about me, and sentenced to death by the physicians, I began to contemplate more seriously on the everlasting rest which I believed myself to be on the borders of." He originally intended it to be no more than the length of one or two sermons; but the weakness being long continued, the book was enlarged. The first and last parts being for his own use were written first, and then the second and third. It was written with no books at hand but a Bible and a Concordance, and he found that "the transcript of the heart hath the greatest force on the hearts of others;" and for the good he had heard that multitudes have received by that writing, he humbly thanked "Him that compelled him to it."

A history which interested me much; for I delight to think of books I love as growing in this and that unexpected way from little unnoticed seeds, like living creatures, not as constructed deliberately from outside, like a thing made by hands. Doth not John Milton say that a good book is "the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life; so that he who destroys a good book commits not so much a murder as a massacre, and slays an immortality rather than a life."

Much also Aunt Dorothy had to say of Mr. Baxter's good works; how out of his narrow income he contrived to send promising young men to the university, and to relieve the destitute without stint, "having ever more to give," he said, "as he gave more;" how he had been the physician of his people, fighting against their sicknesses as well as their sins; how the old were moved by him, who had never been moved before, and little children were stirred by his eloquent entreaties, and trained by his patient teaching, so that they brought the light of love and godliness into many a home which before had been all darkness.

She said Mr. Baxter was wont humbly to attribute the wonderful efficacy of his ministry to many causes rather than to any peculiar power in his words; to the following among others:--.

1. That "the people had never had any awakening ministry before, and therefore were not sermon-proof."

2. The infirmity of his health. That "as he had naturally a familiar, moving voice, and doing all in bodily weakness as a dying man, his soul was more easily brought to seriousness, and to preach as a dying man to dying men."

3. That many of the bitter enemies to godliness, "in their very hatred of Puritans," had gone into the king's armies, and "were quickly killed."

4. The change made in public affairs by the success of the wars; "which (said Mr. Baxter), however it was done, and though much corrupted by the usurpers, yet removed many impediments to men's salvation. Before, godliness was the way to shame and ruin; but though Cromwell gave liberty to all sects, and did not set up any party alone, by force, yet this much gave abundant advantage to the gospel; especially considering that godliness now had countenance and reputation also as well as liberty; and such liberty (even under a usurper) as never before since the gospel came into the land did it possess. And" (said he) "much as I have written against licentiousness in religion, and the power of the magistrate in it, yet, in comparison of the rest of the world, I think that land happy that hath but _bare liberty to be as good as they are willing to be, and toleration for truth to bear down her adversaries_."

5. Another advantage was the zeal, diligence, the holy, humble, blameless lives, and the Christian concord of the religious sort.

6. The private meetings for prayer, repetitions, and asking questions, and his personal intercourse with every family apart.

7. Being able to give his writings, and especially a Bible, to every family that had none.

8. That the trade of the weaving of Kidderminster stuffs enabled them to set a Bible on the loom before them, wherewith to edify one another while at their work. For (thought Mr. Baxter) "free-holders and tradesmen are the strength of religion and civility in the land, and gentlemen (_idle_ men, I think he meant) and beggars the strength of iniquity."

9. His own single life, "enabling him the easilier to take his people for his children."

10. That God made great use of sickness to do good to many: and then of Mr. Baxter's practice of physic; at once recovering their health and moving their souls.

11. The quality of the wicked people of the place, who, "being chiefly drunkards, would roar and rave in the streets like stark madmen, and so make that sin abhorred."

12. The assistance of good ministers around.

To these things, and such as these, said Aunt Dorothy, Mr. Baxter loved to attribute those conversions which "at first he used to count up as jewels, but of which afterwards he could not keep any number."

All this made me greatly desire the time when I might hear Mr. Baxter preach; and, at last, on the second Sunday after our arrival, Aunt Dorothy insisted on my going to church.

The only perplexity was Annis Nye. However, I trusted that Aunt Dorothy's subdued frame of mind, and Annis's being busy with the babes or in the kitchen, would avert a collision.

The sermon went far to explain to me Kidderminster and Mr. Baxter. But no written words will ever explain to those who did not hear them what his sermons were.

The pulpit was at once Mr. Baxter's hearth, his throne, and his true battle-field: the central hearth at which the piety of every fireside in Kidderminster was weekly enkindled; the throne from which the hearts of men and women, old men and little children, were swayed; the battle-field where he fought, not so much against sectaries and misbeliefs, but against sin and unbelief. He was at home there, close to every heart there; yet at home as a father among his children. All that he was, turn by turn, through the week--pleading, teaching, exhorting, consoling, from house to house--he was in the pulpit altogether; but with the difference between glow and flame, between speech and song; between a man calmly using his faculties one by one and a man with his whole soul awake and on fire, and concentrated into one burning desire to save men and make them holy; with a message to deliver, which he knew could do both. His eye enkindled, his face illumined, his whole emaciated frame quivering with emotion as he leant over the pulpit, and spoke to every heart in the church.

"Though we speak not unto you as men would do that had seen heaven and hell, and were themselves perfectly awake," he said. But it seemed to me as if he _had_ seen heaven and hell (or rather _felt_ them); and as if, while I listened to him, for the first time in my life, my soul was "perfectly awake" all through.

And of all this, the next generation, and those who never heard him in this, will know nothing! Instead, they will have one hundred and sixty little books and treatises, out of which they may vainly strive to piece together what Mr. Baxter was during those fourteen most fruitful years of his ministry at Kidderminster. But even if they could put the fragments together right, they would only have created an image of clay. And most likely they will piece them together wrong (as I did before I knew him). And then they will wonder at the clumsy image, and wonder what gentlemen of the neighbourhood, trained in universities, in courts, and in armies, and at the same time the poor weavers of Kidderminster, and the nailers of Dudley, who clustered round the doors and windows when he preached, could find in his words so beautiful and so moving.

Most words, written or spoken, are perhaps more spoken to one generation than men like to think. If the next generation read them, it is not so much as living words to move themselves, but as lifeless effigies of what moved their fathers. But with great orators this must be especially the case, and with great preachers more perhaps than with other orators. Nor need they complain. Their words reach far enough, moving hearts whose repentings move the angels in the presence of God. They live long enough: on high, in the deathless souls they awaken; on earth, in the undying influence from heart to heart, from age to age, of the holy lives they inspire.

The large old church was thronged to the extremity of the five new galleries which had been built since Mr. Baxter preached, to accommodate the congregation.

When he ceased speaking, there was a long hush, as of reluctance to supersede the last tones of that persuasive voice by any other sound.

And as the congregation gently dispersed, that sacred hush seemed on them still. They were treasuring up the words wherewith they would strengthen themselves and each other during the week; the housewife keeping them in her heart like a song from heaven; the weaver, as he worked with his open Bible before him on the loom, seeing them shine on its verses like the fingers of a discriminating sunbeam.

As I came home, I remember feeling not so much as if I had been in a church where something good had been said, as in a battle-field where something great had been done. Death-blows had been given to cherished sins; angels of hell had been despoiled of their false "armour of light," and compelled to appear in their own hideous shrunken shapes; hidden faults had been dragged from their ambush in the heart, and smitten; the joints of armour, deemed impervious, had been pierced at a venture; the powers of darkness had been defeated by being detected; the powers of light had been aroused, refreshed, arrayed in order of battle, and sent on their warfare, strengthened and cheered, as the Ironsides by the voice of Oliver. A battle had been fought, and a campaign set in order, and the combatants inspired for fresh conflicts. As those living words echoed in my heart, all the conflicts of armies and politicians seemed mere shadowy repetitions (like the battles in the Elysian shades) of that eternal essential conflict between good and evil waged unceasingly within and around us.

I remember that Aunt Dorothy's first words to me, when I returned, sounded as if they came up to me on a sunny height, from a strange voice in some dim region far below.

She said,--

"Olive, dear heart, it rejoices me that you have such a discerning young woman to serve you. She is, I deny not, a trifle rustical, and needs instruction as to gestures and forms of address, but, at least, she is able to perceive how sadly poor General Cromwell has been seduced from the ways of humility and uprightness, and has failed in protecting the people of God."

Nevertheless, these words were not without something consolatory in them for me. Much as Aunt Dorothy and Annis had, belike, misunderstood one another as to what they meant by the "people of God" whom the Captain-General failed to protect, it was evident they were still so far on friendly relations with each other. And it was also plain to me that Aunt Dorothy's militant faculty (and therefore she herself) was recovering.

A very opportune improvement. For on the following day came letters from Roger and Job Forster announcing the battle of Dunbar, which those who fought it looked on as an act of the great warfare between good and evil, as truly as any of Mr. Baxter's preachings. In which belief Aunt Dorothy and Mr. Baxter agreed with them; but not as to the sides on which the combatants were ranged.

The first letter from Dunbar was from Roger, dated September 2nd:--

"A word to thee, Olive, my sister, by the post who is to carry letters for the Lord-General. Ill news travel fast, and if such have reached thee before these, I would have thee know, though our case is low enough, our hearts are not daunted.

"I write in my tent on my knee--wind and rain driving across this wild tongue of land, dashing the waves against the rocks, whistling through the long grasses of the marshes, as in the sedges by old Netherby Mere. Nothing to do but to keep our powder dry, if we can, and pray.

"The enemy think us caught in a worse Pound than my Lord Essex at Fowey. Even the General thinks little less than a miracle can save us. But maybe the miracle is wrought already in the courage of our men, without a grain of earthly food to sustain it; the miracles of the New Covenant being, for the most part, inward.

"For months we have been watching them up and down the hills and the shores round Edinburgh, yet never able to tempt them to a battle. And now they deem us trapped and doomed, which may work to better purpose on them than our challenges. To all appearance their boastings are justified.

"The ships we hasted into this 'trap' to meet (sorely needing fresh victuals), are nowhere in sight. Through his knowledge of the country, the enemy has possessed himself of all the passes between us and England. His army is on the bill above us, twenty-three thousand strong, with veteran generals, threatening to sweep down, and with 'one shower, wash us out of the country.'

"We with but eleven thousand to meet them. Many of ours lying sick in the town of Dunbar.

"In all Scotland not another stronghold is ours.

"Among them is the shout of a king, 'a Covenanted king;' whatever strength may lie in that! Many of their soldiers godly men and brave.

"I think we shall not be suffered to dishonour the good cause or the General by lack of courage. But victory is not in our hands. And what may be in God's, I am no prophet to tell.

"Between us and England an army twice our number. Between England and the old tyranny, as we deem, nothing but Oliver and his eleven thousand. A thought to nerve heart and hand.

"'We are sensible of our disadvantages,' as the General saith. 'But not a few of us stand in this trust, that because of their numbers--because of their confidence--because of our weakness--because of our strait, we are in the Mount, and in the Mount the Lord will be seen; and that He will find out a way of deliverance and salvation for us.'

"The sea and the waves roaring, but as yet, God be praised, no man's heart failing him for fear. Farewell! Whatever comes to-morrow I would have thee know we are not dismayed to-day."

And, enclosed, a few lines from my husband:--

"This campaign has been one of more occupation for the leech than the soldier," he wrote. "The wild weather, and food not of the best or most plentiful, with lying out on the wet moors, always restlessly on the watch for battles which never came, have shattered the troops more than many a hard fight. Sickness is on all sides. The Captain-General saith the men fall sick beyond imagination. He himself has not escaped. The foe I fight with has left me little intermission. The prospect of a battle, such as hangs over us in the thousands gathering on Doon Hill through the day, and now ready to sweep down the slopes, seems proving already to some a better physic than any of mine. A wound is doubled when the spirit is wounded, and half healed when the spirit is cheered.

"Never fear for me, dear heart; I know I am where my task is set. And I keep as well as men for the most part do who have plenty to do and hope in doing it."

"Ah," sighed Aunt Dorothy, "snared in their own net at last! Did not Mr. Baxter write to the well-disposed in the sectarian army, warning them of the sin of going to war against the godly in Scotland; 'for which, O blindness!' quoth he, 'they thought me an uncharitable censurer.' Remarkable providence!" she concluded; "to have actually run of their own free will into a place which as if it had been ordained from the beginning to be just such a trap."

"Had we not better wait till we see whether they get out, Aunt Dorothy?" said I.

"Get out, child?" said she, fierily; "I think better of them, with all their transgressions, than to believe they are bad enough to be suffered to prosper in their evil ways! Mr. Cromwell himself was, or seemed to be, in the Covenant once."

But that very evening flew through the land the news of Dunbar victory: these letters having been delayed by coming round through London. The Scottish forces were totally routed. As Mr. Baxter said, "Their foot taken, their horse pursued to Edinburgh; when, if they would only have let Oliver's weakened and ragged army go, or cautelously followed them, it would have kept their peace and broken his honour."

For neither Mr. Baxter nor Aunt Dorothy thought it at all a "remarkable providence" that Oliver and his army had thus escaped. It was plain, on the contrary, she thought, to all right-thinking people, that their successes, so far from proving them right, only proved that they had gone too far wrong to be corrected.

A few days afterwards arrived a letter, sent me by Rachel Forster from Job.

It began:--

"See Psalm 107. (_O praise the Lord, all ye nations; praise him all ye people._

_For his merciful kindness is great towards us; and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord_).* We sang it on the battle-field yesterday. The shortest psalm that is. Made on purpose, belike, for such a service and such a congregation. For we had no time for more. We sang it, Oliver and the foremost of us, on the halt, before the rest came up for the chase. The music rolled up grand, like the sea, from the hollow of the brook against the hill of Doon. We had cause to sing it, and the whole land hath cause. Never better. Do thou sing it, dear heart, at Netherby, and let Mistress Olive sing it, and the babes listen, and Mistress Annis (if she will unlearn her perverse ways); 'old men and children, young men and maidens.' For their 'covenant with death' is broken. The snare is broken, and we are delivered. And not we and England only, but all the godly throughout the three kingdoms; if they will but see. Surely they must see; kirk-ministers and all, 'spite (as the General saith) of all their sullenness at God's providences, and their envy at Eldad and Medad and the Lord's people who prophecy; their envy (saith he) at instruments, because things did not work forth their platform, and the great God did not come down to their thoughts.'

* In Mr. Rous's version:--

"O give ye praise unto the Lord, All nations that be; Likewise, ye people, all accord His name to magnify. For great to usward ever are His loving-kindnesses; His truth endures for evermore, The Lord O do ye bless."

"They hung above us on the hill of Doon, twenty-three thousand strong, all through the night. A wild night it was; the waves roaring, the cold rain driving across the tongue of land where they thought us trapped. But we prayed, and watched, and kept our powder dry, which was as much as we could do. We had some scant shelter under tents and walls. They, poor souls, had none; and before dawn they put out all their matches but two to a company, and lay down under the corn-shocks. Oliver did not wait for them to burst on us; nor for the morning to break. We did not wait for his word to be on the alert. A company of us were in prayer at three o'clock, with a poor cornet (one of the Eldads and Medads), when Major Hodgson rode past and stopped to join, and found strength in it, as the day proved.

"We were to have charged before they woke. But there were delays in getting all the men forward. So before we had gathered we heard the enemy's trumpets wake up one by one in the dark, along the hill-side. Then the moon broke from a cloud, and, with the first ray of dawn, made light enough to see where we were going, when at last all the men came up, and the trumpets pealed out all along our line with the English battle-shout, and the great guns.

"Their cry and ours met: '_The Covenant!_' and '_The Lord of Hosts!_' And with it we and they met, met and closed in death-grapple for three-quarters of an hour; company to company, man to man. Once we were pressed back across the brook in the hollow, their horse charging desperately. No hearing the winds and waves roar then. Then we charged back, horse and foot,--such a charge (many say) as they never saw--back again across the hollow of the brook. That charge was never returned. We heard Oliver's voice, '_They run, I profess they run!_' And then the sun broke across the field, and with it again Oliver's voice, '_Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered._'

"And scattered they were. Three thousand dead in the hollow of the brook. (Three thousand whose hands we would fain have held as brothers. God knows how Oliver entreated them sore, and how they gave us hatred for our love.) Ten thousand prisoners. The rest flying right and left through the land. An army gone in an hour.

"An army of brave Scottish men, godly men many of them doubtless; ministers there in store to bless them (no Eldads and Medads, but covenanted kirk-ministers), all swept away like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor.

"Will they not yet see? Not our courage did it; they were brave as we. Not our numbers; theirs doubled ours. Not our field: they chose it. The passes of the hills were theirs. What then? Can any fail to see? The lie that is among them makes them weak, the false oaths to a false Covenant sworn at their command, against his will and conscience, by the poor, false, young Stuart king. The difference is the difference in our battle-cries. '_The Covenant_,' good once (far be it from us to speak scorn of it), good twice, but not good always; strong against one evil yesterday, not strong against all evil for ever. And '_The Lord of Hosts_,' Almighty against all evil for ever. Not His own Covenant even, as far as it is but written in stone; much less theirs, though signed with their blood; not His own Covenant, though 'confirmed by an oath,' so much as _Himself_ living to confirm the oath.

"As the Lord-General saith, 'What He hath done, what He is to us in Christ, is the root of our comfort; in this is stability; in us is weakness. Faith as an act yields not perfect peace; _but only as it carries into Him who is our perfect peace_. Rest we here, and here only.'*

* "What God hath done, what He is to us in Christ, is the root of our comfort: and this is stability; in us is weakness. Acts of obedience are not perfect, and, therefore, yield not perfect peace. Faith as an act yields it not; but only as it carries us into Him, who is our perfect peace, and in whom we are accounted of and received by the Father even as Christ Himself. This is our high calling. Rest we here, and here only."

"Truly soldiers have cause to sing the 109th Psalm who have such a General to lead and speak to them; although, in the eyes of the kirk, he be but an Eldad. I trust I meddle not with things too high for me after the lesson I have had. Often, dear heart, I long for thee, and thy comfortable speech and smile.

"Master Roger and I talk over many things by the camp-fires when most are asleep; we knowing old Netherby, and thee, and so many other things the rest know not. He is heavier and graver than I would see him, save where there is work to be done.

"I doubt there is somewhat gnawing, without noise, as worms and blights do, at his heart.

"There was the pretty lady at the hall, now among the Hivites and Perizzites (so to speak) in France. I know nothing, but that he never speaks of her and hers. And they were aye together, he and she and Mistress Olive, in the old days.

"Poor brave young heart, mine is sore for him many a time. It is not all who get such plentiful wages beforehand as I, Rachel, in thee."

Which last sentence Rachel had annotated with,--

"The goodman means no harm, Mistress Olive. But on that matter he could never be brought to see plain, say what I would."

The next Sunday a Thanksgiving was appointed by the Parliament ("the Rump") for the victory of Dunbar. This Mr. Baxter openly disregarded; using his influence, moreover, to persuade others to do the same. He did not hesitate in his sermon to warn his hearers of the sin of fighting against a loyal Scottish Covenanted army; while, at the same time, he blamed the Scots themselves for "imposing laws upon their king, for forcing him to dishonour the memory of his father, and for tempting him to take God's name in vain by speaking and publishing that which, they might easily know, was contrary to his heart."

So, in the afternoon of that Sabbath which Mr. Baxter refused to make a day of thanksgiving to Kidderminster, I held a private thanksgiving service in my own chamber.

At first, in my solitude, my spirit was too busy with protesting against Mr. Baxter to be at leisure for praise.

At the doors of some of the houses opposite, quiet groups of weavers were gathered, in their Sunday best. In all the town, Mr. Baxter rejoiced to think, there was not one Separatist. The Quakers (he fondly believed) he had silenced, at a discussion held in his church. One journeyman shoemaker, indeed, had turned Anabaptist, "but he had left the town upon it."

No "Eldads and Medads" had troubled Kidderminster with irregular prophesying; "for," said Mr. Baxter, "so modest were the ablest of the people, that they were never inclined to a preaching way, but thought they had teaching enough by their pastors."

"Among all these busy brains and stirring hearts," I thought, as I sat at my window, "not one that differs from Mr. Baxter; while Mr. Baxter differs in so many directions from so many people that fifty books have been written against him."

The thought of a whole town walking on such a narrow path, step by step after Mr. Baxter, with those fifty precipices and "bye-paths" on all sides, had something appalling in it;--appalling in its monotony, and in its precariousness. What kind of a place would England be to live in if it were all brought to this Kidderminster standard? Not very pleasant certainly for any journeyman shoemaker who was unfortunate enough to turn Anabaptist! Perhaps in the end a little wearisome even for Mr. Baxter himself, when no one was left for him to silence.

I need not have perplexed myself with such speculations. Long before the experiment reached that stage, Mr. Baxter's own eloquent voice itself was silenced, and his faithful words made doubly precious to his flock by the prohibition, on peril of imprisonment or fine, of ever listening to them again.

Nor was a slumbrous unanimity by any means the danger England had then to dread.

As I opened my Bible and read the Dunbar Psalm, and sought to make melody with it in heart, my quiet chamber seemed to become a side chapel of a vast cathedral. I felt no more alone. A thousand services of song seemed going on around me. From Dr. Jeremy Taylor silenced in Wales, and good Bishop Hall near Norwich, and numerous little companies in old halls and manors, meeting secretly to use the Liturgy banished from churches and cathedrals. From these same ancient churches and cathedrals, where hundreds of "painful ministers," like Mr. Baxter, Joseph Alleine, or John Howe, were leading the devotions of the people in psalms more ancient than any Liturgy, and prayers new as every morning's mercies. From Puritan armies in Scotland, covenanted and uncovenanted. From meetings of Quakers, many of them in prisons. Beyond these again, from Lutherans and Calvinists in Protestant Europe; and doubtless also from countless devout hearts in Catholic cathedrals and convents. And farther off still, from the Puritan villages in the wilderness on the other side of the sea.

At first this concourse of sounds scarce seemed a concert. Babel has smitten men with deeper divisions than those of speech. Too many of the prayers sounded terribly like anathemas. Too many of the psalms like war-cries.

Until, as I still listened, the roof even of this vast cathedral of Christendom seemed to melt away into the firmament of heaven. Then I found that there was a height whence all discords, which were not music, fell back to earth, and whence all the discords without which music cannot be, flowed up in one grand River of Praise, in at the Gates of Pearl.

The burden of the song seemed simply that old prayer, "Our Father which art in heaven."

But from the crystal fiery sea into which that river flowed, rolled back, as in an echo of countless ocean waves, the antiphon,--

"_Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints!_"

Then the thought came to me, "Mr. Baxter, however, with all his moderatings and balancings cannot antedate these harmonies. Aunt Dorothy says he believes he has found the exact middle point between every extreme--Calvinism and Arminianism, Episcopacy, Presbytery, Independency. But, unfortunately, to other people it is but a point. Aunt Dorothy cannot quite balance herself on it. It is certain the whole world cannot. It is doubtful if any one can, except Mr. Baxter."

The harmony is made, not by each trying to learn the whole, but by each keeping faithfully to the part given him to learn and sing, though the part be only a broken note here and there.

And I thanked God that all the efforts of the worst men, or the best, to anticipate that majestic anthem of conflicting and embracing sound by a thin unison of voices, had never succeeded, and never could succeed, as long as men are men, and the second Man is not St. Paul, or Apollos, or St. John--but the Son of Man; the Lord from heaven.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"_Paris_, 1650, _September_.--It is a new world in which I find myself, here, in the hotel of Madame la Mothe. Save Barbe and myself, not one Protestant is of the circle.

"The loneliness is sometimes oppressive, courteous as all are. It is not so much the condemnation of Protestant England, as an unfortunate island shattered from the rest of Christendom by the earthquake of the Reformation, which makes me feel how far off we are from each other, as their incapacity to comprehend the divisions which are convulsing our country. 'From shattering to pulverizing, the process is but natural,' a good priest said the other day. They seem to look on us as the dust of a ruined Church; and between one atom of dust and another--between atoms Episcopal, atoms Presbyterian, and atoms Independent--they have no sunbeam strong enough to distinguish.

"_Paris, October_ 1_st_.--This morning Madame la Mothe, always anxious for my welfare, and now and then awakening to spasms of conviction that my welfare means my 'conversion,' took me to hear an excellent priest, called Singlin, preach.

"'I do not go often myself, my child,' she said, 'because the power of M. Singlin's sermons is redoubtable. They sweep people away from transitory ties, like a torrent. Now, while M. la Mothe lives, this is a danger to which I scarcely venture to expose myself. He is, as you see, more aged than I am. And what could he do without me? When I married him, I was a child; he a man of high reputation, who had made his mark in the world. It was considered a brilliant destiny for me. It has been a tranquil and a happy destiny. He was ever to me the most considerate of friends, guiding me through the temptations of the world like a director, generously providing me with the pleasures suited to my age, and consoling me like an angel when our only child died. I could never abandon him now.'

"Many things were strange to me in these words. This married life seemed so strangely dual, instead of one. She spoke of him rather as leading on than going with; rather as providing her joys than joining in them; rather as consoling her griefs than sharing them. And as strange seemed to me this mingled, love and dread of M. Singlin's sermons.

"We dressed, and set off for the church.

"'Surely, Madame,' I said, as we walked through the streets, 'no good man would advise you to abandon home and M. la Mothe?'

"'No, certainly,' she said; 'not advise. But he might make me feel the world so hollow and momentary, all its relationships so transitory, that an irresistible attraction would draw my heart from the world, like that of the young lady you see on the other side of the street, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Pascal. And what comfort, then, would my husband have in my going through life, by his side indeed, but as a machine wound up to its work, with the spirit elsewhere!'

"And she pointed out to me a maiden habited much like a nun, moving silently along with downcast eyes.

"'See, my child,' she whispered, 'one of the trophies of M. Singlin's eloquence, or, at least, of the doctrines he enforces. A young person of good family, daughter of M. Etienne Pascal, counsellor of the king. At thirteen she was a poetess. She charmed the Queen, Anne of Austria, and the Court, by her verses on the birth of the Dauphin, his present Majesty. She captivated all by the point of her repartees. At fourteen she won from Cardinal Richelieu her father's pardon for some political offence, by her marvellous acting in a drama. Her brother, Blaise, works miracles of science--literally miracles. He has weighed the air, and made a machine which calculates. She is beautiful, accomplished, not yet twenty-six; the most brilliant prospects open to her; the only unmarried daughter of an indulgent father who loves her tenderly. She hears M. Singlin. His words give the seal to her vocation. She renounces everything--the Court, the world, the family as far as she can, her genius, her wit, herself.'

"'You mean she renounces her genius by consecrating it.'

"'I mean she _renounces_. Hereafter God and the Church may consecrate. But who can say? What are our talents to Him? His Providence can destroy a navy by a whirlwind or by a little worm. Henceforth she reads only books of devotion and theology. She writes no more poetry. She denies herself the manifestation of her dearest affections. Until her father freely consents to her profession, she yields, indeed, so far as to remain in his house. But she makes her home a convent, her chamber a cell. She spends the day there in solitude--last winter without a fire, bleak as it was--reciting offices, reading books of piety. She only joins the family at meals. And of the meals, as far as possible, she makes fasts, refusing to warm herself at the fire. Charity alone, and devotion, bring her out of her retirement. When her sister's child was dying of the small-pox she nursed it night and day with devoted tenderness. She would, doubtless, have done the same for the child of a beggar; so entire is her consecration. Soon, no doubt, such piety will vanquish all objections; her father will yield (if he lives), and she will enter Port Royal. And this is one result of M. Singlin's eloquence, and of the power of his doctrine. You will confess it is a power, beneficent indeed, but formidable.

"'Formidable indeed, Madame,' I said, shuddering, for I thought of my own father. 'Fire, I think, to the brain, and frost to the heart.'

"'Alas, my child!' she said; 'how should you understand what is meant by genuine Vocation, or a thorough Conversion?'

"To me, indeed, this seemed not conversion; but annihilation.

"We were silent some way on our return from the church.

"'You were arrested,' said Madame la Mothe.

"'It reminded me of a Puritan sermon I once heard in England,' I said; 'speaking of the world as a "carcass that had neither life nor loveliness." Only M. Singlin seemed to include more in what he meant by the world than the Puritan did.'

"'That is what I should expect,' she replied. 'The higher the point of view, the more utter must seem the vanity of all below. Does he not make life seem a speck of dust, its history a moment? yet each speck of dust on the earth a world, and each moment a lifetime, as to its issues, radiating as these do through eternity!'

"When we came back, Madame la Mothe gave an ardent account of the sermon to an Abbe, a cousin of hers, who happened to be visiting at the house.

"To my surprise, he solemnly denounced the recluses of Port Royal, with M. Singlin and their directors. He called it a conspiracy.

"He said: 'A renegade Capuchin has (as they confess) been the means of the conversion of their adored Abbess, Angélique Arnauld. The Arnauld family, the soul of the whole thing, were Protestants in the previous generation; and (as the Spaniards say) it takes more than one generation to wash the taint of heresy from the blood.'

"At this point Madame la Mothe considerately introduced me.

"'With the Protestants we are on open ground, he said, bowing graciously to me. 'Mademoiselle will understand I spoke ecclesiastically. But these Jansenists are conspirators. They are digging mines underneath the altar itself. However, the Pope lives, and the Order of Jesus is awake. We shall see which will perish--the sanctuary, or the mine which was to explode it.'

"'Is it true,' I asked Madame la Mothe afterwards, 'that the Abbess of Port Royal owed her first impulse heavenward to a Protestant?'

"'They have told me, indeed, it was a renegade monk who so moved the young Abbess' heart,' she replied. 'The miserable being, it is said, spoke so forcibly on the blessedness of a holy life, and on the infinite love and humiliation of our Lord in His incarnation.'

"'Perhaps, then, he knew the blessedness of a holy life,' I said.

"'He was a wretched fugitive, escaping from his convent, my child,' she replied, a little impatiently. 'But what of that? Was not Balaam one of the prophets?'

"Two things, however, give me a kind of mournful consolation.

"One is, that, deny it as they will, there is an undying link between the holy people of Port Royal and those of the Protestant Church. I like to think that. Not only has their piety a common source in the same Sun, but it was enkindled by the touch of a poor heretic hand they would refuse to grasp in brotherhood. They will have to grasp that poor hand by-and-by, I like to think; and then, not reluctantly!

"And the other consolation is, that divisions are not confined to Protestants; a consolation both as regards the Roman Catholics and ourselves. For it seems to me, wherever there is thought there must be difference; wherever there is life there must be variety. Life and sin; these seem to me the chief sources of religious difference. God only knows from which of these two fountains each drop of the turbulent stream flows. Life, which must manifest itself in forms varied as the living, varying as their growing; sin, which adds to these varieties of healthy growth the sad varieties of disease, infirmity, excrescence, or defect.

"_Paris, October_ 2_nd_.--A battle at Dunbar, on the coast of Scotland.

"Another defeat. 'A complete rout,' my father says in his letter, which is very desponding. He is very indignant with the Scots, who will not let the king's 'loyal servants and counsellors' come near him, or even fight for him, but drag him about like a culprit and preach sermons to him, 'once,' he says, 'six in succession.' (And, here, His Majesty had not the reputation of being too fond of sermons.) He is also grieved with the king himself; at his signing the Covenant, at his publicly condemning his royal martyred father's acts, and his mother's religion; and, above all, at his suffering himself to be conducted in state into Edinburgh, under the gate where were exposed the dishonoured remains of Montrose, who so gallantly died for him not six months before. 'Nevertheless,' he concludes, 'we shall all die for him when our time comes, no doubt, as willingly as Montrose did. And after all, the true mischief-makers are the priests. From the Pope to the kirk preachers, not a disturbance in the world but you find them at the bottom of it. Let all the theologies alone, sweetheart. One is as bad as another. Say thy Creed; keep the Commandments; pray the Lord's Prayer. And remember thy old father.'

"_January, Chateau St. Rémi_.--We have come to M. la Mothe's country chateau for the Christmas.

"The Abbey Church of Port Royal des Champs is our parish-church. Madame la Mothe often takes me there.

"The first morning after our arrival she took me to the edge of the Valley of Port Royal.

"It is rather a cup-like hollow in the plain than a valley among hills. Its sides are clothed with a sombre mantle of ancient forests,--at the further end sweeping into the plain into which the valley opens. A broad rich plain with rivers, woods, corn-fields, now ploughed into long brown ridges for sowing; towns, villages with spires and towers, all stretching far away into a blue dimness.

"The recluses who occupied Les Granges, the abbey farm on the brow of the hill where we stood. must find their prayers helped, I think, by this glimpse into the wide world of life beyond. The nuns at the bottom of the valley must lose it.

"The valley was entirely filled by the convent.

"'It is like a vase carved by the Creator Himself for the precious ointment whose odour fills all His house,' Madame la Mothe said.

"To my unaccustomed eyes it was more like a prosperous village than a monastery.

"In the midst, the great tower of the church; close to it, the convent itself, with its lofty roofs, arched windows and gateways, turrets and pinnacles; around, the infirmary, surgery, weaving-houses, wash-houses, bake-houses, wood, corn and hay stacks, the mill and the mill-pond, and fish-ponds; the new and stately hotel which is the retreat of the Duchess de Longueville, with the residences of other noble ladies; and beyond, the kitchen-gardens and meadows divided by a winding brook from the 'Solitude,' where, amidst groups of ancient trees, and under the steep slopes of the wooded hill, the nuns repair for confession and meditation. Even then, on that winter-day, I thought I perceived the gleam of their white dresses among the trees.

"As we look, Madame la Mothe told me some of the scenes which had been witnessed there within the last fifty years.

"Not fifty years since, the abbey had been a place of restless gaiety and revelry. Light songs and laughter might have been heard echoing among the woods, when the child Angélique Arnauld was appointed Abbess.

"She then described the great king Henri Quatre with his courtiers invading the valley in the eagerness of the chase, and the child Abbess with her crozier in her hand marching in state out of that grand arched gateway at the head of her nuns, and warning His Majesty from the sacred precincts; the king gallantly kissing the queenly child's hand, and obeying her behests.

"Then the renegade Capuchin, finding one night's shelter in the abbey on his flight to a Protestant country, preaching in that church of the 'blessedness of a holy life and the love of Christ,' so as to awaken the young Abbess in her seventeenth year to the vision of a new world and a new life, which, in a subsequent sickness, deepened into thorough conversion to God.

"The 'Journée du Guichet,' when the Abbess Angélique began her attempts to reform and seclude the nuns by refusing to admit her own father within the grating; by the long fainting-fit with which her resistance ended, showing him what the effort cost her, and convincing him of her sincerity.

"The reform of Port Royal. Its growing reputation for sanctity. The mission of the young Abbess to reform other convents; the thronging of new nuns under her rule, until the valley (then undrained) became too small, health failed, and all the community had to remove for fifteen years to Paris.

"The arrival of the Abbess Angélique's brother, M. Arnauld d'Andilly, and the other recluses, to take up their abode at the deserted abbey, then half in ruins, the meadows a marsh, the gardens a wilderness. The draining of the marsh and rebuilding of the abbey by the hands of these gentlemen, working to the sound of psalms.

"The return of the Abbess Angélique, with her long train of white-robed daughters, welcomed with enthusiasm by the peasants. The one meeting of the recluses and the nuns, eighteen of them of the Arnauld family; as the brothers led the sisters into the church they had worked so hard to restore, and then retired to the abbey farm, to see each other no more except at the church services through a grating.

"As I looked down, nothing struck me so much as the stillness. To the eye, the valley was a place of busy human life. To the ear, it was a solitude. No discordant noises came from it, no hum of cheerful converse, nor voices of children at play. The nuns have large schools, which they teach most diligently and intelligently; the best ever known, it is said. But the children are accustomed to play, each by herself, quietly. The nuns think they like it as much,--after a little while. They are also never allowed to kiss or caress each other. Caresses might lead to quarrels, and are, besides (the nuns think), a weakening indulgence of emotion.

"I hope they often read the little ones the gospel which tells how the Master 'took the little children in His arms.' They must need it.

"The stillness had a sacred solemnity; but there was something of a vault-like chill in it, which crept over me like a shadow, as we descended the steep path, strewn with moist dead leaves among the roots of the leafless trees.

"I should like better to have seen Port Royal when, as in the wars of the Fronde a year or two since, it became a refuge for the plundered peasants of the neighbourhood, the infirmary filled with their sick and aged, the church with their corn, the sacred napkins for the altar torn up to bind their wounds.

"Through the grand arched gateway we went into the inner court, and thence into the church, where the nuns were chanting the service.

"Their music seems all kept for the church. Sin and eternity! These two thoughts seem to hush all the music at Port Royal, except such as goes up to God. It was a solemn thing to hear the hundred voices joining in the severe and simple chants to which they tune their lives so well.

"Madame la Mothe was pleased to see me moved as I was by it.

"'In England, you have scarcely a choir like that,' she said.

"'Not quite,' I replied; yet not to mislead her with false hopes as to me I could not help adding,--'With us the singers are not gathered into a choir, but scattered through the Church; in scattered Christian homes throughout the nation. And the pauses of the psalms are filled up by family joys and sorrows, and by the voices and laughter of little children; which, it seems to me, make the psalms all the sweeter and truer.'

"But more solemn than this general assembly it was to me to see, as I have this evening, while I was in the church alone, that motionless, white robed, kneeling figure keeping watch in the dusk before the 'Sacred Host' on the altar. One silver lamp radiated a dim and silvery light into the recesses of the empty silent church; the lamp never extinguished, the prayer never ceasing.

"That kneeling worshipper seemed to me herself a living symbol and portion of the Perpetual living Sacrifice, in which the One sacrifice unto death is for ever renewed; as Christian heart after heart is enkindled to love, and sacrifice, and serve; as the Church, redeemed by Him who offered Himself up without spot to God, offers herself up in Him to do and suffer the Father's will, to drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism; His living body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.'

"As we came up the hill my heart was full of that thought. We turned and looked back over the valley. The massive towers threw long shadows over the meadows, silvered with dew and moonlight. The broad lake shone, like the tranquil lives of the sisterhood, mirroring the heavens.

"On the other side, on the brow of the hill, the lights of Les Granges showed where the recluses were keeping their watch. A deep-toned bell from the abbey church struck the hour.

"Then, in the deepened hush of silence which followed, the soft chant of the nuns came stealing up the slopes. As we listened, it seemed to be answered from above by the deep music of men's voices from Les Granges.

"We listened till the last notes died away. I never heard church music which so moved me as those unconscious antiphons, where the two sides of the choir could not hear each other, whilst we heard both. It made me think of so many things: of the many choirs on earth who sing a part, and cannot hear or will not recognize each other's music, while God is listening to all; of the two sides of the choir in heaven and earth; and of the voices in the higher choir which I should hear no more on earth.

"I felt lifted into a higher world. And we two walked home in one of those restful silences which sometimes say so much more than words.

"It broke a little rudely on this when, at the gate of the chateau, M. la Mothe's servant met us, exclaiming:

"'Ah, madame! M. le Comte is much agitated. He says it is ten minutes after the time when madame brings him his posset.'

"We hastened into the salon. M. la Mothe was indeed much agitated.

"'Pardon me, my friend,' she said; 'I am ten minutes late.'

"He pointed to the clock.

"'Ten, madam!' he exclaimed. 'Fourteen and a half, at the least! when the physician said every minute was of consequence. But we must bear it, no doubt. Neglect is the portion of the aged. And madame has her salvation to accomplish, no doubt! In my youth married women accomplished their salvation in accomplishing the comfort of their husbands. But times change. In a few months I shall, no doubt, be beyond the reach of neglect; and then madame can accomplish her salvation without further interruption. Heaven grant it may prove your salvation after all! Those learned gentlemen, the Jesuits, think otherwise, and they have great saints among them.'

"I shall never forget the sweet humility with which she acknowledged the justice of his reproaches, and tact and tenderness with which she soothed his feeble irritability into tranquillity again.

"'You mean well, no doubt, my poor friend!' he said at last, with a lofty air of forbearance; 'and no doubt we shall not soon have such an omission again.

"'Ah, my child!' she said to me, as she came into my room afterwards; 'if you had only known how good he was, and how patient with me, when I was wild and young! These little irritations are not from the heart, but from the brain, which is over-tasked and tired. He had no sleep last night on account of the gout, and I read aloud to him romances, insipid enough, I think, to send me asleep in a house on fire. But they had no effect on him, the pain was so acute.'

"The tears came into my eyes. She thought nothing of her own fatigue.

"'You need not pity me,' she said, with her own bright smile. 'I am an easy, happy old woman, far too contented, I fear, with the world and with my lot in it. If I have any virtue, it is good temper; and that is scarcely a virtue, not certainly a grace--indeed, merely a little hereditary advantage, like skin that heals quickly.'

"'I was not pitying you, madame,' I ventured to say; 'I was only thinking how much better God makes our crosses for us than they make them even at Port Royal.'

"'Alas, my child!' she sighed; 'there is no need for the holy ladies and gentlemen of Port Royal to make their own crosses. The Jesuits are preparing plenty of crosses, I fear, for them. But do not, I entreat you, dignify such little prickles as mine by the name of crosses.'

"I made no answer, save by kissing her hand. For I thought her crosses were none the worse discipline because to her they seemed only prickles; and her graces all the more genuine and sweet because to her they seemed only 'little hereditary advantages.'

"It is such a help to 'crosses,' in the work they have to do for us, when they have no chance of looking grand enough to be set up on pedestals and adored; and it is such a blessing for 'graces' when they are not clothed in Sunday or 'religious' clothes, so as to have any opportunity of looking at themselves at all.

"Good temper, kindliness, cheerfulness, lowliness, tenderness, justice, generosity, seem to me to lose so much of their beauty and fragrance when they change their sweet familiar home-names (which are also their true Christian names) for three-syllabled saintly titles, such as 'holy indifference,' or 'saintly resignation,' and pace demurely about in processions, saying, in every deprecatory look and regulated gesture, 'See how unlike the rest of the world we are!'

"'_When saw we Thee an hungered?_?'--how much that means! It was not so much, I think, that the 'righteous' had not recognized the Master in their acts, as that they did not recall the acts. They did not recognize the sweet blossoms of their own graces, because His life had gone down to the root, and flowed through every stem and twig of everyday feeling, and overflowed in every bud and blossom of every-day words and works, as naturally and inevitably as a fountain bubbles up in spray. It was not His presence they had been unconscious of, but their own services. For it seems to me just the acts religious people least remember that are the most beautiful, and that Christ most remembers, because they flow from the deepest source; not from a conscious purpose, but from a pervading instinctive life.

"In such unconscious acts the noble men and women of Port Royal are rich indeed. I love, for instance, to think how M. de St. Cyran, when himself a prisoner in the Bastille, sold some of the few precious books remaining to buy clothes for two fellow-prisoners of his--the Baron and Baroness de Beau Soleil--and said to the lady who undertook the commission for him, 'I do not know what is necessary, but some one has told me that gentlemen and ladies of their condition ought not to be seen in company without gold lace for the men and black lace for the women. Pray purchase the best, and let everything be done modestly, and yet handsomely, that when they see each other they may forget, for a few minutes at least, that they are captives.' Madame de Beau Soleil's beautiful 'worldly' lace will perhaps prove a more religious robe for M. de St. Cyran than his own 'religious habit.'

"The selling of the church plate at Port Royal to relieve the poor is certainly as much a religious act as the buying it. The voluntary desecration of their church into a granary, to save the corn of the poor peasants from plunder during the wars of the Fronde, was certainly a true consecration of it. The lovely wax models which the sister Angélique makes to purchase comforts for our Royalist countrywomen, heretics though she believes us to be, seem (to us at least) a labour of love sure not to be forgotten above. The delight in acts of kindness to others, for which Blaise Pascal is said to torture himself by pressing the sharp studs of his iron girdle into the flesh, may prove to have been more sanctifying than the pain by which he seeks to expiate it. The homely services which Jacqueline Pascal rendered her little dying niece on the nights she spent in nursing her through 'confluent smallpox,' may prove to have been more 'divine offices' than those she spent so many nights, half-benumbed with cold, in reciting.

"And so, after all, from the most self-questioning religious life, as well as from the lowliest life of love that scarcely dared call itself religious, may come that same answer of the righteous. He who scarce dared lift his eyes to heaven, saying with rapture, 'Was it indeed Thee to whom I gave that cup of cold water?'--and the austere Puritan (Catholic or Protestant, saying), 'Was it indeed the _feeding_ and _clothing_, those little forgotten acts of kindness I thought nothing of, that were pleasing Thee?"

"_February_.--I wonder what Olive is doing and learning. These misunderstandings of God and of one another perplex me at times not a little. I wonder if she has any perplexities of the same kind in England?

"This morning Madame la Mothe told me a beautiful saying of M. Arnauld d'Andilly, brother to the Mère Angélique, when some one was exhorting him to rest, 'There is all eternity,' he replied, 'to rest in.'

"This evening I repeated this to Barbe. She replied: 'It reminds me of a saying of a good pastor of ours, who said, when some one tried to comfort him in severe sickness by wishing him health and rest, "Mon lit de santè et de repos sera dans le ciel."'*

* Told of M. Drelincourt, pastor of Charenton, who died in 1669.

"The two sides of the choir again!--taking up the responses from each other without knowing anything of each other's singing! How wonderful it all is! This deafness to each other's music; these misunderstandings of each other's words! this deafness to what God tells us of Himself in the Gospels, and in the world; these misunderstandings of Him! And His patient listening, and understanding us all!