Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
From his earliest childhood his father had taught him to see God in
nature, and the first light that came now to him in the outer darkness
was the truth which had really become part of his very being when, as a
little fellow, he rode with the doctor through the Herefordshire lanes,
learning to observe, and learning to love birds and insects and flowers.
God was in His creation and the world was not at the mercy of fate and
chance.
Yet it was not until this autumn evening that the breadth of the
assertion struck him, or that he in the least grasped the thought that
the grand climax, welcoming the entrance of the King of Glory, was
the prophecy of the entire ultimate triumph of the Lord strong
and mighty--the Conqueror in the battle of love against hate, of
righteousness against sin.
Sickened and utterly wearied with the stormy theological disputes of the
age, he reached now beyond the clamouring voices, and sought refuge in
the living realities wherein alone peace can be found.
Moreover, as he lay that evening in the dark prison room, for spite of
the cold and the short days the prisoners were allowed neither fire nor
light, there returned to him in helpful fashion the remembrance of the
last talk he had had with his friend Joscelyn Heyworth.
They had sat late together in their quarters at the “Nagg’s Head” in
Bath, and Joscelyn had told him of his visit to his old tutor Whichcote,
at North Cadbury, during which the recent death of Hampden had been the
chief topic, and in his bitterness of soul the young Captain had found
relief in telling an older and wiser man the despair he felt for the
country under its grievous loss. A memory returned to Gabriel of some
words of Whichcote’s as to heaven, which his friend had quoted, and he
fell to musing over them. “Heaven is first a temper and then a place;
and both heaven and hell have their foundations within us.” He knew only
too well that the last statement was true, knew it by the brutal thirst
for vengeance which was consuming him; by the hatred of his enemies
which had changed his whole character, by the harsh judgments
he silently passed on the failings and petty weaknesses of his
fellow-prisoners. But the tutor had said that heaven also had its
foundation within us, and the thought linked itself now to that
startling assertion that the world and they that dwell therein are
God’s, which had first lightened his gloom. Musing over it all, he
presently fell into a sounder and more refreshing sleep than any he had
of late known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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