But what then would Robertson think? He might give his wife the letter to read! She might even read it of herself, for they concealed nothing from each other! So he only walked the faster, tired himself, and earned an appetite as the result of his day’s work! He ate a good dinner, although with little enjoyment, and fell fast asleep in his chair. No letter was written to Robertson that day. No letter of such sort was ever written. The spirit was not willing, and the flesh was weakness itself. In the evening he took up a learned commentary on the Book of Job; but he never even approached the discovery of what Job wanted, received, and was satisfied withal. He never saw that what he himself needed, but did not desire, was the same thing—even a sight of God! He never discovered that, when God came to Job, Job forgot all he had intended to say to him—did not ask him a single question—knew that all was well. The student of Scripture remained blind to the fact that the very presence of the Living One, of the Father of men, proved sufficient in itself to answer every question, to still every doubt! But then James’s heart was not pure like Job’s, and therefore he could never have seen God; he did not even desire to see him, and so could see nothing as it was. He read with the blindness of the devil in his heart. In Marlowe’s _Faust_, the student asks Mephistopheles— How comes it then that thou art out of hell? And the demon answers him— Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it; and again— Where we are is hell; And where hell is there must we ever be: ... when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that are not heaven; and yet again— I tell thee I am damned, and now in hell; and it was thus James fared; and thus he went to bed. And while he lay there sleepless, or walked in his death to and fro in the room, his father and mother, some three miles away, were talking about him. CHAPTER XIV For some time they had lain silent, thinking about him by no means happily. They were thinking how little had been their satisfaction in their minister-son; and had gone back in their minds to a certain time, long before, when conferring together about him, a boy at school.