“I’m sure, sir, you have had hard enough work with me! I am a bad one
to teach! I thought I knew all that you have had such trouble to make
me see! I was in a bog of ignorance and misery, but now I am getting
my head up out of it, and seeing about me!—Please let me ask you one
thing, sir: how is it that, when the thought of God comes to me, I draw
back, afraid of him? If he be the kind of person you say he is, why
can’t I go close up to him?”
“I confess the same foolishness, my child, _at times_,” answered the
minister. “It can only be because we do not yet see God as he is—and
that must be because we do not yet really understand Jesus—do not see
the glory of God in his face. God is just like Jesus—exactly like him!”
And the parson fell a wondering how it could be that so many, gentle and
guileless as this woman-child, recoiled from the thought of the perfect
One. Why were they not always and irresistibly drawn toward the very
idea of God? Why, at least, should they not run to see and make sure
whether God was indeed such a one or not? whether he was really Love
itself—or only loved them after a fashion? It set him thinking afresh
about many things; and he soon began to discover that he had in fact
been teaching a good many things without _knowing_ them; for how could
he _know_ things that were not true, and therefore _could not_ be known?
He had indeed been _saying_ that God was Love, but he had yet been
teaching many things about him that were not lovable!
They sat thinking and talking, with silences between; and while they
thought and talked, the day-star was all the time rising unnoted in
their hearts. At length, finding herself much stronger, Isy rose, and
they resumed their journey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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