Christian fiction; Neighborhoods -- Scotland -- Fiction
“Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
young,” she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were
walking up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the
down-turf was indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we
had reached the top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight.
The top of the hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun
was hanging on the face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea
stretched for visible miles and miles along the shore on either hand,
its wide blue mantle fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land,
and scalloped into all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the
nether fires which had formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as
they bore the rising tide up on the shore, was the one music fit for
the whole. Ear and eye, touch and smell, were alike invaded with
blessedness. I ought to have kept this to give my reader in Connie’s
room; but he shall share with her presently. The sense of space--of
mighty room for life and growth--filled my soul, and I thanked God in
my heart. The wind seemed to bear that growth into my soul, even as the
wind of God first breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and
the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment of every aspiration. I turned
and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but listless amidst that which
lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.
“Don’t you enjoy all this grandeur, Wynnie?”
“I told you I was very wicked, papa.”
“And I told you not to say so, Wynnie.”
“You see I cannot enjoy it, papa. I wonder why it is.”
“I suspect it is because you haven’t room, Wynnie.”
“I know you mean something more than I know, papa.”
“I mean, my dear, that it is not because you are wicked, but because you
do not know God well enough, and therefore your being, which can only
live in him, is ‘cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.’ It is only in
him that the soul has room. In knowing him is life and its gladness. The
secret of your own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who
knows its secret. Look up, my darling; see the heavens and the earth.
You do not feel them, and I do not call upon you to feel them. It would
be both useless and absurd to do so. But just let them look at you for
a moment, and then tell me whether it must not be a blessed life that
creates such a glory as this All.”
She stood silent for a moment, looked up at the sky, looked round on the
earth, looked far across the sea to the setting sun, and then turned her
eyes upon me. They were filled with tears, but whether from feeling,
or sorrow that she could not feel, I would not inquire. I made haste to
speak again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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