The Sergeant, however, enjoyed much inward peace though little
happiness. For how different is peace from happiness! Happiness is the
result of harmony between our wants as creatures and the world without:
peace is the harmony between us as spiritual beings and the Father of
our spirits. The one is as changeable as the objects or circumstances
on which it for the moment relies; the other is as unchangeable as the
God on whom it eternally rests. We may thus possess at once real
happiness and real peace; yet either may exist without the other. Nay
more, happiness may be destroyed by God in order that the higher
blessing of peace may be possessed; but never will He take away peace to
give happiness! Happiness without peace is temporal, but peace along
with happiness is eternal.
Adam, as we have said, enjoyed little happiness in the conflict in which
he was engaged, but he was kept in "perfect peace".
When another Sunday came round, the old sense of duty induced him to go,
as usual, to church. His absence might be supposed to indicate that he
feared the face of man, because fearing the face of God. Katie
accompanied him. Her courage rose to the occasion. Let not the reader
who, moving in a larger sphere of life, has learned to measure his
annoyances by a larger standard, smile at these simple souls, or think
it an exaggeration thus to picture their burden as having been so heavy.
Adam and Katie walked along the street, knowing all the time that they
did so under the gaze of the cold and criticising eyes of some who were
disposed to say to them, "Stand back, I am holier than thou!" Yet more
persons than they themselves were aware of felt towards them kindness,
pity, and respect, mingled with very opposite feelings to those of the
minister and the members of Kirk Session who had made so much ado about
so small an affair. Others forgot the sympathy due to a suffering, good
man, apart from its immediate cause. Many of his worthy friends said
afterwards that they "did not think of it!" Alas! this _not_ thinking
is often the worst form of thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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