Christian fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
“I think our associations can hardly be so multiform, or so delicate, as
to have a share in bringing to us half of the thoughts and feelings that
nature wakes in us. If they have such a share, they must have reference
either to a fore-existence, or to relations hidden in our being, over
which we have no control; and equally in such case are the thoughts
and feelings waked in us, not by us. I do not want to argue; I am only
suggesting that, if the world moves thought and feeling in those that
regard it, thought and feeling are somehow concerned in the world. Even
to wake old feelings, there must be a likeness to them in what wakes
them, else how could it wake them? In a word, feeling must have put
itself into the shape that awakes feeling. Then there is feeling in the
thing that bears that shape, although itself it does not feel. Therefore
I think it may be said that there is more thought, or, rather, more
expression of thought, in the face of the world when the sun is up, than
when he is not--as there is more thought in a face awake than in a face
asleep.--Ah, there is the sun! and there are things that ought never to
be talked about in their presence! To talk of some things even behind
their backs will keep them away!”
Richard neither understood his last words, nor knew that he did not
understand them. But he did understand that it was better to watch the
sunrise than to talk of it.
Up came the child of heaven, conquering in the truth, in the might
of essential being. It was no argument, but the presence of God that
silenced the racked heart of Job. The men stood lost in the swift
changes of his attendant colours--from red to gold, from the human to
the divine--as he ran to the horizon from beneath, and came up with a
rush, eternally silent. With a moan of delight Richard turned to his
gazing companion, when he beheld that on his face which made him turn
from him again: he had seen what was not there for human eyes! The
radiance of Wingfold's countenance, the human radiance that met the
solar shine, surpassed even that which the moon and the sky and the
sleeping earth brought out that night upon the face of Barbara! The one
was the waking, the other but the sweetly dreaming world.
Richard refused to let any emotion, primary or reflex, influence his
opinions; they must be determined by fact and severe logical outline.
Whatever was not to him definite--that is, was not by him formally
conceivable, must not be put in the category of things to be believed;
but he had not a notion how many things he accepted unquestioning, which
were yet of this order; and not being only a thing that thought, but a
thing as well that was thought, he could not help being more influenced
by such a sight than he would have chosen to be, and the fact that he
was so influenced remained. Happily, the choice whether we shall be
influenced is not given us; happily, too, the choice whether we shall
obey an influence _is_ given us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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