Christian fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
"To tell you all that followed, if I could recall and narrate it in
order, would take hours. Suffice it that from that moment I was a
student, a disciple. Soon to me also came then the two questions:
HOW DO I KNOW THAT THERE IS A GOD AT ALL? and--HOW AM I TO KNOW THAT
SUCH A MAN AS JESUS EVERY LIVED? I could answer neither. But in the
meantime I was reading the story--was drawn to the man there
presented--and was trying to understand his being, and character,
and principles of life and action. And, to sum all in a word, many
months had not passed ere I had forgotten to seek an answer to
either question: they were in fact questions no longer: I had seen
the man Christ Jesus, and in him had known the Father of him and of
me. My dear sir, no conviction can be got, or if it could be got,
would be of any sufficing value, through that dealer in second-hand
goods, the intellect. If by it we could prove there is a God, it
would be of small avail indeed: we must see him and know him, to
know that he was not a demon. But I know no other way of knowing
that there is a God but that which reveals WHAT he is--the only idea
that could be God--shows him in his own self-proving existence--and
that way is Jesus Christ as he revealed himself on earth, and as he
is revealed afresh to every heart that seeks to know the truth
concerning him."
A pause followed, a solemn one, and then again Polwarth spoke:
"Either the whole frame of existence," he said, "is a wretched,
miserable unfitness, a chaos with dreams of a world, a chaos in
which the higher is for ever subject to the lower, or it is an
embodied idea growing towards perfection in him who is the one
perfect creative Idea, the Father of lights, who suffers himself
that he may bring his many sons into the glory which is his own
glory."
CHAPTER XIX.
THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.
"But," said Wingfold--"only pray do not think I am opposing you; I
am in the straits you have left so far behind: how am I to know that
I should not merely have wrought myself up to the believing of that
which I should like to be true?"
"Leave that question, my dear sir, until you know what that really
is which you want to believe. I do not imagine that you have more
than the merest glimmer of the nature of that concerning which you,
for the very reason that you know not what it is, most rationally
doubt. Is a man to refuse to withdraw his curtains lest some flash
in his own eyes should deceive him with a vision of morning while
yet it is night? The truth to the soul is as light to the eyes: you
may be deceived, and mistake something else for light, but you can
never fail to know the light when it really comes."
"What then would you have of me?--what am I to DO?" said Wingfold,
who, having found his master, was docile as a child, but had not
laid firm enough hold upon what he had last said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account