Christian fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Others again judged him a fanatic--a dangerous man. Such did not all
venture to assert that he had erred from the way, but what man was
more dangerous than he who went too far? Possibly these forgot that
the narrow way can hardly be one to sit down in comfortably, or
indeed to be entered at all save by him who tries the gate with the
intent of going all the way--even should it lead up to the
perfection of the Father in heaven. "But," they would in effect have
argued, "is not a fanatic dangerous? and is not an enthusiast always
in peril of becoming a fanatic?--Be his enthusiasm for what it
may--for Jesus Christ, for God himself, such a man is dangerous--
most dangerous! There are so many things, comfortably settled like
Presumption's tubs upon their own bottoms, which such men would, if
they could, at once upset and empty!"
Others suspected a Romanizing drift in the whole affair. "Wait until
he gathers influence," they said, "and a handful of followers, and
then you'll see! They'll be all back to Rome together in a month!"
As the wind took by the tail St. Peter's cock on the church spire
and whirled it about, so did the wind of words in Glaston rudely
seize and flack hither and thither the spiritual reputation of
Thomas Wingfold, curate. And all the time, the young man was
wrestling, his life in his hand, with his own unbelief; while upon
his horizon ever and anon rose the glimmer of a great aurora, or the
glimpse of a boundless main--if only he could have been sure they
were no mirage of his own parched heart and hungry eye--that they
were thoughts in the mind of the Eternal, and THRERFORE had appeared
in his, even as the Word was said to have become flesh and dwelt
with men! The next moment he would be gasping in that malarious
exhalation from the marshes of his neglected heart--the
counter-fear, namely, that the word under whose potent radiance the
world seemed on the verge of budding forth and blossoming as the
rose, was TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.
"Yes, much too good, if there be no living, self-willing Good," said
Polwarth one evening, in answer to the phrase just dropped from his
lips. "But if there be such a God as alone could be God, can
anything be too good to be true?--too good for such a God as
contented Jesus Christ?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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