Christian fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
own son into the world--had given him to appear among us, clothed in
the garb of humanity, the armour that can be pierced, to take all
the consequences of being the god of obedience amongst the children
of disobedience, engulfing their wrongs in his infinite forbearance,
and winning them back, by slow and unpromising and tedious renewal,
to the heart of his father, surely such a God would not have created
them, knowing that some of them would sin sins from the horror of
which in themselves all his devotion could not redeem them!--And as
he thought thus, the words arose in his mind--"COME UNTO ME ALL YE
THAT LABOUR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST." His
heart filled. He pondered over them. When he got home he sought and
found them in the book.--Did a man ever really utter them? If a man
did, either he was the most presumptuous of mortals, or HE COULD DO
WHAT HE SAID. If he could, then to have seen and distrusted that
man, Wingfold felt, would have been to destroy in himself the
believing faculty and become incapable of trusting for ever after.
And such a man must, in virtue of his very innocence, know that the
worst weariness and the worst load is evil and crime, and must know
himself able, in full righteousness, with no jugglery of oblivion or
self-esteem, to take off the heavy load and give rest.
"And yet," thought the curate, not without self-reproach, "for one
who will go to him to get the rest, a thousand will ask--HOW CAN HE
THEN DO IT?--As if they should be fit to know!"
CHAPTER XIII.
A SERMON TO HELEN.
All the rest of the week his mind was full of thoughts like these,
amid which ever arose the suffering face of Helen Lingard, bringing
with it the still strengthening suspicion that behind it must lie
some oppressive, perhaps terrible secret. But he made no slightest
movement towards the discovery of it, put not a single question in
any direction for its confirmation or dissolution. He would not look
in at her windows, but what seeds of comfort he could find, he would
scatter wide, and hope that some of them might fall into her garden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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