The illustration would have pleased Hester much had he said "coming out
of a concert-room," for she was not able to think of God being in a
theatre: perhaps that had some relation to her inability to tell Saffy
why God made the animals: she could have found her a reason why he made
the dogs, but not why he made the monkeys. We are surrounded with things
difficult to understand, and the way most people take is not to look at
them lest they should find out they have to understand them. Hester
suspected scepticism under the remarks of the doctor: most doctors, she
believed, had more than a leaning in that direction. But she had herself
begun to have a true notion of serving _man_ at least; therefore
there was no fear of her not coming to see by and by what serving God
meant. She did serve him, therefore she could not fail of finding out
the word that belonged to the act: no one who does not serve him ever
can find out what serving him means. Some people are constantly rubbing
at their skylights, but if they do not keep their other windows clean
also, there will not be much light in the house: God, like his body, the
light, is all about us, and prefers to shine in upon us sideways: we
could not endure the power of his vertical glory; no mortal man can see
God and live; and he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, shall
not love his God whom he hath not seen. He will come to us in the
morning through the eyes of a child, when we have been gazing all night
at the stars in vain.
Hester rose. She was a little frightened at the very peculiar man and
his talk. She had made several attempts in the dull light, but without
much success, to see him as he watched the contortions of the acrobats,
which apparently he enjoyed more than to her seemed reasonable. But, as
with herself, it was the boy Moxy that chiefly attracted him, though the
show of physical prowess was far from uninteresting to him; and although
what she saw through the smoky illumination of the dip was not
attractive to her, the question remains whether it was really the man
himself she saw, or only an appearance made up of candle gleam and
gloom, complemented by her imagination. I will write what she saw, or
thought she saw.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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