stay where you are. I shall be able to speak more freely if you are not present. Here is a book to amuse yourself with. I do not think I shall be long gone."
But I was longer gone than I thought I should be.
When I reached the carpenter's house, I found, to my surprise, that he was still at work. By the light of a single tallow candle placed beside him on the bench, he was ploughing away at a groove. His pale face, of which the lines were unusually sharp, as I might have expected after what had occurred, was the sole object that reflected the light of the candle to my eyes as I entered the gloomy place. He looked up, but without even greeting me, dropped his face again and went on with his work.
"What!" I said, cheerily,—for I believed that, like Gideon's pitcher, I held dark within me the light that would discomfit his Midianites, which consciousness may well make the pitcher cheery inside, even while the light as yet is all its own—worthless, till it break out upon the world, and cease to illuminate only glazed pitcher-sides—"What!" I said, "working so late?"
"Yes, sir."
"It is not usual with you, I know."
"It's all a humbug!" he said fiercely, but coldly notwithstanding, as he stood erect from his work, and turned his white face full on me—of which, however, the eyes drooped—"It's all a humbug; and I don't mean to be humbugged any more."
"Am I a humbug?" I returned, not quite taken by surprise.
"I don't say that. Don't make a personal thing of it, sir. You're taken in, I believe, like the rest of us. Tell me that a God governs the world! What have I done, to be used like this?"
I thought with myself how I could retort for his young son: "What has he done to be used like this?" But that was not my way, though it might work well enough in some hands. Some men are called to be prophets. I could only "stand and wait."
"It would be wrong in me to pretend ignorance," I said, "of what you mean. I know all about it."
"Do you? He has been to you, has he? But you don't know all about it, sir. The impudence of the young rascal!"
He paused for a moment.
"A man like me!" he resumed, becoming eloquent in his indignation, and, as I thought afterwards, entirely justifying what Wordsworth says about the language of the so-called uneducated,—"A man like me, who was as proud of his honour as any aristocrat in the country—prouder than any of them would grant me the right to be!"
"Too proud of it, I think—not too careful of it," I said. But I was thankful he did not heed me, for the speech would only have irritated him. He went on.
"Me to be treated like this! One child a ..."
Here came a terrible break in his speech. But he tried again.
"And the other a ..."
Instead of finishing the sentence, however, he drove his plough fiercely through the groove, splitting off some inches of the wall of it at the end.
"If any one has treated you so," I said, "it must be the devil, not God."
"But if there was a God, he could have prevented it all."
"Mind what I said to you once before: He hasn't done yet. And there is another enemy in His way as bad as the devil—I mean our SELVES. When people want to walk their own way without God, God lets them try it. And then the devil gets a hold of them. But God won't let him keep them. As soon as they are 'wearied in the greatness of their way,' they begin to look about for a Saviour. And then they find God ready to pardon, ready to help, not breaking the bruised reed—leading them to his own self manifest—with whom no man can fear any longer, Jesus Christ, the righteous lover of men—their elder brother—what we call BIG BROTHER, you know—one to help them and take their part against the devil, the world, and the flesh, and all the rest of the wicked powers. So you see God is tender—just like the prodigal son's father—only with this difference, that God has millions of prodigals, and never gets tired of going out to meet them and welcome them back, every one as if he were the only prodigal son He had ever had. There's a father indeed! Have you been such a father to your son?"
"The prodigal didn't come with a pack of lies. He told his father the truth, bad as it was."
"How do you know that your son didn't tell you the truth? All the young men that go from home don't do as the prodigal did. Why should you not believe what he tells you?"
"I'm not one to reckon without my host. Here's my bill."
And so saying, he handed me a letter. I took it and read:—
"SIR,—It has become our painful duty to inform you that your son has this day been discharged from the employment of Messrs—-and Co., his conduct not being such as to justify the confidence hitherto reposed in him. It would have been contrary to the interests of the establishment to continue him longer behind the counter, although we are not prepared to urge anything against him beyond the fact that he has shown himself absolutely indifferent to the interests of his employers. We trust that the chief blame will be found to lie with certain connexions of a kind easy to be formed in large cities, and that the loss of his situation may be punishment sufficient, if not for justice, yet to make him consider his ways and be wise. We enclose his quarter's salary, which the young man rejected with insult, and,
"We remain, &c.,
"—-and Co."
"And," I exclaimed, "this is what you found your judgment of your own son upon! You reject him unheard, and take the word of a stranger! I don't wonder you cannot believe in your Father when you behave so to your son. I don't say your conclusion is false, though I don't believe it. But I do say the grounds you go upon are anything but sufficient."
"You don't mean to tell me that a man of Mr—-'s standing, who has one of the largest shops in London, and whose brother is Mayor of Addicehead, would slander a poor lad like that!"
"Oh you mammon-worshipper!" I cried. "Because a man has one of the largest shops in London, and his brother is Mayor of Addicehead, you take his testimony and refuse your son's! I did not know the boy till this evening; but I call upon you to bring back to your memory all that you have known of him from his childhood, and then ask yourself whether there is not, at least, as much probability of his having remained honest as of the master of a great London shop being infallible in his conclusions—at which conclusions, whatever they be, I confess no man can wonder, after seeing how readily his father listens to his defamation."
I spoke with warmth. Before I had done, the pale face of the carpenter was red as fire; for he had been acting contrary to all his own theories of human equality, and that in a shameful manner. Still, whether convinced or not, he would not give in. He only drove away at his work, which he was utterly destroying. His mouth was closed so tight, he looked as if he had his jaw locked; and his eyes gleamed over the ruined board with a light which seemed to me to have more of obstinacy in it than contrition.
"Ah, Thomas!" I said, taking up the speech once more, "if God had behaved to us as you have behaved to your boy—be he innocent, be he guilty—there's not a man or woman of all our lost race would have returned to Him from the time of Adam till now. I don't wonder that you find it difficult to believe in Him."
And with those words I left the shop, determined to overwhelm the unbeliever with proof, and put him to shame before his own soul, whence, I thought, would come even more good to him than to his son. For there was a
