When he
took her hand--listless one day, fiercely despairing the next,--he
would glance at her with a swift scrutiny that questioned, and then
waited. The pity in his old eyes never dimmed their relentless
keenness; they seemed to raid her face, sounding all the shallows in
search of depths. For with his exultant faith in human nature, he
believed that somewhere in the depths he should find God, It is only
the pure in heart who can find Him in impurity, who can see, behind
the murky veil of stained flesh, the very face of Christ declaring the
possibilities of the flesh!--but this old man sought and knew that he
should find Him. He waited and watched for many days, looking for that
recognition of wrong-doing which breaks the heart by its revelation of
goodness that might have been; for there is no true knowledge of sin,
without a divine and redeeming knowledge of righteousness! So, as this
old saint looked into the breaking heart, pity for the sinner who was
base deepened into reverence for the child of God who might be noble.
It is an easy matter to believe in the confident soul; but Dr.
Lavendar believed in a soul that did not believe in itself!
It seemed to Helena that she had nothing to live for; that there was
nothing to do except shiver back out of sight, and wait to die. For
the time was not yet when she should know that her consciousness of
sin might be the chased and fretted Cup from which she might drink the
sacrament of life; when she should come to understand, with
thanksgiving, that unless she had sinned, the holy wine might never
have touched her lips!
In these almost daily talks with Dr.
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