Diana Part 42

"Don't you think," the minister began again with a tender, light accent, "it will be part of my permanent duty to preach to you?"

"I dare say; I am sure I want it enough," said Diana.

"Is not this a good opportunity?"

"I suppose it is. We cannot get away."

"Never mind; the wind will go down by and by. It has been blowing on purpose to keep us here. Diana, do you think a good G.o.d made any of his creatures to be unhappy?"

"I don't know, Mr. Masters. He lets them be unhappy."

"It is not his will."

"But he takes away what would make them happy?"

"What do you think would do that?"

"I suppose it is one thing with one person, and another with another."

"True; but take an instance."

"It is mother's happiness to have her farm and her dairy and her house go just right."

"Is she happy if it does?"

"She is very uncomfortable if it don't."

"That is not my question," said the minister, smiling. "Happiness is not a thing that comes and goes with the weather, or the crops, or the state of the market;--nor even with the life and death and affection of those we love."

"I thought it did"--said Diana rather faintly.

"In that case it would be a changeable, insecure thing; and being that, it would cease to be happiness."

"Yes. I thought human happiness was changeable and uncertain."

"Do you not feel that such conditions would spoil it? No; G.o.d loves us better than that."

"But, Mr. Masters," said Diana in some surprise, "n.o.body in this world can be sure of keeping what he likes?"

"Except one thing."

"What can that be?"

"Did you never see anybody who was happy independent of circ.u.mstances?"

Diana reflected. "I think Mother Bartlett is."

"I think so too."

"But she is the only person of whom that is true in all Pleasant Valley."

"How comes she to be an exception?"

Diana reflected again, but this time without finding an answer.

"Isn't it, that she has set her heart on what cannot fail her nor be insufficient for her?"

"Religion, you mean."

"I do not mean religion."

"What then?" Diana asked in new surprise.

"I mean--Christ."

"But--isn't that the same thing?"

"Not exactly. Christ is a person."

"Yes--but"--

"And _he_ it is that can make happy those who know him. Do you remember he said, 'He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst'?"

Looking up at the speaker and following his words, they somehow struck Diana rather hard. Her lip suddenly trembled, and she looked down.

"You do not understand it," said the minister, "but you must believe it. Poor hungry lamb, seeking pasture where there is none,--where it is withered,--come to Christ!"

"Do you mean," said Diana, struggling for voice and self-command, but unable to look up, for the minister's hand was on her shoulder and his words had been very tenderly spoken,--"do you mean, that when everything _is_ withered, he can make it green again?"

The minister answered in the words of David, which were the words of the Lord: "'He shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender gra.s.s springeth out of the earth by clear s.h.i.+ning after rain.'"

Diana bent her head lower. Could such refreshment and renewal of her own wasted nature ever come to pa.s.s? She did not believe it; yet perhaps there was life yet at the roots of the gra.s.s which scented the rain. The words swept over as the breath of the south wind.

"'The light of a morning without clouds'"--she repeated when she could speak.

"Christ is all that, to those who know him," the minister said.

"Then I do not know him," said Diana.

"Did you think you did?"

"But how _can_ one know him, Mr. Masters?"

"There is only one way. It is said, 'G.o.d, who created the light out of darkness, hath _s.h.i.+ned in our hearts_, to give the light of the glory of the knowledge of Christ.'"

"How?"

"I cannot tell. As the sun rises over the hills, and suddenly the gold of it is upon everything, and the warmth of it."