Queechy Volume I Part 30

"Died for us! ? And what end was that to serve, Elfie?" said he, partly willing to hear the full statement of the matter, and partly willing to see how far her intelligence could give it.

"Because we are sinners," said Fleda, "and G.o.d has said that sinners shall die."

"Then how can he keep his word, and forgive at all?"

"Because Christ has died _for us_," said Fleda, eagerly ?

"instead of us."

"Do you understand the justice of letting one take the place of others?"

"He was willing, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with a singular wistful expression, that touched him.

"Still, Elfie," said he, after a minute's silence, "how could the ends of justice be answered by the death of one man in the place of millions?"

"No, Mr. Carleton, but He was G.o.d as well as man," Fleda said, with a sparkle in her eye which perhaps delayed her companion's rejoinder.

"What should induce him, Elfie," he said, gently, "to do such a thing for people who had displeased him?"

"Because he loved us, Mr. Carleton."

She answered with so evident a strong and clear appreciation of what she was saying, that it half made its way into Mr.

Carleton's mind by the force of sheer sympathy. Her words came almost as something new.

Certainly Mr. Carleton had heard these things before; though perhaps never in a way that appealed so directly to his intelligence and his candour. He was again silent an instant, pondering, and so was Fleda.

"Do you know, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, "there are some people who do not believe that the Saviour was anything more than a man?"

"Yes, I know it," said Fleda; ? "it is very strange!"

"Why is it strange?"

"Because the Bible says it so plainly."

"But those people hold, I believe, that the Bible does not say it."

"I don't see how they could have read the Bible," said Fleda.

"Why, he said so himself."

"Who said so?"

"Jesus Christ. Don't you believe it, Mr. Carleton?"

She saw he did not, and the shade that had come over her face was reflected in his before he said "No."

"But perhaps I shall believe it yet, Elfie," he said, kindly.

"Can you show me the place in your Bible where Jesus says this of himself?"

Fleda looked in despair. She hastily turned over the leaves of her Bible to find the pa.s.sages he had asked for, and Mr.

Carleton was cut to the heart to see that she twice was obliged to turn her face from him, and brush her hand over her eyes, before she could find them. She turned to Matt. xxvi.

63-65, and, without speaking, gave him the book, pointing to the pa.s.sage. He read it with great care, and several times over.

"You are right, Elfie," he said. "I do not see how those who honour the authority of the Bible, and the character of Jesus Christ, can deny the truth of His own declaration. If that is false, so must those be."

Fleda took the Bible, and hurriedly sought out another pa.s.sage.

"Grandpa showed me these places," she said, "once when we were talking about Mr. Didenhover ? _he_ didn't believe that. There are a great many other places, grandpa said; but one! is enough." ?

She gave him the latter part of the 20th chapter of John.

"You see, Mr. Carleton, he let Thomas fall down and wors.h.i.+p him, and call him G.o.d; and if he had _not_ been, you know ? G.o.d is more displeased with that than with anything."

"With what, Elfie?"

"With men's wors.h.i.+pping any other than himself. He says he 'will not give his glory to another.' "

"Where is that?"

"I am afraid I can't find it," said Fleda ? "it is somewhere in Isaiah, I know" ?

She tried in vain; and failing, then looked up in Mr.

Carleton's face to see what impression had been made.

"You see Thomas believed when he _saw_," said he, answering her; ? "I will believe, too, when I see."

"Ah! if you wait for that" ? said Fleda.

Her voice suddenly checked: she bent her face down again to her little Bible, and there was a moment's struggle with herself.

"Are you looking for something more to show me?" said Mr.

Carleton, kindly, stooping his face down to hers.

"Not much," said Fleda, hurriedly; and then making a great effort, she raised her head, and gave him the book again.

"Look here, Mr. Carleton ? Jesus said, 'Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.' "

Mr. Carleton was profoundly struck, and the thought recurred to him afterwards, and was dwelt upon. "Blessed are they that have _not_ seen, and yet have believed." It was strange at first, and then he wondered that it should ever have been so.

His was a mind peculiarly open to conviction, peculiarly accessible to truth; and his attention being called to it, he saw faintly now what he had never seen before, the beauty of the principle of _faith_ ? how natural, how reasonable, how _necessary_, how honourable to the Supreme Being, how happy even for man, that the grounds of his trust in G.o.d being established, his acceptance of many other things should rest on that trust alone.

Mr. Carleton now became more reserved and unsociable than ever. He wearied himself with thinking. If he could have got at the books, he would have spent his days and nights in studying the evidences of Christianity; but the s.h.i.+p was bare of any such books, and he never thought of turning to the most obvious of all, the Bible itself. His unbelief was shaken; it was within an ace of falling in pieces to the very foundation; or, rather, he began to suspect how foundationless it had been. It came at last to one point with him ? If there were a G.o.d, he would not have left the world without a revelation ?

no more would he have suffered that revelation to defeat its own end by becoming corrupted or alloyed; if there was such a revelation, it could be no other than the Bible; and his acceptance of the whole scheme of Christianity now hung upon the turn of a hair. Yet he could not resolve himself. He balanced the counter doubts and arguments on one side and on the other, and strained his mind to the task; he could not weigh them nicely enough. He was in a maze; and seeking to clear and calm his judgment that he might see the way out, it was in vain that he tried to shake his dizzied head from the effect of the turns it had made. By dint of anxiety to find the right path, reason had lost herself in the wilderness.

Fleda was not, as Mr. Carleton had feared she would be, at all alienated from him by the discovery that had given her so much pain. It wrought in another way, rather to add a touch of tender and anxious interest to the affection she had for him.

It gave her, however, much more pain than he thought. If he had seen the secret tears that fell on his account, he would have been grieved; and if he had known of the many pet.i.tions that little heart made for him, he could hardly have loved her more than he did.

One evening Mr. Carleton had been a long while pacing up and down the deck in front of little Fleda's nest, thinking and thinking, without coming to any end. It was a most fair evening, near sunset, the sky without a cloud, except two or three little dainty strips which set off its blue. The ocean was very quiet, only broken into cheerful mites of waves that seemed to have nothing to do but sparkle. The sun's rays were almost level now, and a long path of glory across the sea led off towards his sinking disk. Fleda sat watching and enjoying it all in her happy fas.h.i.+on, which always made the most of everything good, and was especially quick in catching any form of natural beauty.

Mr. Carleton's thoughts were elsewhere ? too busy to take note of things around him. Fleda looked now and then as he pa.s.sed at his gloomy brow, wondering what he was thinking of, and wis.h.i.+ng that he could have the same reason to be happy that she had. In one of his turns his eye met her gentle glance; and, vexed and bewildered as he was with study, there was something in that calm bright face that impelled him irresistibly to ask the little child to set the proud scholar right. Placing himself beside her, he said, ?