“You would like better to be at home in bed, wouldn’t you?” he asked, trying me.
“No, indeed, I should not,” I answered, with more than honesty; for I felt exuberantly happy.
“If only we can keep warm,” said my father. “If you should get very cold indeed, you must not lose heart, my man, but think how pleasant it will be when we get home to a good fire and a hot breakfast.”
“I think I can bear it all right. I have often been cold enough at school.”
“This may be worse. But we need not anticipate evil: that is to send out for the suffering. It is well to be prepared for it, but it is ill to brood over a fancied future of evil. In all my life, my boy--and I should like you to remember what I say--I have never found any trial go beyond what I could bear. In the worst cases of suffering, I think there is help given which those who look on cannot understand, but which enables the sufferer to endure. The last help of that kind is death, which I think is always a blessing, though few people can regard it as such.”
I listened with some wonder. Without being able to see that what he said was true, I could yet accept it after a vague fashion.
“This nest which we have made to shelter us,” he resumed, “brings to my mind what the Psalmist says about dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. Everyone who will, may there, like the swallow, make himself a nest.”
“This can’t be very like that, though, surely, father,” I ventured to object.
“You are right there. Still it is like. It is our place of refuge.”
“But it keeps our minds at peace. Even the refuge in God does not always secure us from external suffering. The heart may be quite happy and strong when the hands are benumbed with cold. Yes, the heart even may grow cold with coming death, while the man himself retreats the farther into the secret place of the Most High, growing more calm and hopeful as the last cold invades the house of his body. I believe that all troubles come to drive us into that refuge--that secret place where alone we can be safe. You will, when you go out into the world, my boy, find that most men not only do not believe this, but do not believe that you believe it. They regard it at best as a fantastic weakness, fit only for sickly people. But watch how the strength of such people, their calmness and common sense, fares when the grasp of suffering lays hold upon them. It was a sad sight--that abject hopeless misery I saw this afternoon. If his mind had been an indication of the reality, one must have said that there was no God--no God at least that would have anything to do with him. The universe as reflected in the tarnished mirror of his soul, was a chill misty void, through which blew the moaning wind of an unknown fate. As near as ever I saw it, that man was without God and without hope in the world. All who have done the mightiest things--I do not mean the showiest things--all that are like William of Orange--the great William, I mean, not our King William--or John Milton, or William Penn, or any other of the cloud of witnesses spoken of in the Epistle to the Hebrews--all the men I say who have done the mightiest things, have not only believed that there was this refuge in God, but have themselves more or less entered into the secret place of the Most High. There only could they have found strength to do their mighty deeds. They were able to do them because they knew God wanted them to do them, that he was on their side, or rather they were on his side, and therefore safe, surrounded by God on every side. My boy, do the will of God--that is, what you know or believe to be right, and fear nothing.”