'Knock, and it shall be opened,' said the vicar; but the comfort was sadly spoken, and he sighed.
'But is not there a time, Mr. Wylder, when He shall have shut to the door, and are there not some who, crying to him to open, shall yet remain for ever in outer darkness?'
'I see, dear Miss Lake, that your mind is at work--it is a good influence--at work upon the great, theme which every mortal spirit ought to be employed upon.'
'My fears are at work; my mind is altogether dark and turbid; I am sometimes at the brink of despair.'
'Take comfort from those fears. There is hope in that despair;' and he looked at her with great interest in his gentle eyes.
She looked at him, and then away toward the declining sun, and she said despairingly--
'Come!' said he, 'Miss Lake, bethink you; was there not a time--and no very distant one--when futurity caused you no anxiety, and when the subject which has grown so interesting, was altogether distasteful to you. The seed of the Word is received at length into good ground; but a grain of wheat will bring forth no fruit unless it die first. The seed dies to outward sense, and despair follows; but the principle of life is working in it, and it will surely grow, and bring forth fruit--thirty, sixty, an hundredfold--be not dismayed. The body dies, and the Lord of life compares it to the death of the seed in the earth; and then comes the palingenesis--the rising in glory. In like manner He compares the reception of the principle of eternal life into the soul to the dropping of a seed into the earth; it follows the general law of mortality. It too dies--such a death as the children of heaven die here--only to germinate afresh with celestial power and beauty.'
Miss Lake's way lay by a footpath across a corner of the park to Redman's Dell. So they crossed the stile, and still conversing, followed the footpath under the hedgerow of the pretty field, and crossing another stile, entered the park.
To me, from association, no doubt, that park has always had a melancholy character. The ground undulates beautifully, and noble timber studs it in all varieties of grouping; and now, as when I had seen the ill-omened form of Uncle Lorne among its solitudes, the descending sun shone across it with a saddened glory, tipping with gold the blades of grass and the brown antlers of the distant deer.