True to his Colours. Theodore P. Wilson
for good, as being on the same level with them, in a way denied to himself. While, on the other hand, the man of inferior education and position is conscious that all real increase in knowledge is increase in power, and that his brother of higher-station and more extensive reading can grasp and deal effectually with topics of interest and importance, which could not be done justice to by his own less skilful and less intelligent handling. And thus, as each leans in a measure on the other, being in entire sympathy as they are on highest things, the force of their united action on the hearts and lives of others is powerful indeed. Such was the case in Crossbourne. The combined work of the vicar and Thomas Bradly, both for the salvation of souls and the rescue and reformation of the intemperate, was being felt by the enemies of the truth to be a work of power: they were therefore on the watch to hinder and mar that work by every means within their reach; for Satan will not lose any of his captives without setting his own agents on a most determined and vigorous resistance.
The vicar himself was just the fitting man for his position. Gently yet not luxuriously nurtured, and early trained in habits of self-denial and consideration for the feelings of others, he had entered the ministry, not only with a due sense of the solemnity of his responsibilities, and under a conviction that he was truly called to his profession by the inward voice of the Holy Spirit, but also with a loving self-forgetfulness, while he sought earnestly the truest welfare of all committed to his charge. And when he passed, after some years’ experience in the ministerial Work, to the important post of vicar of Crossbourne, he had come to take a peculiar interest in the study of individual character, and to delight in gathering around him workers of various temperaments and habits of thought. Rugged enough were some of these in their general bearing and their way of expressing themselves; but he knew well, when he had broken through the outer surface, what a firm-grained material he had to work upon in the hearts of such, and how he would be sure to win from them, in due time, by force and consistency of character, respect and affection as abiding as they were sincere.
It was his happiness also to be united to a wife like-minded with himself in views and work. On one point alone they had differed, and that was as to the mental training of their only child, a daughter.
Clara Maltby was now eighteen. She had been brought up by the united teaching and example of both parents “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Naturally thoughtful and retiring, and fond of learning, she had mastered the lessons taught her in her earliest years with an ease which awoke in her mother’s heart an ambition that her child, when she grew old enough, should gain some intellectual distinction. And as Clara herself was never happier than when she had a book in her hand, all that her parents had to do was to choose for her such branches of study as she was best calculated to shine in. Nor did she disappoint her teachers, but threw herself into her lessons with an energy and interest which made it certain that she would rise to eminence among competitors for the prizes of learning proposed to her own sex. And thus it was that what might have been a rational thirst after knowledge, and have led to the acquirement of stores of information which would have made their possessor an ornament to her home and to the society in which she moved, grew into an absorbing passion.
She came at length to live in and for her studies. All her other pursuits and occupations were made to be subordinate to these, and were by degrees completely swallowed up by them. Not that she was unaware that there were duties which she ought to fulfil in her home and in her father’s parish, which could not be done justice to without shortening her hours of study. She saw this plainly enough, and deplored her neglect; but she had come to persuade herself that success in her intellectual pursuits was the special end at which she was to aim for the present; and she believed that her mother, at any rate, held the same view.
And yet her conscience was not at ease on the matter. Home and parish work which used to fall to her was either left undone or transferred to others. “Mother,” she would say, “I am so sorry not to be of more use; I ought to help you, and to take my share of work in the parish; but then you know how it is—you see that I have no time.” Once her class in the Sunday-school had been her delight, and the object of many an anxious thought and earnest prayer, while each individual scholar had a place in her heart and her supplications. But by degrees the preparation for the Sunday lessons became irksome and too much for her already overworked brain. She must make the Sabbath a day of absolute rest from all mental exertion, except such as was involved in a due attendance on the services in the house of God, which her conscience would not allow her to absent from.
As for week-day work in the parish, such as taking her turn in visiting the girls’ day-school, undertaking a district as visitor, looking up and tending the sick and the sorrowful in conjunction with her father and mother, the excuse of “no time” was pleaded here also; so that she who was once welcomed in every home in the parish, and carried peace by her loving words and looks to many a troubled and weary heart, was now becoming daily more and more a stranger to those who used to love and value her. Indeed, she seldom now stirred from home, except when snatching for health’s sake a hasty walk, in which she would hurry from the vicarage and back again along roads where she was least likely to meet with interruption from the greetings of friends or neighbours.
Light, purer light, the light of God’s truth, had indeed shone into her heart, but that light was suffering a gradual and deepening eclipse through the shadow cast by the idol of intellectual ambition, which had usurped for a while the place where once her Saviour reigned supreme. And the poor body was suffering, for the overstrained mind was sapping the vigour of all its powers. And then there came a resort to that remedy, the stimulant which spurs up the flagging energies to extraordinary and spasmodic exertion, only to leave the poor deluded victim more prostrate and exhausted than ever.
The vicar had never been satisfied with his daughter’s course. Life, in his view, was too short and eternity too near to justify any one in pursuing even the most innocent and laudable object in such a manner as to unfit the soul for keeping steadily in view its highest interests, and to engross the mind and life so entirely as to shut all the doors of loving and Christian usefulness. While acknowledging the value of storing, cultivating, and enlarging the mind, he became daily more and more convinced that such mental improvement was becoming a special snare to the young and enthusiastic; beguiling them into the neglect of manifest duty, and into a refined and subtle self-worship, which, in the case of those who had set out on the narrow way, was changing the substance for a shadow, and destroying that peace which none can truly feel who rob their Saviour of the consecration of all that they have and are to his glory.
But deeply as he deplored the change in his daughter’s habits, and her withdrawal from first one good work and then another, he had not fully realised how it had come about, and the mischief it was doing to the body, mind, and soul of the child he loved so dearly. It was only gradually that she had relinquished first one useful occupation, and then another; and circumstances seemed at the time to make such withdrawal necessary.
Then, too, his wife’s reluctance to see that, after all, she had mistaken the path on which she should have encouraged her daughter to travel, had led her to make as light as possible of the evil effects, which were only too plain to others not so nearly interested in her child’s well-being. She could not bear to think that, after all, Clara’s pursuit of intellectual distinction was physically, morally, and spiritually a huge mistake, and that she was purchasing success at the cost of health and peace. “There was nothing seriously amiss with her,” she would tell her husband, when he expressed his misgivings and fears; “she only wanted a little change; that would set her up: there was no real cause for anxiety. It would never do for Clara to be behind the rest of the girls of her age in intellectual attainments: it would be doing her injustice, for she was so manifestly calculated to shine; and if God had given her the abilities and the tastes, surely they ought to be cultivated. She could return by-and-by to her work in the Sunday-school and the parish. And then, how much better it was that she should be acquiring really solid and useful knowledge, which would be always valuable to her, than be spending her energies on any of the worldly or frivolous pursuits which were entangling and spoiling so many well-disposed girls in our day.”
Alas! The poor mother, whose own heart and conscience were not really satisfied with these reasonings, had forgotten, or failed to see, that the same devotion to study which kept her daughter