<h3 class='c001'>CHAPTER V</h3></div>
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<div class='line'>Life! life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west,</div>
<div class='line in10'>Love, Love alone can pore</div>
<div class='line in10'>On thy dissolving score</div>
<div class='line in10'>Of harsh half-phrasings,</div>
<div class='line in12'>Blotted ere writ,</div>
<div class='line in10'>And double erasings</div>
<div class='line in12'>Of chords most fit.</div>
<div class='line in42'>—<span class='sc'>Sidney Lanier.</span></div>
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<p class='c010'>From the time of the missionary meeting and the
announcement of his daughter’s determination to devote
herself to the service of Christ in a heathen land, Samuel
Mallison’s health declined rapidly. His <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Nunc Dimittis</span></i>
was of literal import, and prophetic.</p>
<p class='c011'>Whether the death which all who loved him saw that
he was soon to accomplish could be called dying of
heart-break or dying of fulfilled desire, would have been
hard to determine. Heart and flesh cried out against
the separation from his best-beloved child, while the
triumphant spirit blessed God for answered prayer, and
for the fruition in that cherished life of his child of
hopes and aspirations which had been but scantily fulfilled
in his own.</p>
<p class='c011'>“I have not been a successful man, Anna,” he said
to her one autumn day when they were alone in his
study. He sat erect in his straight chair, but with an
unmistakable languor in every line of face and frame,
and with a feverish brightness in his prominent dark
eyes.</p>
<p class='c011'>Anna laid her hand upon his with endless gentleness.</p>
<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>“No man in Haran is so beloved, father. No man
has done so much good.”</p>
<p class='c011'>“Perhaps,” he answered sadly, “and I am satisfied.
It is the will of God. Anna, I have seemed, perhaps,
cold and silent, and without feeling as you have seen me;
but the fire within has burned unceasingly, and I am
consumed.”</p>
<p class='c011'>The last words were spoken lower and with an unconscious
pathos which moved Anna unspeakably.</p>
<p class='c011'>“I do not understand, father dear, not fully. Can
you tell me all? I love you so.”</p>
<p class='c011'>They were the simplest words of the most natural
affection, and yet it was the first time in her life that
Anna had spoken after this sort to her father.</p>
<p class='c011'>“My girl,” he said simply, taking her hand within
his own. Then, after a pause, he continued speaking.</p>
<p class='c011'>“It is after this manner that life has gone with me.
I believe I ought to retrace my past with you—for perhaps
there may be light upon your path, if you know all.
When I entered the ministry it was with sincerely right
purpose; all the influences of my life pointed me in that
direction, but it was, perhaps, more as an intellectual and
congenial profession than from deeper reasons. I began
my ministry, in 1841, in Boston. I was considered to
have certain gifts which were valued in that day, and all
went well, on the surface. But it was the period of a
literary awakening in our nation, of which Boston was
the centre of influence. An American literature was
just becoming a visible reality, and a new impulse was at
work and stirring everywhere. Men of original force
were suddenly multiplied before us, and the contagion of
intellectual ambition was felt in an altogether new degree.
To me it became all-controlling. Transcendental philosophy,
<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>Platonism, and classic learning acquired for me
a supreme attraction, and I gave myself more and more
to the study of them, and to the translation of Greek
poetry. This had no unfavourable effect upon my preaching
in the opinion of my congregation, rather the reverse,
and I may say without vanity that I had reached comparatively
early a certain eminence to which I was by no
means indifferent.”</p>
<p class='c011'>Samuel Mallison paused a moment, while Anna
silently reflected that this narrative would in the end
explain the buried books of her dear old garret delight.</p>
<p class='c011'>“Learning was young among us in those days,
Anna,” Samuel Mallison began again humbly, after a
little space, “else this would not have happened; in
the year 1848 I received a call to a professorship of the
Greek language and literature in Harvard College.”</p>
<p class='c011'>Anna felt her own young blood rush to her cheeks in
pride and wonder and amazement. To her little-village
simplicity and scanty experience this seemed a surpassing
distinction, and one which placed her father among the
great men of the earth.</p>
<p class='c011'>“The day after the mind of the authorities had been
made known to me, was the day of my life which I
remember best,” Samuel Mallison continued.</p>
<p class='c011'>“I went to my study that morning with a programme
of what would take place somewhat definitely before
my mind. I was about to seek, humbly and devoutly,
an interview with God, in which I would lay before
him this new and momentous opening in my life, and
seek to have his will for me made clear. What this
will would be, or what I should take it to be, was, just
below the surface of my mind, a foregone conclusion.
In fact, my letter of acceptance was substantially framed
<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>in my mind already. I had never been favoured with
voices and visions and revelations clear and conclusive
in my religious experience, and I foresaw a decision
based upon general reasonableness and preference,
touched with a pleasant sense of the divine favour,
which might naturally be expected to rest upon so
congenial a course, and one so worthily justified by
precedent. I read, as a preparatory exercise, with perfect
satisfaction, the twelfth chapter of John’s Gospel,
then closed my Bible and knelt in prayer. This was
exactly as I had foreseen—an orderly series of exercises
befitting my position. But, oh; how mechanical,
how cold, how barren! With such perfunctory practices
I could think to take leave of the sacred calling
of the ministry, so dead had my spirit grown to the
claims of the blessed gospel, and its mission of salvation
to a lost and perishing world!</p>
<p class='c011'>“I knelt and thought to pray, but, like the king in
‘Hamlet’, my words flew up, my thoughts remained
below. Between me and Him whom I would have
approached, interposed, like a palpable barrier, a solemn
reiterated echo of words just read: ‘Verily, verily, I
say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall
lose it.’</p>
<p class='c011'>“I rose from my knees and walked up and down the
room in great anxiety of spirit. This new work which
I thought to undertake was educational, ennobling, necessary;
in no way contrary to sound doctrine, in no
way a betrayal of sacred responsibility; I was fitted for
it by nature, by tastes, and attainments. Why was it
opened to me? To mock me? to tempt? I could
<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>not believe it, I had welcomed it as coming in the providence
of God.</p>
<p class='c011'>“But my heart-searching grew swift and deep, and
it was given me to see the absoluteness, the finality, of
the vows which I had assumed, from which I straightway
realized that no argument of those with which I
was equipped sufficed to release me. Feebly and imperfectly,
yet sensibly, I began to grasp the import of
what the apostle calls the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings,
the being made conformable unto his death. Oh,
the depth of the mystery hid in that saying! All these
years I have sounded it—Anna, all these years I have
died, in my own natural life—I have striven to give all
I had to give, but the ‘much fruit’—where has it
been?”</p>
<p class='c011'>An expression of pain, hardly less than agony, was
impressed upon Samuel Mallison’s face, and Anna hid
her eyes, finding it too bitter to bear to see him suffer
thus.</p>
<p class='c011'>“I put it all away from me, then and there. Nothing
was possible but for me to decline the invitation which
had been given, you can see. Further, I saw that my
studies had been my snare. My love of poetry and
philosophy and learning, the prominence of my pulpit,
the social and intellectual affinities I had formed, all had
contributed to my spiritual deadness and decline. It
was then that I put away in that box, now upstairs, the
books which had particularly ministered to the tastes
which had led me so far from the true conception of my
life work. Never since that day have I allowed myself
to follow the instinct for poetic expression. That longing
had to be cut out, even if some life-blood flowed in
the doing it. Henceforth, I wished to know nothing
<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>but Christ, and him—Anna, do not fail to grasp this—him,
not triumphant, but <em>crucified</em>. The offence of
the cross to the natural spirit, how hardly can it be overcome!
No child’s play, no easy and harmonious growth
in grace, has it been to me, but a conflict all the way.
Your mother has a different type of religious life. Be
thankful if her temperament shall prove to be yours.</p>
<p class='c011'>“That is the story. I left my church not very long
after and sought this rugged, remote section, because it
offered hard work and a needy field, which some men
shunned. Some years before I had met your mother, and
we were married. Twenty years of my life and its best
activity have been spent here in Haran. Those first
few years and what made life to me in them I have looked
upon as a false start. From that day, I sought only this
one gift: an especial enduement of the Holy Spirit to
give me power with men unto salvation. I desired this
gift supremely, but I have not received it in any signal
manner. My ministry has not been wholly unfruitful,
but it has been lacking in the results for which I hoped;
I have not had power with God and men, as have some
of my more favoured brethren. The end is near now,
very near, but I come with almost empty hands and a
humbled, contrite heart to meet my Judge. But, my
child, whatever the conflicts of the past years, the last
thing which I could wish for to-day would be to have
reversed that early decision. My life, from the merely
human point of view, might, perhaps, on the line of intellectual
effort have been counted successful, while as a
minister of Christ it has not been so to any marked degree:
but what is success, and what failure, when the
things of time fade before our eyes?”</p>
<p class='c011'>Samuel Mallison’s head drooped upon one supporting
<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>hand, and an expression of solemn musing rested on his
face, while Anna’s tears flowed fast.</p>
<p class='c011'>“Just to do our own little day’s work faithfully, not
knowing what its part may be in the great whole, just
to hold fast to the word of God and the testimony of
Jesus, and, having begun the race, to continue to the end—is
not this enough?”</p>
<p class='c011'>There was silence between them for some moments,
and then the father said, making a sign to Anna to
rise:—</p>
<p class='c011'>“I want you to leave me now, dear child. I must
rest. The one earthly hope to which I still cling is that
to you may be given the reward of ‘much fruit,’ which
I have failed to win. Remember this, if all the other
teaching I have given you shall be forgotten in the years
which are to try you, of what stuff you are made: <em>with
greatness we have nothing at all to do; faithfulness only is
our part</em>.”</p>
<p class='c011'>Anna Mallison listened to these words with reverent
sympathy and loving response, but the deeper meaning
of them did not reveal itself to her, her time for perception
being not yet fully come.</p>
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<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>
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