If there had but been some one of themselves to teach
that the true outlet and sedative of overstrained
feeling is right action! that the performance of an
unpleasant duty, say the paying of their debts, was
a far more effectual as well as more specially religious
mode of working off their excitement than dancing!
that feeling is but the servant of character until
it becomes its child! or rather, that feeling is but
a mere vapour until condensed into character! that
the only process through which it can be thus consolidated
is well doing—the putting forth of the right
thing according to the conscience universal and individual,
and that thus, and thus only, can the veil be .withdrawn
from between the man and his God, and the man be saved
in beholding the face of his Father!
“But have patience—give them time,”
said Mr Graham, who had watched the whole thing from
the beginning. “If their religion is religion,
it will work till it purifies; if it is not, it will
show itself for what it is, by plunging them into
open vice. The mere excitement and its extravagance—the
mode in which their gladness breaks out—means
nothing either way. The man is the willing, performing
being, not the feeling shouting singing being:
in the latter there may be no individuality—nothing
more than receptivity of the movement of the mass.
But when a man gets up and goes out and discharges
an obligation, he is an individual; to him God has
spoken, and he has opened his ears to hear: God
and that man are henceforth in communion.”
These doings, however, gave—how should
they fail to give?—a strong handle to the
grasp of those who cared for nothing in religion but
its respectability—who went to church Sunday
after Sunday, “for the sake of example”
as they said—the most arrogant of Pharisaical
reasons! Many a screeching, dancing fisher lass
in the Seaton was far nearer the kingdom of heaven
than the most respectable of such respectable people!
I would unspeakably rather dance with the wildest
of fanatics rejoicing over a change in their own spirits,
than sit in the seat of the dull of heart, to whom
the old story is an outworn tale.
CHAPTER XLIX: MOUNT PISGAH
The intercourse between Florimel and Malcolm grew
gradually more familiar, until at length it was often
hardly to be distinguished from such as takes place
between equals, and Florimel was by degrees forgetting
the present condition in the possible future of the
young man. But Malcolm, on the other hand, as
often as the thought of that possible future arose
in her presence, flung it from him in horror, lest
the wild dream of winning her should make him for
a moment desire its realization.
