Post Haste by R. M. Ballantyne (ebook audio reader .txt) 📖

now scarred and roughened fingers almost tearing out his hair, while his bloodshot eyes stared stonily at the blank wall opposite.

Bones continued to gaze at his companion, and to wish with all his heart that he had never met him. He had, some time before that, made up his mind to put no more temptation in the youth’s way. He now went a step further—he resolved to attempt the task of getting him out of the scrapes into which he had dragged him. But he soon found that the will which had always been so powerful in the carrying out of evil was woefully weak in the unfamiliar effort to do good!

Still, Bones had made up his mind to try. With this end in view he proposed a walk in the street, the night being fine. Aspel sullenly consented. The better to talk the matter over, Bones proposed to retire to a quiet though not savoury nook by the river-side. Aspel objected, and proposed a public-house instead, as being more cheerful.

Just opposite that public-house there stood one of those grand institutions which are still in their infancy, but which, we are persuaded, will yet take a prominent part in the rescue of thousands of mankind from the curse of strong drink. It was a “public-house without drink”—a coffee-tavern, where working men could find a cheap and wholesome meal, a cheerful, warm, and well-lit room wherein to chat and smoke, and the daily papers, without being obliged to swallow fire-water for the good of the house.

Bones looked at the coffee-house, and thought of suggesting it to his companion. He even willed to do so, but, alas! his will in this matter was as weak as the water which he mingled so sparingly with his grog. Shame, which never troubled him much when about to take a vicious course, suddenly became a giant, and the strong man became weak like a little child. He followed Aspel into the public-house, and the result of this first effort at reformation was that both men returned home drunk.

It seemed a bad beginning, but it was a beginning, and as such was not to be despised.

When Phil and Pax reached Archangel Court, a-glow with hope and good resolves, they found the subjects of their desires helplessly asleep in a corner of the miserable room, with Mrs Bones preparing some warm and wholesome food against the period of their recovery.

It was a crushing blow to their new-born hopes. Poor little Pax had entertained sanguine expectations of the effect of an appeal from Phil, and lost heart completely. Phil was too much cast down by the sight of his friend to be able to say much, but he had a more robust spirit than his little friend, and besides, had strong faith in the power and willingness of God to use even weak and sinful instruments for the accomplishment of His purposes of mercy.

Afterwards, in talking over the subject with his friend Sterling, the city missionary, he spoke hopefully about Aspel, but said that he did not expect any good could be done until they got him out of his miserable position, and away from the society of Bones.

To his great surprise the missionary did not agree with him in this.

“Of course,” he said, “it is desirable that Mr Aspel should be restored to his right position in society, and be removed from the bad influence of Bones, and we must use all legitimate means for those ends; but we must not fall into the mistake of supposing that ‘no good can be done’ by the Almighty to His sinful creatures even in the worst of circumstances. No relatives or friends solicited the Prodigal Son to leave the swine-troughs, or dragged him away. It was God who put it into his heart to say ‘I will arise and go to my father.’ It was God who gave him ‘power to will and to do.’”

“Would you then advise that we should do nothing for him, and leave him entirely in the hands of God?” asked Phil, with an uncomfortable feeling of surprise.

“By no means,” replied the missionary. “I only combat your idea that no good can be done to him if he is left in his present circumstances. But we are bound to use every influence we can bring to bear in his behalf, and we must pray that success may be granted to our efforts to bring him to the Saviour. Means must be used as if means could accomplish all, but means must not be depended on, for ‘it is God who giveth us the victory.’ The most appropriate and powerful means applied in the wisest manner to your friend would be utterly ineffective unless the Holy Spirit gave him a receptive heart. This is one of the most difficult lessons that you and I and all men have to learn, Phil—that God must be all in all, and man nothing whatever but a willing instrument. Even that mysterious willingness is not of ourselves, for ‘it is God who maketh us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.’ ‘Without me,’ says Jesus, ‘ye can do nothing.’ A rejecter of Jesus, therefore, is helpless for good, yet responsible.”

“That is hard to understand,” said Phil, with a perplexed look.

“The reverse of it is harder to understand, as you will find if you choose to take the trouble to think it out,” replied the missionary.

Phil Maylands did take the trouble to think it out. One prominent trait in his character was an intense reverence for truth—any truth, every truth—a strong tendency to distinguish between truth and error in all things that chanced to come under his observation, but especially in those things which his mother had taught him, from earliest infancy, to regard as the most important of all.

Many a passer-by did Phil jostle on his way to the Post-Office that day, after his visit to the missionary, for it was the first time that his mind had been turned, earnestly at least, to the subject of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.

“Too deep by far for boys,” we hear some reader mutter. And yet that same reader, perchance, teaches her little ones to consider the great fact that God is One in Three!

No truth is too deep for boys and girls to consider, if they only approach it in a teachable, reverent spirit, and are brought to it by their teacher in a prayerful spirit. But fear not, reader. We do not mean to inflict on you a dissertation on the mysterious subject referred to. We merely state the fact that Phil Maylands met it at this period of his career, and, instead of shelving it—as perhaps too many do—as a too difficult subject, which might lie over to a more convenient season, tackled it with all the energy of his nature. He went first to his closet and his knees, and then to his Bible.

“To the law and to the testimony” used to be Mrs Maylands’ watchword in all her battles with Doubt. “To whom shall we go,” she was wont to say, “if we go not to the Word of God?”

Phil therefore searched the Scripture. Not being a Greek scholar, he sought help of those who were learned—both personally and through books. Thus he got at correct renderings, and by means of dictionaries ascertained the exact meanings of words. By study he got at what some have styled the general spirit of Scripture, and by reading both sides of controverted points he ascertained the thoughts of various minds. In this way he at length became “fully persuaded in his own mind” that God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are facts taught in Scripture, and affirmed by human experience, and that they form a great unsolvable mystery—unsolvable at least by man in his present condition of existence.

This not only relieved his mind greatly, by convincing him that, the subject being bottomless, it was useless to try to get to the bottom of it, and wise to accept it “as a little child,” but it led him also to consider that in the Bible there are two kinds of mysteries, or deep things—the one kind being solvable, the other unsolvable. He set himself, therefore, diligently to discover and separate the one kind from the other, with keen interest.

But this is by the way. Phil’s greatest anxiety and care at that time was the salvation of his old friend and former idol, George Aspel.