The seed that is to rend the rock comes in all manner of odd, and often
unremembered, ways; but somehow, it is there; rains and dews unnoticed
feed it; and surely, one day the rock is rent, the light is pouring in,
and we are free! It is often a matter of anguish that, strive as we may,
it is impossible to remember what helping hand it was that sowed for us.
Our fickle memory seems to convict us of ingratitude, and yet we know
how far that sin is from us; and how, if those sowers could but be
revealed to us, we would fall upon their necks, or at their feet.
I talked of this one day with Narcissus, and some time after he sent me
a few notes headed 'Spiritual Pastors,' in which he had striven to
follow the beautiful example set by Marcus Aurelius, in the anxiously
loving acknowledgment with which he opens his meditations. I know he
regarded it as miserably inefficient; but as it does actually indicate
some of the more individual side of his experience, and is, moreover,
characteristic in its style, I shall copy a few passages from it here:--
'To some person or persons unknown exceeding gratitude for the
suggestion, in some dim talk, antenatal it would almost seem, that Roman
Catholics might, after all, be "saved." Blessed fecundating suggestion,
that was the earliest loophole!
'To my father I owe a mind that, once set on a clue, must follow it, if
need be, to the nethermost darkness, though he has chosen to restrict
the operation of his own within certain limits; and to my mother a
natural leaning to the transcendental side of an alternative, which has
saved me so many a time when reason had thrown me into the abyss.
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