^ Wife murder was also considered quite legitimate. In one of our inland villages dwelt a young couple, happy in every respect except that they had no children. The man, being a Heathen, resolved to take home another wife, a widow with two children. This was naturally opposed by his young wife. And, without the slightest warning, while she sat plaiting a basket, he discharged a ball into her from his loaded musket. It crashed through her arm and lodged in her side. Everything was done that was in my power to save her life ; but on the tenth day tetanus came on, and she soon after passed away. The man appeared very attentive to her all the time ; but, being a Heathen, he insisted that she had no right to oppose his wishes ! He was not in any way punished or disrespected by the people of his village, but went out and in amongst them as usual, and took home the other woman as his wife a few weeks thereafter. His second wife began to attend Church and School regularly with her children ; and at last he also came along with them, changing very manifestly from his sullen and savage former self. They have a large family ; they
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are avowedly trying to train them all for the Lord Jesus ; and they take their places meekly at the Lord's Table.
It would give a wonderful shock, I suppose, to many namby- pamby Christians, to whom the title " Mighty to Save " conveys no ideas of reality, to be told that nine or ten converted murderers were partaking with them the Holy Communion of Jesus ! But the Lord who reads the heart, and weighs every motive and circumstance, has perhaps much more reason to be shocked by the presence of some of themselves. Penitence opens all the Heart of God — " To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." ^
(3) But Christ's words infer a third truth — the immortality of the soul, of the conscious personality of the child of God. The Father is immortal, therefore the child. Goodness and love — two names of the same thing — are necessarily eternal. If the child is to reach the goodness and love of the Father, he must be as eternal as the Father. If all this trouble be taken with the individual child, it is ridiculous to the reason, and inconceivable to the heart, that the Father should fling that which He laboured for and loved into annihilation. If we allow that God is a Father that conclusion of death is unthinkable.
^ We then went for a three miles' walk, my father talking of the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau, of religion, of faith, and of immortality. While touching on the life after death he spoke of Carlyle, and his dimness of faith in the closing years of his life. He said that when he was stopping at a coffee-house in London, Carlyle had come to smoke a pipe with him in the evening and the talk turned upon the immortality of the soul; upon which Carlyle said : " Eh ! old Jewish rags : you must clear your mind of all that. Why should we expect a hereafter ? Your traveller comes to an inn, and he takes his bed, it's only for one night, he leaves next day, and another man takes his place and sleeps in the bed that he has vacated." My father continued : " I answered, * Your traveller comes to his inn, and lies down in his bed, and leaves the inn in the morning, and goes on his way rejoicing, with the sure and certain hope and belief that he is going somewhere, where he will sleep the next night,' and then Edward Fitzgerald, who was present, said, ' You have him there ' " : " which proves," said my father, " how dangerous an illustration is." ^
^ Dr. McLaren of Manchester gave an address at the " Union Assembly" in Edinburgh on the 9th of October 1901. His biographer says : There was one passage in particular, towards the
1 John G. Paton, ii. 160. ^ Tennyson : A Memoir, ii. 410.
298 TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?
end of the address, when his radiant look told even more than his words. It ran as follows : —
" Consider how the conscious possession of that higher life in Christ brings with it an absolute incapacity of believing that what men call death can affect it. ' Christ in us ' *s ' the hope of glory.' The true evidence for immortality lies in the deep experience of the Christian spirit. It is when a man can say, * Thou art the strength of my heart ' that the conviction springs up inevitable and triumphant, that such a union can no more be severed by the physical accident of death than a spirit can be wounded by a sword, and that, therefore, he has the right to say further, * and my portion for ever! "
In the short pause that came after these words, and during the rustle of movement (preparation for another spell of sustained attention) one listener turned to another and whispered, " It is like seeing a spirit." And it was true.^