unkind
to his child. The Lord can ask, 'What man of you, if his son 129
asked for bread, would give him a stone?' and it is a rhetorical question. Anyone knows from experience that among us there are a good many fathers who mistreat their children, or abandon them. And it was at that point I noticed young Boughton grinning at me.
White as a sheet, and grinning. The text was one I would never have chosen if I'd thought he might be
there, though if I'd kept to the sermon as I wrote it, everything would have been better.
About the cruelty of those narratives I said that they rendered the fact that children are often victims of rejection or violence, and that in these cases, too, which the Bible does not otherwise countenance, the child is within the providential care of God. And this is no less true, I said, if the angel carries her home to her faithful and loving Father than if He opens the spring or stops the knife and lets the child live out her sum of earthly years.
I don't know how sufficient that is to the question. It is such a difficult question that I hesitate to raise it at all. My only preparation for dealing with it has been the many times people have asked me to explain it to them. Whatever they may have thought, I have not succeeded to my own satisfaction even once.
I have always worried that when I say the insulted or the downtrodden are within the providence of God, it will be taken by some people to mean that it is not a grave thing, an evil thing, to insult or oppress. The whole teaching of the Bible is explicitly contrary to that idea. So I quoted the words of the Lord: 'If anyone offend these little ones, it would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he were cast into the sea.'
That is strong language, but there it is. Young Boughton just sat there grinning. That's one thing that has always been strange about him. He treats words as if they were actions.
He doesn't listen to the meaning of words, 130
the way other people do. He just decides whether they are hostile, and how hostile they are. He decides whether they threaten him or injure him, and he reacts at that level. If he reads chastisement into anything you say, it's as if you had taken a shot at him. As if you had nicked his ear.
Now, as I have said, I did not expect him to be at that service. Furthermore, there are plenty of people whose behavior toward their children falls far short of what it should be, so, even when I departed from my text, and even though I will concede that my extemporaneous remarks might have been influenced by his sitting there with that look on his face, right
beside my wife and child, still it was considerable egotism on his part to take my words as directed at him only, as he clearly did.
Your mother looked anxious. That might have been because I seemed to her to be talking about my own situation, and hers and yours, or it might have been because I did struggle a little to organize my thoughts, or it might have been because my emotions ran higher than they normally do. And if I looked at all the way I felt, even half as weary, there'd be grounds for concern in that, too.
But the thought occurred to me that young Boughton had told her some version of events, enough so she saw the implications, from his point of view, of my sermon. I don't know
when he might have spoken to her. If he wanted the opportunity, he could have found it, I suppose. It did strike me as
strange that she didn't look at him even one time. If she wished not to seem at all to recognize him in the sermon, that would explain it. I felt perhaps others in the congregation might have thought the sermon was directed at him. It was all most unfortunate. I must hope some good can come of it. I just don't know why he isn't worshipping with the Presbyterians. Now I will pray. First I think I'll sleep. I'll try to sleep.
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Another morning, thank the Lord. A good night's sleep, and no real discomfort to speak of. A woman in my flock called just after breakfast and asked me to come to her house.
She is elderly, recently a widow, all by herself, and she has just moved from her farm to a cottage in town. You can never know what troubles or fears such people have, and I went. It turned out that
the problem was her kitchen sink. She told me, considerably amazed that a reversal so drastic could occur in a lawful universe, that hot water came from the cold faucet and cold water
from the hot faucet. I suggested she might just decide to take C
for hot and / / f o r cold, but she said she liked things to work the way they were supposed to. So I went home and got my screwdriver and came back and switched the handles. She said she
guessed that would do until she could get a real plumber. Oh, the clerical life! I think this lady has suspected me of a certain doctrinal sloughing off, and now she will be sure of it.
The story made your mother laugh, though, so my labors are repaid. Last night I finished The Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine. It gave me a sort of turn there for a while. The old man sees the girl with someone her own age and remarks how well suited they are, and then he starts getting old and shabby and broke, and she's still very beautiful, of course. But it all turns out fine. She loves him only and forever. I doubt the book would have kept my interest if that particular matter had not arisen. And then I did want to know what there was in it your mother liked so
much. God bless her, she's a dear woman. I read most of it yesterday evening, and then I couldn't sleep, wondering about it,
so I crept off to my study and read till almost dawn. And then 132
I went up to the church to watch the dawn come, because that peace does restore me better than sleep can do. It is as though there were a hoard of quiet in that room, as if any silence that ever entered that room stayed in it. I remember once as a child dreaming that my mother came into my bedroom and sat
down in a chair in the corner and folded her hands in her lap and stayed there, very calm and still. It made me feel wonderfully safe, wonderfully happy. When I woke up, there she was,
sitting in that chair. She smiled at me and said, 'I was just enjoying the quiet.' I have that same feeling in the church, that I
am dreaming what is true.
