



Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al
Haines.










THE SEABOARD PARISH

BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.

VOL. II.






CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


    I. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
   II. NICEBOOTS
  III. THE BLACKSMITH
   IV. THE LIFE-BOAT
    V. MR. PERCIVALE
   VI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH
  VII. AT THE FARM
 VIII. THE KEEVE
   IX. THE WALK TO CHURCH
    X. THE OLD CASTLE
   XI. JOE AND HIS TROUBLE
  XII. A SMALL ADVENTURE
 XIII. THE HARVEST




CHAPTER I.

ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.


In the evening we met in Connie's room, as usual, to have our talk. And
this is what came out of it.

The window was open. The sun was in the west. We sat a little aside out
of the course of his radiance, and let him look full into the room.
Only Wynnie sat back in a dark corner, as if she would get out of his
way. Below him the sea lay bluer than you could believe even when you
saw it--blue with a delicate yet deep silky blue, the exquisiteness of
which was thrown up by the brilliant white lines of its lapping on the
high coast, to the northward. We had just sat down, when Dora broke out
with--

"I saw Niceboots at church. He did stare at you, papa, as if he had
never heard a sermon before."

"I daresay he never heard such a sermon before!" said Connie, with the
perfect confidence of inexperience and partiality--not to say
ignorance, seeing she had not heard the sermon herself.

Here Wynnie spoke from her dark corner, apparently forcing herself to
speak, and thereby giving what seemed an unpleasant tone to what she
said.

"Well, papa, I don't know what to think. You are always telling us to
trust in Him; but how can we, if we are not good?"

"The first good thing you can do is to look up to him. That is the
beginning of trust in him, and the most sensible thing that it is
possible for us to do. That is faith."

"But it's no use sometimes."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you--I mean I--can't feel good, or care about it at all."

"But is that any ground for saying that it is no use--that he does not
heed you? that he disregards the look cast up to him? that, till the
heart goes with the will, he who made himself strong to be the helper
of the weak, who pities most those who are most destitute--and who so
destitute as those who do not love what they want to love--except,
indeed, those who don't want to love?--that, till you are well on
towards all right by earnestly seeking it, he won't help you? You are
to judge him from yourself, are you?--forgetting that all the misery in
you is just because you have not got his grand presence with you?"

I spoke so earnestly as to be somewhat incoherent in words. But my
reader will understand. Wynnie was silent. Connie, as if partly to help
her sister, followed on the same side.

"I don't know exactly how to say what I mean, papa, but I wish I could
get this lovely afternoon, all full of sunshine and blue, into unity
with all that you teach us about Jesus Christ. I wish this beautiful
day came in with my thought of him, like the frame--gold and red and
blue--that you have to that picture of him at home. Why doesn't it?"

"Just because you have not enough of faith in him, my dear. You do not
know him well enough yet. You do not yet believe that he means you all
gladness, heartily, honestly, thoroughly."

"And no suffering, papa?"

"I did not say that, my dear. There you are on your couch and can't
move. But he does mean you such gladness, such a full sunny air and
blue sea of blessedness that this suffering shall count for little in
it; nay more, shall be taken in for part, and, like the rocks that
interfere with the roll of the sea, flash out the white that glorifies
and intensifies the whole--to pass away by and by, I trust, none the
less. What a chance you have, my Connie, of believing in him, of
offering upon his altar!"

