CHAPTER 25

The Removal, 1855.

When I was on the eve of leaving Perranzabuloe, and before I knew that I was to go, I felt there was a gulf between the people and myself.  Whatever else they held they were quite ignorant of ecclesiastical antiquities, Church history, and Catholic truth; what is more, they were unwilling to learn about such matters.

Now I began to feel that another gulf was opening between my present people and myself.  It was not as before, about ecclesiastical things; but on another score altogether.  I wanted them to believe in a living Saviour:  they were trying to content themselves with salvation instead.  I wanted them to trust the Giver:  they preferred to rejoice in the gift.  I longed to lead them on to trust Christ as the object of faith, and from this to go on to devote themselves to His service, for very love of Him—­to be loosed from the present world, by the hope of the Lord’s coming.  I could not get the people to receive this teaching, though it was God’s truth, and could be verified by the Word.

I confess that this threefold truth was not so satisfying to my own soul as I expected it would be.  I remembered that I had not learned it from men or books, but experimentally, by God’s teaching, in answer to prayer.  I could not imagine what was wanting, and did not discover, for several years after, that the mere knowledge of a truth by itself, even though it is about Christ, cannot deliver.  It is not the truth of Christ that delivers, but the Christ of the truth.  In itself, it is but an instrument in the hand of the Spirit; and our expectation should be not from it, but from the Divine Person, whose it is.

I have found that the power is Christ Himself; that where He is really the object of faith, He keeps the believer in peace; and that if there is no peace, it is only because there is a deficiency of trust:  that He, as the object of love, constrains us to work for His Father’s glory; and that He, as the object of hope, can and does separate us from the world and its entanglements, by drawing our affections to things above and beyond the present.  Not having discovered this simple yet important truth, I was restless; and from God’s Word came down to read the words’ and thoughts of men.  I fell in with the “Life of Madame Guyon.”  Here I found much sympathy, but somehow not that peace I was looking for.  Then I read the writings of the Port Royal school, the Jansenists, Butler’s “Lives of the Saints,” and other such books.  These diverted my mind, employed and interested it; but I cannot say they satisfied me.  I was craving for something which I had not found yet, and had to wait three years or more before I did so.