The Romance of the Coast eBook

James Runciman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 198 pages of information about The Romance of the Coast.

The Romance of the Coast eBook

James Runciman
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 198 pages of information about The Romance of the Coast.
himself, unconsciously hinting at his physical power.  He then read his text in a low voice:  "Why is life given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?" Musgrave was an uneducated man, with strong logical instincts.  Perhaps, had he been educated thoroughly, the poetic vein, which gave the chief charm to his mind and conversation, would have been destroyed.  As it was, he invariably confined himself to logic so long as his emotions remained untouched; but there were moments when his blood seemed to catch fire, and he broke away from the calm reasoning which serves for placid men.  He then spoke with poetry, and with an accent which affected the nerves of all who heard him.  On this afternoon he began with a little sketch of the history of Job, and he then detailed his notion that the Arab, who wrote the most wonderful book in the world, was really the type of the modern man, and lived hundreds of generations before his time.  He pointed out that all around us in Britain were men of deep thoughts, and wise thoughts, who had grown discontented with the world, and had set up their own intelligence in an endeavour to grasp the purpose of an intelligence infinitely higher.  The existence of evil, the existence of pain, the existence of all the things that make men’s pilgrimage, from dark to dark, mysterious and awful, can never be probed to any purpose by one creature created by the great Power who also created the mystery of pain and the problem of evil.  Dwelling in the desert, and seeing day by day the movements of the world, and the strange progress of the stars, Job had grown to cherish the pride of intellect.  So long as his prosperity was unbroken, he was contented, and busied himself day after day in relieving the wants of the poor and in succouring the oppressed.  But when the blast of affliction blew upon him, his kindly disposition forsook him for a little, and he only thought of his own bitterness; he only thought of the puzzles that have faced every man who has a heart to feel since first our race appeared in this wondrous place.  Musgrave thought that every man who has faith, every man whose heart has been torn by the wrenches of chance, must sympathize with the yearning of Job; but at the last every man, like Job, comes to see that there are things beyond our minds.  Each of us learns that there are things before which our intelligence must be abashed, and that the only safe rule of life is to fall into the attitude of trust, and question no more.  He felt it necessary to touch his homely hearers, and he said:  “Only last week the wind woke from the sky, and the storm swept over the moor, and swept over this little place where two or three are now gathered together to worship.  Many of our friends put forth in the morning in the joy of strength, in the pride of manhood, and no one of them fancied the sea that now fawns upon the shore would wake up into fury, and would dash its claws into cliff and sand, and rend the works of man into
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The Romance of the Coast from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.