Percival

“ I have been trying in vain to recall any incident in Scripture which would correspond with the picture."
"Surely," said my aunt, "Percival must have represented St. Peter with the money found in the mouth of the fish."
"I thought of that at first," I observed. "But the man in the picture, thin and weak in appearance, does not at all suit our idea of a hardy fisherman: he looks more like a worn-out mechanic. Percival, you must tell us what meaning you intended to convey."
Percival. The shekel is meant for that brought by the fish; but the man in the picture is certainly not the Apostle. ”

“ When Sir Percivale saw that he would not turn, he threw himself on the ground, and cast away his helm and sword, and bemoaned himself for the most unhappy of all Knights; and there he abode the whole day, and, being faint and weary, slept till it was midnight. And at midnight he waked and saw before him a woman, who said to him right fiercely, 'Sir Percivale, what doest thou here?' 'Neither good nor great ill,' answered he. ”

“ But you see, sir, there is this difference between Sir Percival and myself:—He has had no motive in improving Nature for her positive uses, and therefore he has been contented with giving her a prettier robe. He loves her as a grand seigneur loves his mistress. I love her as a man loves the helpmate who assists his toils. According as in rural life my mind could find not repose, but occupation—according as that occupation was compatible with such prudent regard to fortune as a man owes to the children he brings into the world—my choice of life would be a right or a wrong one. ”

“ Ye faire mayde:
“‘Tis Percival, my archer love, I wot!”
“’T was aimed with care, and my love-shaft, I trow,
Straight to her hand—and to her heart—will go.”
“A valentine his trusty bow hath shot!”
“Gadzooks!” cries Percival. ‘Alack! what ’s up? ”

“ Percival left his seat to confer with the shrinking Elfred.
"'E can 'ave the old bath-plug an' welcome, Sir, as far as I'm concerned," said the latter.
"Tut, tut!" said Percival. "You must make a fight for it. ”

“ His obstinacy was not to be subdued, nor his will opposed; and the unrelenting preacher, who taught humility, love, and concord from his pulpit, and who could produce not one sensible reason for thwarting the attachment of two amiable creatures, concluded the scene by flying into a furious passion, in which he gave John Percival clearly to understand, that he was no longer an acceptable, or even permitted, guest. ”

“ And then there was another pause, which ended by Percival's saying, in a tone of subdued irritation: "There are few of our party that have the same reasons that I have for wishing myself on the way back to England."
"You are not going to stay in South America, then?"
"Not I. There is someone I want to find; that's all."
"A man?" ”

“ Percival. Oh, the good, good Gratian! Let me have your knife, father.
Mr. G. Here, Percival; but why my knife? [Pg 133]
'I will play you all the pretty tunes that I know, if you will give me leave.'—Page 132.
[Pg 135]
Percival. I will tell you. I have only nibbled here a little of my cake, so pleased I was in listening to you! So I will cut it smooth. There, see how well I have ordered it! These scraps, together with the currants, will be more than I shall want for breakfast; and the first poor man that I meet going home shall have the rest, even though he should not play upon the violin. ”

“ Mivers as she followed her into the vehicle.
As the lumbering conveyance (the only coach on the stand) heaved itself into motion, Percival’s eye fell on the sweeper, who was still leaning on his broom, and who, in grateful recognition of the unwonted generosity that had repaid his service, touched his ragged hat, and smiled drowsily on his young customer. Love sharpens the wit and animates the timid; a thought worthy of the most experienced inspired Percival St. John ”

“ You hardly think perhaps of this as the awakening of your soul. It may never have occurred to you to think of it as being just as sacred a thing as was Jacob’s vision at Bethel, as being indeed the work of the same Divine spirit.
But let us consider it a little further. Whatever it is that is thus stirring in your heart, it comes and it comes again; it lingers in your thoughts and feelings; it haunts, it impresses and awes you; it rises before you suddenly and stops you from some sin, or, if it fails to stop you, it turns the pleasure for which you craved into wretchedness ”

“ We should like, it may be, to shut our eyes to the fact and dwell rather on the thought that our God is long-suffering and of great kindness and of tender mercy. It is more soothing to think of love than of retribution, or of the arm that shelters or upholds us than of the hand that smites; but the real question should be—“Is it true, this declaration that as we sow we reap, that the wages of sin is death, death of faculty, death of hope?” ”

“ Sir, said Sir Percivale, what signifieth my dream that I dreamed this night? And there he told him altogether: She which rode upon the lion betokeneth the new law of holy church, that is to understand, faith, good hope, belief, and baptism. For she seemed younger than the other it is great reason, for she was born in the resurrection and the passion of our Lord Jesu Christ. And for great love she came to thee to warn thee of thy great battle that shall befall thee. With whom, said Sir Percivale, shall I fight? With the most champion of the world, said the old man ”

“ Most of you, I can well believe, would not voluntarily or deliberately step out of your way to meet a temptation, or to seek any evil course of life. You would not do it of your own free choice, or in cold blood, as we say. This, at any rate, is your own feeling about sin, whether the feeling is consistent with your life or not. As you contemplate any low form of life in another, you recognise its ugliness and its degrading character, and you call it very likely by the name it deserves. ”

“ Percival continued: "Then I felt convinced that imagination could depict the Divine Youth far better than could my weak pencil: so I concentrated my efforts on the face of the dying Joseph, making it reflect, as it were, the brightness of the countenance of Him who bends over His foster-father."
Seyton. Even as artists, unable to give the blaze of the noonday sun, just indicate its presence by lights and shadows thrown on terrestrial objects. ”

“ Percival. Yes, many were earth's thorns which wounded Christ's mortal frame, before they—as a climax—crowned His sacred brow.
Seyton. You have written under your sketch, "The Son of Man hath not where to lay His head;" and the picture forms a comment on the words. The sky above is dark and louring, showing that a storm is about to burst: we see lightning already flashing in the background. The Wanderer has no heavy mantle to wrap around His slightly clad form: every heavy drop will penetrate and chill. Christ's eyes are raised towards the mass of threatening clouds above Him. ”

“ This seed of new life which is to save you from the power of sin and the flesh and give you new aspirations, purer tastes, stronger purposes, need I remind you how it is sown, in what manifold and various ways? It must be within the personal experience of some of you to testify how your meetings in this chapel every morning may sow it. One day it falls on your heart in some word of some hymn or prayer, or in some thought or feeling which flashes through you, or some pricking of conscience for no other knows what sin or fault, or in some new resolve. ”

“ And while the bishop frowned into his salad she invited Percival to drink with her in the manner of a woman who is mad to invite perdition. If the good man could have beheld her before a background of frivolity he might have suffered less anxiety. ”

“ Yet in all that storm of feeling his chief exhortation is this reminder of the dignity of their calling. In the midst of all their sin and failure, though he does not spare rebuke and warning, he always aims at inspiring them by uplifting. And we know that this is the true method, because there is nothing which exercises an influence so strong to uplift and purify as the feeling of our kinship with the life above us, and that we are degrading our life when we forget this or ignore it. ”

“ And the question of all questions for each of us to consider is, “How am I to make my life the home and embodiment of this power from above?” If we turn to our Lord’s own example, or to the life of Paul or any other of His followers, or to any life we have known and felt to breathe around it this same power of the Spirit, some things become at once very obvious and clear to us. ”

“ In our everyday consideration of life, we recognise all this: we speak of growth in character and formation of habit as facts which no one would ignore, and which cannot be overestimated. But to acknowledge these, and at the same time to trust that God will hereafter arrest any stream of sinful tendency in us which we ourselves do not attempt to stop now, is to add presumption to sin.
When we speak of Heaven and Hell, we have in our thoughts the vision of those ultimate points towards which the diverging courses of men’s lives are slowly tending day by day. ”

“ Our life is, in fact, a continuous struggle between the two principles here represented. Which is to prevail in it, and fix its character—p. 38 traditional custom, or personal inspiration? Are we to follow the world with its conventions and laws, or to live in personal communion with God? The tendency of our life will be determined in one direction or the other according as we surrender our will to the rule of traditional notions and usages, the power of the external world, or as we seek for direct illumination of mind, conscience, and spirit at the Divine sources of truth and light. ”

“ Every one of you possesses some share of this mysterious, and undefined, and immeasurable gift of influencing his neighbour’s life. Every sin that may have a root in your heart is acting, though you may not think of it or intend it, as a pestilent influence outside your own life; every virtue you exercise may be causing similar virtues to take root and grow in some one near to you.
The tone of the society or life around you is, in fact, just the sum and expression of such individual influences as these. ”

“ Year by year as at this time, when the week of our Saviour’s Passion and Death is just in front of us, and the shadow of His Cross is falling over us, one generation after another of the boys of this school gather here, and in the face of the congregation, young and old, they take upon them the vows of a Christian life. ”

“ And this growing feeling gives an ever-fresh interest to the words and the judgment of the Lord on all matters of individual conduct and daily intercourse; so that if we are possessed at all by it, the Saviour is becoming more of a living person to us, and we ask ourselves more frequently, more earnestly, with more of reality and more of practical meaning in the question, how He would judge this or that side of our life, whether our conduct is in harmony with His spirit, and whether the standards of our life fit at all with His teaching and injunctions. ”

“ If they were thus the objects of the Divine care they could not be thought of as insignificant units in a crowded city; or as living an obscure life which was of no particular importance, as they might otherwise have been tempted to fancy, as we are still sometimes tempted to think about an individual life. ”

“ Thus the life that goes forward and rises to higher and yet higher levels is always a life of new revelations, a life which is being illumined and illumined afresh by those flashes of Divine insight, and strength, and courage, which come to men only as they came to the Lord Himself in the secret communion of prayer and meditation, and through that independence of spirit which arises from the sense of God’s presence to guide us and to uphold. ”

“ Bond, in her black lace cap and false front, would hardly serve as one," laughed Percival. "She is the only specimen of the fair sex that I ever see; except, indeed, the red-haired maid of all work, who is only remarkable for the number of cups and glasses which she breaks. I have to do without models, Seyton; or rather to content myself with the forms which I see in my dreams."
"In your dreams?" I repeated enquiringly.
"I mean waking dreams," said my friend. "I often cannot get rest at night; or at least, till—
"'Yon dull steeple's drowsy chime—'
"has struck one or more of the small hours. ”

“ In serious moments, when the mind is calm, and neither passion nor appetite is stirring, we feel how good a thing it p. 45is to have crucified the flesh and to be living close to Christ; but when we are within the fiery circle of trial or temptation, when sinful desires arise, or passions are strong, or solicitations to evil are subtle and enticing, then we are only too ready to catch at any hopes about the vague future. ”

“ We derive no virtue in ourselves from ourselves alone. Do we not owe our very ability to discriminate between good and evil, our standard of right and wrong, our civilization, our culture—nay, in short, the whole of our evolving realization of the Love of God—to the collective consciousness of Creation, which is a continual revelation of God? Do not we stand to-day as inheritors of wisdom accumulated by the united efforts of mankind in past times, and as guardians of this, the world's increasing consciousness of God, revealed throughout all Time, throughout all Creation? ”