Of this and more he felt at once the truth, since of all earthly books known
to him this contained the most heavenly revelation of what a man may be in
manliness, in gentleness, and in goodness. And as he read the nobler
portions of the book, the nobler parts of his nature gave out their
immediate response.
Hungrily he hurried to and fro across the harvest of those fertile pages,
gathering of the white wheat of the spirit many a lustrous sheaf: the love
of courage, the love of courtesy, the love of honour, the love of high aims
and great actions, the love of the poor and the helpless, the love of a
spotless name and a spotless life, the love of kindred, the love of
friendship, the love of humility of spirit, the love of forgiveness, the
love of beauty, the love of love, the love of God. Surely, he said to
himself, within the band of these virtues lay not only a man's noblest life,
but the noblest life of the world.
While fondling these, he failed not to notice how the great book, as though
it were a living mouth, spat its deathless scorn upon the things that he
also--in the imperfect measure of his powers--had always hated: all
cowardice of mind or body, all lying, all oppression, all unfaithfulness,
all secret revenge and hypocrisy and double-dealing: the smut of the heart
and mind.
But ah! the other things besides these.
Sown among the white wheat of the spirit were the red tares of the flesh;
and as he strode back and forth through the harvest, he found himself
plucking these also with feverish vehemence. There were things here that he
had never seen in print: words that he had never even named to his secret
consciousness; thoughts and desires that he had put away from his soul with
many a struggle, many a prayer; stories of a kind that he had always
declined to hear when told in companies of men: all here, spelled out,
barefaced, without apology, without shame: the deposits of those old, old
moral voices and standards long since buried deep under the ever rising
level of the world's whitening holiness.
With utter guilt and shame he did not leave off till he had plucked the last
red tare; and having plucked them, he had hugged the whole inflaming bundle
against his blood--his blood now flushed with youth, flushed with health,
flushed with summer.
And finally, in the midst of all these things, perhaps coloured by them,
there had come to him the first great awakening of his life in a love that
was forbidden.