And now after much thought, the curate saw that he could not hope to
transplant into the bosom of the lad the flowers of truth that
gladdened his own garden: he must sow the seed from which they had
sprung, and that seed was the knowledge of the true Jesus. It was
now the more possible to help him in this way, that the wild beast
of his despair had taken its claws from his bosom, had withdrawn a
pace or two, and couched watching. And Wingfold soon found that
nothing calmed and brightened him like talk about Jesus. He had
tried verse first--seeking out the best within his reach wherein
loving souls have uttered their devotion to the man of men; but here
also the flowers would not be transplanted. How it came about he
hardly knew, but he had soon drifted into rather than chosen another
way, which way proved a right one: he would begin thinking aloud on
some part of the gospel story, generally that which was most in his
mind at the time--talking with himself, as it were, all about it. He
began this one morning as he lay on the grass beside him, and that
was the position in which he found he could best thus soliloquize.
Now and then but not often Leopold would interrupt him, and perhaps
turn the monologue into dialogue, but even then Wingfold would
hardly ever look at him: he would not disturb him with more of his
presence than he could help, or allow the truth to be flavoured with
more of his individuality than was unavoidable. For every
individuality, he argued, has a peculiar flavour to every other, and
only Jesus is the pure simple humanity that every one can love, out
and out, at once. In these mental meanderings, he avoided nothing,
took notice of every difficulty, whether able to discuss it fully or
not, broke out in words of delight when his spirit was moved, nor
hid his disappointment when he failed in getting at what might seem
good enough to be the heart of the thing. It was like hatching a
sermon in the sun instead of in the oven. Occasionally, when, having