He was no simple quietist. He was an English
gentleman, an officer, a man of energy and action, a lover of
danger and the audacities that defeat danger; a passionate
creature, flowing over with the self-assertiveness of independent
judgment and the arbitrary temper of command.
Whatever he might find in his pocket-Bible, it was not for such
as
he to dream out his days in devout obscurity. But, conveniently
enough,
he found nothing in his pocket-Bible indicating that he should.
What
he did find was that the Will of God was inscrutable and
absolute;
that it was man's duty to follow where God's hand led; and, if
God's hand led towards violent excitements and extraordinary
vicissitudes, that it was not only futile, it was impious to
turn another way. Fatalism is always apt to be a double-edged
philosophy; for while, on the one hand, it reveals the minutest
occurrences as the immutable result of a rigid chain of
infinitely predestined causes, on the other, it invests the
wildest incoherences of conduct or of circumstance with the
sanctity of eternal law. And Gordon's fatalism was no exception.
The same doctrine that led him to dally with omens, to search for
prophetic texts, and to append, in brackets, the apotropaic
initials D.V. after every statement in his letters implying
futurity, led him also to envisage his moods and his desires, his
passing reckless whims and his deep unconscious instincts, as the
mysterious manifestations of the indwelling God.
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