Dear Theo (Ch 1.4)

Dordrecht, January, 1877

I am getting along pretty well at the store and am very busy. I go there at eight o’clock in the morning, and leave at one o’clock at night, but I am glad it is so. Work is always a good thing.

Sometimes I am so delighted that we are living again on the same soil and speaking the same language.

The window of my room looks out on a garden with pine trees and poplars, and the backs of old houses covered with ivy. ‘A strange old plant is the ivy green,’ says Dickens. The view from my window can be so solemn and more or less gloomy, but you ought to see it with the morning sun on it; how different it is then.

Last Sunday I was in the French church here; it is very solemn and impressive and has great charm. After church I took a walk on a dyke along the mills; there was a splendid sky over the meadows, mirrored in the wet ditches. In other countries there are curious things. On the French coast at Dieppe the rocks are covered with green grass, and the sea and the sky, the harbor with the old boats is like a painting by Daubigny, with brown nets and sails. And then the London streets in the rain with the lanterns, and the night spent there on the steps of a little old grey church, as happened to me this summer after the excursion to Ramsgate. There are in other countries also curious things . . . but as I walked last Sunday alone on that dyke, I thought how good it was to feel the Dutch soil under my feet, and I felt, ‘Now it is in mine heart to make a covenant with the Lord God,’ for I recalled all our childhood memories, how often we walked, in those last days of February, with Father to Rysbergen, and heard the lark over the black fields with young green corn, the radiant blue sky with the white clouds in it — and then the stony path with the beech trees — O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! or rather, O Zundert! O Zundert!

I have been very busy today with a great many little nothings, but they belong to my duty; if one had no sense of duty, who would be able to collect his thoughts at all? The feeling of duty sanctifies everything and binds things together, making one large duty out of the many little ones.

Last night I left the store at one o’clock and walked a3round the cathedral and then along the canals and past that old gate of the new church and then home. It had been snowing and everything was so quite; there was only a little light here and there in the upper windows of some of the houses, and the black figure of the night watchman standing out against the snow. It was high tide and against the snow then canals and the ships looked very dark.

To think of Jesus in all places and circumstances, that is a good thing. How difficult is the life of the peasants in Brabant; from whence do they get their strength? And those poor women, what supports them in life? Don’t you think it is what the painter painted in his ‘Light of the World’?

You do not know how I yearn towards the Bible. I read it daily, but I should like to know it by heart, to study thoroughly and lovingly all those old stories, and especially to find out what is known about Christ.

There may be a time in life when one is tired of everything and feels as if all one does is wrong, and there may be some truth in it — do you think this is a feeling one must try to forget and to banish, or is it ‘the longing for God,’ which one must not fear, but cherish to see if it may bring us some good? Is it ‘the longing for God’ which leads us to make a choice which we never regret?

Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.

In the morning I went with Uncle Cor to Uncle Stricker’s, and there had a long conversation. I wrote a letter home to tell them what we did in Amsterdam, and the things we talked over. Today I had a letter from Father. Last Sunday he was not well. I know his heart is burning within him that something may happen to enable me to follow him in his profession; Father always expected it from me. Oh, that it may happen, and God’s blessing rest upon it.

In our family, which is a Christian family in the full sense of the word, there has always been, as far as one can remember, from generation to generation, one who preached the Gospel. Why should not a member of that family feel himself called to that service now? It is my fervent prayer and desire that the spirit of my father and grandfather may rest upon me, and that it may be given me to become a Christian and a Christian labourer, that my life may resemble more and more the lives of those named above, for behold the old wine is good and I do not desire a new one.

Theo, boy, brother whom I love, I have such a fervent longing for it, but how can I reach it?

Oh! might I be shown the way to devote my life more that is possible at present to the service of God, and the Gospel. I keep praying for it and I think I shall be heard; I say it in all humility.

Theo, if only I might succeed in this, if that heavy depression because everything I undertake fails, that torrent of reproaches which I have heard and felt, if it might be taken from me, and if only there might be given to me both the opportunity and the strength needed to come to full development and to persevere in that course for which my father and I should thank the Lord so fervently!

I send you today for your collection another woodcut after Doré, and one after Brion. Keep up your collection and you will get a fine one in time. Accept my small contribution to it. I long so much to keep in touch with you through these little things.

Your letter gave me a feeling of joy, as the woman must have felt who found her mite, for you tell me that the little writing-desk of Aunt Koos has been found by Mrs. Roos, at the spring cleaning. I am so glad. When I shall have started in Amsterdam, I shall want it. It seems to me a new proof and a hint — I have already observed so many of them lately—that everything will go all right with me, that I shall succeed in the thing I so fondly desire; something of the old faith grows in me that my thoughts will be confirmed, and my spirit will be renewed. It will be a choice for my whole life!

***

Mr. Braat has somebody in view for my place, so in May I shall probably be able to put a hand to the plough.

I suppose that for a ‘sower of God’s word,’ as I hope to be, as well as for a sower of the seed in the fields, each day will bring enough of its own evil—and the earth will produce many thorns and thistles—let us continue to help each other, and ask for brotherly love. Much good may be in store for us in the future, let us learn to repeat with Father, ‘I never despair,’ and with Uncle Jan, “The devil is never so black but you can look him in the face.’

Time flies and the das pass quickly; we may become richer and firmer of mind, of character, of heart, we may become richer in God, we may become richer in the fine gold of life, the lover for each other, and the feeling, ‘and yet I am not alone, as the Father is with me.’

Between times I have worked through the whole story of Christ from a catechism book of Uncle Striker’s and copied the text they reminded me of so many pictures by Rembrandt and others.

I hope and believe I shall not repent of the choice I made to try and become a Christian and a Christian worker. Yes, all things form the past may contribute to it. The knowledge of and the love for the work and life of men like Jules Breton, Millet, Jacque, Rembrandt, Bosboom, and so many others, may become a source of new thoughts. What a resemblance there is between the work and life of Father and that of those men! I value that of Father still higher.