Take Up His Cross and Follow Me
Yesterday I finished listening to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and the ending has left me pondering the two different lives of Jane and her cousin St. John Rivers. St. John had asked her to marry him and go with him to India as missionaries. He was a devoted man who wanted to serve God, but he was also somewhat austere and chose not to marry the woman he truly loved because he felt she would not be a good missionary companion for him. He chose instead Jane, even though neither had real feelings of affections for one another, because he felt it was what God was calling him to do and that she could be useful to him as a missionary. She refused because she knew there was no love of the type marriage requires between them, but he persisted trying to convince her that it was the will of the Lord that she marry him: “If I listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage with me; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim—to do all things to the glory of God. My Master was long-suffering: so will I be. I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath: repent—resolve, while there is yet time. Remember, we are bid to work while it is day—warned that ‘the night cometh when no man shall work.’ Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life. God give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken from you!” She was close to being convinced, but she felt a call to go and find the man she had almost married and truly loved, Mr. Rochester, and learn what had become of him since she had left (after learning he was already married). This led her to find that his crazy wife had burned their castle, killed herself, and Mr. Rochester was left blind and without a hand. But she loved him and chose to remain with him the rest of her life, rejecting St. John’s call to be his wife and serve as missionaries. Jane became instead Mr. Rochester’s eyes and hands and loved and served him the remainder of her days, while St. John went as a missionary to love and serve the people of India.
So which choice was the “better part”
for Jane to choose? To me the message of the book is that both choices—Jane’s
to serve and love a single individual and their future children quietly in
their home and St. John’s to give up his life to be a missionary—were right and
acceptable ways to serve God. She summarized what her life became in these
words: “I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on
earth. I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express;
because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer
to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any
more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate
bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at
once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day
long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All
my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are
precisely suited in character—perfect concord is the result. Mr. Rochester
continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that
circumstance that drew us so very near—that knit us so very close: for I was
then his vision, as I am still his right hand.” They became as the Lord had
commanded in the days of Adam and Eve, fulfilling the measure of their creation
as they established their family: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and
his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh”
(Genesis 2:24). She did not reject God in refusing to serve as a missionary;
instead, she chose to serve God by loving with all her heart a single
individual.
On the other hand, here is her summary
of what happened to St. John: “As to St. John Rivers, he left England: he went
to India. He entered on the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it
still. A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and
dangers. Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he
labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down
like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be
stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of
the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of
Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when
he says—'Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross and follow me.’ His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims
to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth—who
stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty
victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful. St. John is
unmarried: he never will marry now. Himself has hitherto sufficed to the toil,
and the toil draws near its close: his glorious sun hastens to its setting. The
last letter I received from him drew from my eyes human tears, and yet filled
my heart with divine joy: he anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible
crown. I know that a stranger’s hand will write to me next, to say that the
good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord.
And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour: his
mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his
faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this—'My Master,’ he says, ‘has
forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly,—"Surely I come quickly!”
and hourly I more eagerly respond,—"Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!”’”
That is how the book ends, with Jane moved to tears at the devotion of this man
who gave up his life for the Lord. And yet, the story does not suggest that Jane
chose wrong in not serving with him as a missionary. She too loved the Lord and
served Him with her whole heart.
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