Part 2 (2/2)
Bessie's Sunday reading was generally confined to her Sunday-school book, for she had not yet learned to love to read the Bible, and regarded it rather as a lesson-book than as the spiritual food which those who know it truly find ”sweeter than honey” to their taste. So it was not a very pleasant prospect to have to hurry off to church again, and she felt very much inclined to make the most of the slight fatigue she felt, and say she was too tired to go, in which case her mother would have willingly a.s.sented to her remaining. But conscience told her she was able to go, and ought to go; and remembering her motto and her prayer, she cheerfully prepared to accompany her father and brothers to church, and she had reason to be grateful for her choice. The words of the sermon deepened and expanded the impressions of the afternoon, and left an abiding influence on the current of her life.
When Mrs. Ford had got through her evening duties, and the little ones were hushed in sound slumber, she sat down near the open window to rest, her eye falling, as she did so, on Bessie's card. The motto upon it carried her thoughts away to the time when, as a newly-married wife, she had listened to a sermon on that very text,--a time when, rejoicing in the happiness of her new life, she had felt her heart beat with grat.i.tude to Him who had so freely given her all things, and with a sincere desire to live to His glory. How had the desire been carried out? A very busy life hers had been, and still was. The innumerable cares and duties of her family and farm and dairy had filled it with never-ceasing active occupations, as was natural and right; but was it right that these occupations should have so crowded out the very principle that would have given a holy harmony to her life, and been a fountain of strength to meet the cares and worries that will fret the stream of the most prosperous course? Sacred words, learned in her childhood, recurred to her mind: ”And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the l.u.s.ts of other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.” Had not that been her own experience? Where were the fruits that might have been expected from ”the word” in her?--the Christian influence and training which might have made her household what a Christian household ought to be?
Had not the ”cares of this world” been made the chief concern--the physical and material well-being of her family made far more prominent than the development of a life hid with Christ in G.o.d? Had not the very smoothness and prosperity of her life, and her self-complacency in her own good management, been a snare to her? Her husband, good and kind as he was, was, she knew, wholly engrossed with the things of this life; and her boys--steadier, she often thought with pride, than half the boys of the neighbourhood--had never yet been made to feel that they were not their own, but bought with the price of a Saviour's blood. Such higher knowledge as Bessie had was due to Miss Preston, for, like many mothers, she had not scrupled to devolve her own responsibilities on the Sunday-school teachers, and thought her duty done when she had seen her children, neatly dressed, set off to school on Sunday afternoon. And the little ones she had just left asleep--had she earnestly commended them to the Lord, and tried to teach them such simple truths about their Saviour as their infant minds could receive?
All these thoughts came crowding into her mind, as they sometimes will when the voice of the Spirit can find an entrance into our usually closed hearts; and she shrank from the thought of the account she should have to give of the responsibilities abused, the trust unfulfilled. Happily, she did not forget that ”if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins;” and that quiet hour of meditation, and confession, and humble resolve was one of the most profitable seasons Mrs. Ford had ever known. For G.o.d, unlike man, can work without as well as with outward instrumentality.
When the others returned from church, it was with some surprise that Mrs. Ford heard from Bessie the words of the text.
”I heard Mr. Raymond preach from that same text long ago, just after we were married, John,” she said.
”Well, if you remember it, it's more than I do. But if he did preach the same sermon over again, it is well worth hearing twice.”
”Yes, indeed,” said his wife. ”I wish I had minded it better. It would have been better for us all if we had. Bessie, are you too tired to read a chapter as soon as the boys come in? We don't any of us read the Bible enough, I'm afraid.”
And Bessie, struck by something unusual in her mother's tone and manner, cheerfully read aloud, at Mrs. Ford's request, the thirteenth of Matthew and the tenth of Hebrews, although the tempting Sunday-school book still lay unread on the table up-stairs.
IV.
_Nelly's Sunday Evening._
”Oh, say not, dream not, heavenly notes To childish ears are vain,-- That the young mind at random floats, And cannot catch the strain.”
In the meantime let us go back to Nelly Connor, and see how _she_ spent her Sunday afternoon.
When she had wistfully watched the last of the groups of children disappearing in the distance, she walked slowly away toward her ”home”--a dilapidated-looking cottage in a potato patch, enclosed by a broken-down fence, patched up by Nelly and her new mother with old barrel-staves and branches of trees. The outdoor work which fell to her lot Nelly did not so much dislike. It was the nursing of a screaming baby, or scrubbing dingy, broken boards--work often imposed upon her--which sorely tried her childish strength and patience.
Nelly found the house deserted. Sunday being Mrs. Connor's idle day, she usually went to visit some of her friends in the village, taking her children with her. A piece of bread and a mug of sour milk on the table were all that betokened any preparation for Nelly's supper; but she was glad enough to miss the harsh scolding tones that were her usual welcome home.
Nelly sat down on the doorstep to eat her crust, watching, as she did so, a little bird which was bringing their evening meal to its chirping little ones in a straggling old plum-tree near the house. For in animal life there is no such discord as sin introduces into human life, marring the beauty of G.o.d's arrangements for His creatures'
happiness. Then, having nothing to keep her at home, she took up her dingy, tattered straw hat, and strolled slowly along towards the village, keeping to the shady lanes on its outskirts till she came out upon the fields across which Bessie had taken her way home.
On her way she pa.s.sed Mr. Raymond's pretty shrubbery, and stood for a while quite still by the white railings, looking at the group within--Lucy and her cousin sitting under the trees on the green turf, with Harry and the rabbit close beside them. Nelly thought she had never seen anything so pretty as Stella, with her rose-leaf complexion and sunny golden hair. The two might have served a painter for a contrast, both as to externals and as to the effect of the surrounding influences which mould human life: the one, from her cradle so tenderly and luxuriously nurtured, petted, and caressed; the other, accustomed from her earliest years to privation and hards.h.i.+p, to harsh tones and wicked words, to all the evil influences which surround a child left to pick up its education on the city streets. Strange mystery of the ”election of circ.u.mstances!”--one of the strangest in our mystery-surrounded life, never to be cleared up till all crooked things shall be made straight. Only let the privileged ones, whose lines have fallen in pleasant places, remember that ”to whom much is given, of them much shall be required.”
A forlorn little figure Nelly looked as she strolled along the field-paths which Bessie had taken an hour before. But she did not trouble herself much about externals, except when in company with others whose better attire made her painfully conscious of the defects in her own; and being of a nature open to every impression from surrounding objects, she was at that moment far from being an unhappy child. It was not often that she was completely free to wander at will; and the fresh breezy fields, the sweet scents of the clover and the pines, the blue rippling river, and the cows that looked calmly at her with their patient, wistful eyes, were all novelties to the town child, whose first summer it was in the country. Some faint recollections she still had of the gra.s.sy slopes of her native hills, in the days of her early childhood; but since then all her experiences of summer had been the hot, hard pavements and stifling dust of a large city.
She had never before extended her wanderings in the direction of Mill Bank Farm so far as to reach the ravine through which the little stream flowed into the river; and now, when she came to the edge of the steep slope and looked down into the luxuriant depth of foliage and fern and ragged moss-clad rock, she felt a sense of delight more intense than Bessie Ford or Lucy Raymond, familiar all their lives with such scenes, had ever experienced. She stood spell-bound at first, and then, scrambling down among rock and fern, reached the little stream, and was soon wading about in its bed, enjoying the sensation of the soft, warm water flowing over her bare feet, and pulling the little flowering water-plants that raised their heads among the moss-grown logs and stones which lay in the bed of the stream. Then she began to climb up on the other side, stopping to examine with admiring eyes every velvety cus.h.i.+on of moss, and cl.u.s.ter of tiny ferns, and fairy-like baby pine or maple, and picking with eager hands the wild roses and other blossoms which she espied among the tangled underwood.
At last, tired with her wanderings, and with hands full of her treasures, she threw herself down on a bed of dry moss that carpeted the top of a high bank of rock which overlooked the river winding away beneath, while overhead, through the feathery sprays of the long, straggling pine boughs, the slanting sunbeams flickered on the turf below.
There, in that solitary stillness--all the stiller for the confused murmur of soft sounds, and the fresh, sweet breath of the woods perfuming the air--unaccustomed thoughts came into the little girl's mind,--thoughts which, in the din and bustle of the city, where the tide of human interests sufficed to fill up her undeveloped mind, had scarcely ever entered it. But here, where the direct works of G.o.d alone were around her, her mind was irresistibly drawn towards Him of whom Miss Preston had told her, that He had made her and all she saw around her, and who lived, she supposed, somewhere beyond that blue sky. With so many pleasant things around her, the thought of their Maker was pleasant too. But then Miss Preston had told her that G.o.d loved what was good, but hated what was bad; and did not her new mother constantly tell her she was a ”bad child?”--an accusation in which her conscience told her there was much truth. So G.o.d could not love her, she thought.
But Miss Preston had said that G.o.d did love her--that He cared for her continually, and wished to make her good and happy--that He had even, in some strange way which she could not understand, sent His Son to die for her, that she might be made good. It was all new and strange, but she had faith in Miss Preston; and because she had told her, she believed it must be true, that she, who had come to think herself--poor child--too bad for any one to care for, had really a great, kind Friend near her, though she could not see Him, and loving her more than the mother whose warm caress she could still remember.
It was an idea that might seem beyond the grasp of a poor untaught child, were it not that He who reveals Himself to babes and sucklings can speak to the heart He has made in ways beyond our power to trace.
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