CONSCIENCE AT WORK.
[Illustration] MY life at Alliston Hall was a very happy one. Day after
day went by without any care or anxiety, and every one was so kind to
me that I could not feel lonely or homeless any longer.
The more I knew of Evelyn Trafford, the more I loved her. In spite of
her light, careless way of talking, there was a great deal of genuine
kind feeling in her, and I am sure she did all in her power to make me
happy. I never once remember, the whole time I was with her, feeling
uncomfortable on account of my position in the house. Both Sir William
and Evelyn treated me as if I were one of the family, and I received
nothing but kindness from their numerous visitors and friends. Lady
Eldridge was the only exception. She, whenever she made her appearance
at Alliston Hall, thought it her duty to keep me fully aware who she,
Lady Eldridge, was, and who I, May Lindsay, was, and of the immense and
immeasurable distance between us.
The guests at Alliston Hall did not pay very long visits, so I had
constant change and variety in my life, and heard and saw a great deal
more of the outer world than in our quiet country home.
And yet, although everything around me was so pleasant, and though
every one was so kind to me, I had not been many months at Alliston
Hall before I began to feel restless and unhappy. For I felt that I was
not walking so closely with God as I had done before. I had become cold
and careless, rising late in the morning and hurrying over my prayers,
and then going through the day in an idle, careless spirit, hardly ever
thinking of my Lord or trying to please Him.
For some time this did not make me at all unhappy. I had so much to
think of, and there were so many pleasant visitors staying in the
house, and so many books to be read, and there was so much to be done
to amuse Evelyn and to make the days pass happily for her, that I gave
myself no time to think about the state of my soul. But the visitors
left and we were quiet again; and then I felt an empty, dissatisfied
feeling in my heart, which I cannot put into words. My conscience was
very busy now, and brought to my recollection all my neglect of my
best and dearest Friend, all my coldness and indifference to Him. I
would have given anything to feel His presence as in times past; but He
seemed far away from me, and I felt too cold even to pray to Him. But
though I had so terribly forgotten Him, my Lord still remembered me.
It was Sunday afternoon. Evelyn had fallen asleep on the sofa, and I
went out into the garden till she awoke. There had been showers all the
morning, but now the sun was shining brightly, and the rain-drops were
sparkling like diamonds on the grass.
I went along one of the grassy terraces, and turned down a quiet path,
shut in by evergreens, which led by a gentle descent down to the sea.
This was my favourite walk, and I always chose it when I came out
alone. There were several seats on this path, so situated as to catch
a peep of the sea through the shrubs and trees, which grew down to its
very edge.
As I turned a corner in this winding path, I suddenly came upon Miss
Lilla Irvine, sitting upon one of the seats reading her Bible. I
apologised for disturbing her, and was going to turn back, when she
asked me if I would not stay a little and read with her.
"You and I love the same Lord, May," she said; "I know we do, and I
think it would help us to talk together of Him sometimes; at least,"
she added, "I am sure it would help me."
"Oh, Miss Irvine," I said, as I sat down beside her, "if you only knew—"
"If I only knew what?" she said, gently.
"If you only knew how careless I have been lately; I have hardly
thought about Him at all."
"What has been the matter, May?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know," I answered; "I think everything has been too smooth
and nice lately; somehow, it is easier to do right when the road is
rather rough; don't you think it is, Miss Irvine?"
"Yes," she said; "when things go wrong, and all seems against us, we
are driven to prayer, May—we feel we must pray then; but we ought not
to need driving into our dear Lord's presence."
"Oh no," I said; "I know we ought not."
"And oh, May," she said, earnestly, "if we get self-confident, and
leave off prayer, we shall soon have a fall; we are not safe for a
single moment if we are not strong in the Lord and in the power of His
might. You will be having a fall if you do not come back to Him, May."
"I wish I could come back, Miss Irvine," I said, "but it is easier
to get wrong than to get right again. I got up this morning rather
earlier, and tried to pray, but I could not fix my thoughts on what I
was saying; all sorts of things kept coming into my mind, and I gave it
up at last."
"Yes," she said, "I know what that is; heart answers to heart. I have
often found it so; when I have left God, and have been pleasing myself,
I have lost the power to pray."
"How is it, Miss Irvine?" I asked.
"I think," she said, "that the Holy Spirit has been grieved, and
without His help we cannot pray."
"Then what do you think I should do?" I asked.
"I think," she said, "you should go back to the Lord, just in the
same spirit in which you first came to Him. Go to Him, and ask Him to
receive you—to take away all the sin which is separating you from Him,
and to give you the comfort of His presence again. And then I think you
should especially pray that you may once more have the help of the Holy
Spirit. I like that old hymn so much:
"'Return, O Holy Dove, return,
Sweet messenger of rest;
I hate the sins which made Thee mourn,
And drove Thee from my breast.
"'So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame,
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.'
"Will you not go back to Him at once, May?" she said, laying her hand
upon mine.
"Oh, Miss Irvine, I will; indeed I will," I said.
"Go now, dear," she said.
So I left her sitting there, and went on, down the winding, shady path
to the sea. It was a quiet, solitary place. The only sounds that were
to be heard were the splashing of the waves upon the rocks, and the
cries of the white sea-birds as they flew backwards and forwards on the
little rocky islands which lay about half a mile from the shore.
I knelt down in a sheltered corner, and felt myself alone with God. I
do not think that I have ever realised the Lord's presence more than at
that moment. And then I confessed it all to Him, all my coldness, all
my carelessness, all my neglect of prayer, all my indifference to Him.
I came back to Him, and asked Him to receive me, and to give me the
light of His countenance again. And then, as Miss Irvine had advised
me, I prayed very earnestly for the Holy Spirit, pleading that promise—
"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children: how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask Him?"
Oh, how thankful I felt that Miss Irvine had spoken to me that
afternoon! I am sure that God put it into her heart to do so.
When I went back to the house, I found her still sitting in the same
place, and she said, as she took hold of my arm to walk home with me:
"Is it all right, dear?"
"Yes, Miss Irvine, I hope so. I have asked Him to forgive me, and I
think He has."
"Yes," she said, "if you have asked Him, I am sure He has. He is always
ready to forgive us, if we will only go to Him. If we only realised how
much He loves us, May, and how much it grieves Him when we are cold and
heartless to Him, I think we should be more careful never to leave Him."
As I look back upon that part of my life which was spent in Alliston
Hall, I cannot be too thankful that God gave me the friendship of Miss
Lilla Irvine. I found in her a true friend, one in whom I could confide
all my troubles and anxieties, and one who was ever ready to sympathise
with me and to advise me. Her visits, to my great joy, were very long
ones. At the time of which I am now writing, she spent several months
at her cousin's house, so that I had many opportunities of seeing her,
and of learning to love her more and more.
As Christmas time drew near, the good sisters at Branston Manor House
wrote to ask me to spend Christmas with them, and Sir William most
kindly gave me a fortnight's holiday.
Evelyn was very loth to part with me, and told me she would be
dreadfully dull whilst I was away. But Sir William would not hear of my
refusing the invitation, and promised to do his best to make up for my
absence.
"Oh dear, oh dear, it will be a long fortnight!" Evelyn said, the night
before I left. "You shouldn't be so nice, May; if you were only a
little more disagreeable, just the smallest degree more like the brown
alpaca, I should not miss you half so much!"
"Very well," I said, laughing, "I will come back provided with
spectacles, and a brown alpaca dress, and be as prim and precise as you
please, and then I suppose I shall get plenty of holidays! Not that I
want holidays," I said, in a different tone, as I noticed the troubled
expression on her face, "I was only joking, dear Evelyn; my whole life
here is a holiday—I am very, very happy, you are all so good to me."
"Just as if we could help being good to you, May," she said; "I told
you that I loved you at first sight, and always should love you, and
I am sure I do. And I do hope you will enjoy being with your little
sister, only you must be sure to come back as soon as they can spare
you."
It was six months since I had seen Maggie, and my heart beat very fast
as the train drew up at Branston Station, and my little sister came
forward to meet me. She had grown very much since I had seen her last,
but she was the same dear, simple-minded child as when I had left her,
and was just as loving and true.
Old John was waiting for us with the two luxurious horses, and we drove
to the Manor House at the usual measured pace.
It was quite touching to see the welcome which the three kind sisters
gave me. If I had been their own child, they could not have seemed more
glad to see me. Miss Jane, especially, took me under her wing from the
moment that I entered the house, and it would indeed have been my own
fault if I had not spent a pleasant Christmas time at Branston Hall.
But what I enjoyed, perhaps, more than anything else, was hearing Mr.
Claremont's sermons. There was something in his plain, practical way of
preaching, which went direct to my heart, and I always came away from
hearing one of his sermons feeling thoroughly dissatisfied with myself,
which perhaps, after all, is the best proof how very useful they were
to me.
On the last Sunday of the year, especially, I felt that indeed there
was a message for me. In both his sermons that day Mr. Claremont spoke
of the year that was past, gone for ever, with all its shortcomings
and sins, all its neglected opportunities, all its wasted moments. In
the evening his sermon was addressed more especially to the unsaved
in the congregation, urging such not to let the last moments of the
old year pass away until they had been to the fountain, Christ Jesus,
the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, and had washed their
sin-stained souls till they were whiter than snow.
But in the morning Mr. Claremont spoke to Christians, to God's own
children. He spoke of the sins of which we Christians had been guilty
during the past year, and above all of our sins of omission. He told us
that God had given to each of us a special work to do for Him, and that
if we did not do it, the work would be left undone. And then he asked
us whether all those who lived in the house with us were amongst the
saved. Were there any, was there one, with whom we spoke day by day,
and whom we loved perhaps very much, and yet whom we knew to be still
outside the refuge, still unsaved?
And then Mr. Claremont pleaded with us, if this was the case, to give
ourselves no rest until that one was safe in Christ, but to speak to
him about his soul, and, whenever we had an opportunity, to plead with
him, and to urge him to come to Jesus before it was too late.
"Another year gone, just gone, and your loved ones still unsaved. Oh,
what if this new year should be their last! What if next New Year's
Day, the opportunity should be over, and they should be gone! Children
of God, up and be doing, let not their blood be on your heads. Oh,
if they should come up to you at the last day, and say, with bitter
reproaches, 'Why did you not warn us? If you really believed, knew that
this was before us, why did you not give yourselves no rest, day nor
night, until you knew that we were saved from it? Oh, why not?' What
will you say to them then? Friends, be up and doing, for the night
cometh when no man can work."
As Mr. Claremont spoke, one face was ever in my mind's eye, one form
was ever before me. It was Evelyn Trafford, my own dear little Evelyn,
of whom I thought. I knew she was not safe. Loving and amiable and
sweet tempered as she was, I know that she cared nothing for the Lord
I loved. She had been brought up entirely for this world, and she had
never been taught to think of things above.
And yet what could I do for her? I had sometimes tried to get a word
in, edgewise as it were, for my Master, but it was very difficult, and
it never seemed to do any good.
Sometimes I thought it did harm. If she was alone with me, she turned
the subject so quickly, and called me precise and particular, and did
not seem so much at her ease with me afterwards. And if any one else
came into the room, she would begin to talk almost scoffingly of all
that I loved and reverenced, as if she were determined to show me how
little she cared for it all. And so I was beginning to think that it
was wiser to be quiet and to say nothing.
Yet this sermon had made me uneasy. If Evelyn, my dear Evelyn, should
die unsaved, and I had never once really spoken to her about her soul's
interests, oh, how I should blame myself! And yet, when could I do it?
How could I begin the subject?
I met Mr. Claremont the next day, as I was going to see one of Miss
Jane's sick people, and I ventured to tell him how much I had felt his
sermon.
"But does it not require very great wisdom in speaking to others?" I
asked.
"Undoubtedly," he said; "there is a time to speak, and a time to keep
silence."
"But with me, Mr. Claremont," I said, "it always seems the time to keep
silence."
"Have you been looking out for an opportunity?" he said. "Ready to
speak and longing to speak, whenever and as soon as God shall give you
one?"
"Hardly that," I said; "I have often thought I ought to speak, but have
always persuaded myself that it was not the right time to do it."
"Ah!" he said. "Perhaps if you look carefully within, Miss Lindsay,
you will find that at the bottom of it all there has been a little
cowardice, a little unwillingness to be brave for the Master's
sake—please forgive me for saying so—but I have often found it so
myself. Often, when I have neglected speaking to others about their
souls, I have found that it was not from want of opportunity, but from
want of courage to use the opportunities that were given me."
"Yes," I said, "I believe you are right."
"Pray for opportunities to be given you, be on the look-out for
opportunities, and use the opportunities as soon as ever they occur,
and you will, I am sure, Miss Lindsay, find that there is indeed a time
to speak, as well as a time to be silent."
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