DOLLY AT THE WICKET GATE.
The next Sunday rose calm and quiet over the hills of Poganuc.
There was something almost preternatural in the sense of stillness
and utter repose which the Sabbath day used to bring with it in those
early times. The absolute rest from every earthly employment, the
withholding even of conversation from temporal things, marked it off
from all other days. To the truly devout the effect was something the
same as if the time had been spent in heaven.
On this particular dewy, fresh summer morning it seemed as if Nature
herself were hushing her breath to hear the music of a higher
sphere. Dolly stood at her open window looking out on the wooded
hills opposite, feathered with their varied green, on the waving
meadows with their buttercups and daisies, on the old apple tree in
the corner of the lot where the bobolink was tilting up and down,
chattering and singing with all his might. She was thinking of what
she had heard her father saying to her mother at breakfast: how the
sickness and death of one good woman had been blessed to all that
neighborhood, and how a revival of religion was undoubtedly begun
there.
All this made Dolly very serious. She thought a great deal about
heaven, and perfectly longed to be quite sure she ever should get
there. She often had wished that there were such a thing in reality
as a Wicket Gate, and an old Interpreter's house, and a Palace
Beautiful, for then she would set right off on her pilgrimage at
once, and in time get to the Celestial City. But how to get this
spiritual, intangible preparation she knew not. To-day she knew was
a sacramental Sunday, and she should see all the good people taking
that sacrificial bread and wine, but she should be left out.
And how to get in! There were no Sunday-schools in those days,
no hymns or teachings specially adapted to the child; and Dolly
remembered to have heard serious elderly people tell of how they were
brought "under conviction" and suffered for days and weeks before
the strange secret of mercy was revealed to them, and she wondered
how she ever should get this conviction of sin. Poor Dolly had often
tried to feel very solemn and sad and gloomy, and to think herself a
dreadful sinner, but had never succeeded. She was so young and so
healthy--the blood raced and tingled so in her young veins; and if
she was pensive and sad a little while, yet, the first she knew, she
would find herself racing after Spring, or calling to her brothers,
or jumping up and down with her skipping rope, and feeling full as
airy and gay as the bobolink across in the meadow. This morning she
was trying her best to feel her sins and count them up; but the birds
and the daisies and the flowers were a sad interruption, and she went
to meeting quite dissatisfied.
When she saw the white simple table and the shining cups and snowy
bread of the Communion she inly thought that the service could have
nothing for her--it would be all for those grown-up, initiated
Christians. Nevertheless, when her father began to speak she was
drawn to listen to him by a sort of pathetic earnestness in his voice.
The Doctor was feeling very earnestly and deeply, and he had chosen
a theme to awaken responsive feeling in his church. His text was the
declaration of Jesus: "I call you not servants, but friends;" and his
subject was Jesus as the soul-friend offered to every human being.
Forgetting his doctrinal subtleties, he spoke with all the simplicity
and tenderness of a rich nature concerning the faithful, generous,
tender love of Christ, how he cared for the soul's wants, how he
was patient with its errors, how he gently led it along the way of
right, how he was always with it, teaching its ignorance, guiding its
wanderings, comforting its sorrows, with a love unwearied by faults,
unchilled by ingratitude, till he brought it through the darkness of
earth to the perfection of heaven.
Real, deep, earnest feeling inclines to simplicity of language, and
the Doctor spoke in words that even a child could understand. Dolly
sat absorbed, her large blue eyes gathering tears as she listened;
and when the Doctor said, "Come, then, and trust your soul to this
faithful Friend," Dolly's little heart throbbed "I will." And she
did. For a moment she was discouraged by the thought that she had not
had any conviction of sin; but like a flash came the thought that
Jesus could give her that as well as anything else, and that she
could trust him for the whole. And so her little earnest child-soul
went out to the wonderful Friend. She sat through the sacramental
service that followed, with swelling heart and tearful eyes, and
walked home filled with a new joy. She went up to her father's study
and fell into his arms, saying, "Father, I have given myself to
Jesus, and he has taken me."
The Doctor held her silently to his heart a moment, and his tears
dropped on her head.
"Is it so?" he said. "Then has a new flower blossomed in the Kingdom
this day."