"Would you like another chapter, Lilian dear?" asked Kate Everard of the
invalid cousin whom she had lately come from Hampshire to nurse.
"Not now, thanks; my head is tired," was the reply.
Kate closed her Bible with a feeling of slight disappointment. She knew
that Lilian was slowly sinking under incurable disease, and what could
be more suitable to the dying than constantly to be hearing the Bible
read? Lilian might surely listen, if she were too weak to read for
herself.
Kate was never easy in mind unless she perused at least two or three
chapters daily, besides a portion of the Psalms; and she had several
times gone through the whole Bible from beginning to end. And here was
Lilian, whose days on earth might be few, tired with one short chapter!
"There must be something wrong here," thought Kate, who had never during
her life kept her bed for one day through sickness. "It is a sad thing
when the dying do not prize the word of God."
"Lilian," said she, trying to soften her naturally quick, sharp tones
to gentleness, "I should think that now, when you are so ill, you would
find special comfort in the Scriptures."
Lilian's languid eyes had closed, but she opened them, and fixing her
soft, earnest gaze upon her cousin, replied, "I do--they are my support;
I have been feeding on one verse all the morning."
"And what is that verse?" asked Kate.
"'Whom I shall see for myself,'" began Lilian slowly; but Kate cut her
short--
"I know that verse perfectly--it is in Job; it comes just after 'I know
that my Redeemer liveth;' the verse is, 'Whom I shall see for myself,
and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.'"
"What do you understand by the expression 'not another'?" asked Lilian.
"Really, I have never particularly considered those words," answered
Kate. "Have you found out any remarkable meaning in them?"
"They were a difficulty to me," replied the invalid, "till I happened to
read that in the German Bible they are rendered a little differently;
and then I searched in my own Bible, and found that the word in the
margin of it, is like that in the German translation."
"I never look at the marginal references," said Kate, "though mine is a
large Bible and has them."
"I find them such a help in comparing Scripture with Scripture,"
observed Lilian.
Kate was silent for several seconds. She had been careful to read daily
a large portion from the Bible; but to "mark, learn, and inwardly digest
it," she had never even thought of trying to do. In a more humble tone
she now asked her cousin, "What is the word which is put in the margin
of the Bible instead of 'another' in that difficult text?"
"_A stranger_" replied Lilian; and then, clasping her hands, she
repeated the whole passage on which her soul had been feeding with
silent delight:
"'Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and _not a
stranger_.'
[Illustration: "Whom I shall see for myself."]
"O Kate," continued the dying girl, while unbidden tears rose to her
eyes, "if you only knew what sweetness I have found in that verse all
this morning while I have been in great bodily pain! I am in the Valley
of the Shadow--I shall soon cross the dark river; I know it: but He
will be with me, and 'not a stranger.' He is the Good Shepherd, and I
know His voice; a stranger would I not follow.
"Oh," continued Lilian, "in the glad resurrection morn, it is the Lord
Jesus whom I shall behold--my own Saviour, my own tried friend, and 'not
a stranger;' I shall at last see Him whom, not having seen, I have
loved."
Lilian closed her eyes again, and the large drops, overflowing, fell
down her pallid cheeks; she had spoken too long for her strength, but
her words had not been spoken in vain.
"Lilian has drawn more comfort and profit from one verse--nay, from
three words in the Bible, than I have drawn from the whole book,"
reflected Kate. "I have but read the Scriptures,--she has searched them.
I have been like one floating carelessly over the surface of waters
under which lie pearls; Lilian has dived deep and made the treasure her
own."
[Illustration]