ANOTHER OPEN EVENING.
“But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in
glory by Christ Jesus.”—Philippians iv. 19.
For some months past, my dear girl friends, I have been equally
gratified and troubled by the sight of a large pile of your letters
on my table—gratified, because they are full of sweet confidences,
requests for advice and help, grateful allusions to benefits which have
resulted from our talks in the twilight, and affectionate expressions
towards myself. As a whole, your letters have been a source of great
joy to me; but, on the other hand, it has grieved me to think that some
of you have hoped and waited in vain for replies which never came.
Believe me, I would have written to each and all of you had it been
possible. Conscience does not reproach me for having wilfully neglected
you; but I have had a good many heartaches on your account.
Who does not know the trial of looking and waiting in vain for a
friend’s letter?
I cannot now address you singly; but an open evening will again bring
us more into touch with each other, as a former one did a few months
ago.
It is alike delightful and wonderful to note the results of that
night’s talk, during which we had glimpses of each other’s thoughts,
needs, and longings. Subsequent letters have shown me how the words
of one girl-writer have stirred the hearts of many to prayer on her
behalf, and in some cases they have asked, “How can I be of real use
to another member of our gathering?”
Some have been brought into closer relationship with each other as
correspondents, and I trust the result will be beneficial to all of
them.
Several of my correspondents have asked that evenings should be devoted
to subjects of special interest to themselves and many others, but
which do not come within the scope of our object in meeting. Let me
remind you, dear friends, who, from the most worthy motives, have
suggested the consideration of such subjects, how varied are the
classes, ages, nationalities, and even the religious views of those
who meet with me in the twilight. It will be obvious to you that the
usefulness of our meetings would be imperilled, were we to introduce
any subject likely to arouse an antagonistic feeling even in the minds
of a few.
Several of our recent talks have been devoted to smoothing away the
difficulties which many dear girls meet with in their first efforts at
self-dedication. They are answers to inquiries and requests for help
which have come from many quarters. I do earnestly hope and pray that,
by God’s blessing, they will be found useful and helpful to many others
besides my dear correspondents.
I think that many amongst you who ask questions would do well to refer
back to some of our earlier talks, which all who now meet with me may
not have read. They began in September, 1896, and have been continued
monthly ever since.
It is delightful to find how many of my girls do refer back to the old
talks for help and comfort; and, to you all, it must be very cheering
to know that God has blessed the words of some to the good of others.
Here is an instance. One dear correspondent had been telling me a great
deal about the many worries and anxieties of daily life, and of the
relief it was to open her heart to someone who was, she felt sure,
“interested in us girls.”
With a mother ill in bed, and who must not be told anything about
the worries incidental to the large family, the servants, and home
which needed constant oversight, my young correspondent was feeling
overweighted, and wrote—
“Oh, how mistaken people are who think one has nothing to do but take
it easy and enjoy oneself! If they only knew! Still, I am wicked to
grumble so! These little ‘thorns in the flesh’ are nothing compared
with what so many have to bear. This morning I was ready to break down
and have a real hearty cry, a thing I do not often indulge in. I had
no opportunity just then. I took up at random a back number of the ‘G.
O. P.’ and opened it at the ‘Twilight Talk.’ It seemed just meant for
me. There was an extract from the letter of a girl who seemed to have
my feelings exactly, and her words did help me so. I hope you will
never give up writing to us whilst you are able to do so. I pray for
you and for all our ‘Twilight Circle,’ and that we may all, both you
and me, gain more and more blessing from our monthly meetings.”... “I
do so want to make a fresh start and try to overcome my temptations.
It is so nice to know that you are praying for us—for me. May the dear
Lord bless you exceeding abundantly with the blessing that maketh rich
and addeth no sorrow to it, is the prayer of ‘One of your most loving
girls.’”
You will all, I am sure, understand, that in giving abstracts from
such letters, I am anxious for every member of our “Twilight Circle”
to share a great pleasure with me. That our talks should have been so
largely blessed, and that the interest taken in them is continually
deepening and extending, is a matter which concerns each of us. We
_must_ all benefit by being permitted to read each other’s hearts and
knowing that we are not alone in our experiences, whether of joy or
sorrow.
It is wonderful how two or three words often stir us to sympathy and
incline us to confidence. Here is an instance from the letter of one
who had lately known a great sorrow.
“Last month I was feeling so miserable when my paper arrived; and
somehow I felt better after reading that kind remark you made about
someone who told you she was a ‘motherless bairn.’ I have lost my
mother too, and have not yet got used to being without her. You will
understand how dreary everything seems sometimes; but when I read the
‘Twilight Talks,’ it makes me feel that there is still something left
to live for. My life seems very poor and mean when judged by your
standard, and it is very hard to reach, and sometimes seems a hopeless
task.”
I pause here to say that the standard I strive to place before you,
beloved ones, and myself, being God’s standard, as shown to us in
the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, makes all our lives seem poor and
mean—none more so than my own. Thanks be to God! He has taught me
by His Spirit to look from my own weakness to His strength, from my
sinfulness to Him, in whom I believe, and “Who bare my sins in His
own body on the tree”; from my poor efforts after holiness, which are
too often only a record of failures, to the perfect righteousness
of Christ, which is the precious heritage of all who trust in His
sacrifice alone for salvation.
We must not give up striving, or lose courage by looking too much at
ourselves. We must look up to Christ, and, though we have sorely lagged
behind in our attempts to follow Him, and met with many disappointments
by the way, we must still keep on. We must endeavour to imitate the
Christ-life, but trusting the while in the sweet assurance that
“He became sin (or a sin-offering) for us that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him.”
Looking at self, we despair. Turning from self to Christ, we find that
He has fulfilled the whole law, and that, believing in His finished
work, we are “justified by faith and have peace with God.” Yet, even
when we do realise what Christ has done, how dissatisfied we are with
our own poor efforts to show that we love and want to be like Him!
Everything in Him is so grandly perfect, and so many littlenesses creep
into our best efforts that we are ashamed to look at them.
A dear correspondent gives us a picture which many of us will own to be
a reflection of our own feelings.
“I am one of His weak ones, yet longing to live the life that shall
glorify Him most. The thing that grieves me so is that I have so little
love in my heart towards Him. It is not strong as it ought to be; but
Jesus is so precious to me that I want above all things to lead others
to Him, that they may know what a Saviour He is!”
Happy girl! To be able to see so much in Christ, so little in self! It
is the dissatisfied disciples who cannot be contented to follow their
Master “afar off.” They _must_ be ever praying and striving after a
closer union with and greater likeness to their Lord. If one of you
should write and say, “I am quite satisfied with myself, I am doing the
best I can, and I am sure nobody can find fault with me,” I should be
very, very sorry for her.
The student who has mastered the rudiments of a science does not sit
down contented with the little he knows. He looks to the highest level
of knowledge which has been attained by those who have gone before him,
and says to himself, “If hard work, earnest, painstaking study and
perseverance will do it, I will go a step beyond.”
Many years ago I stood by the death-bed of one who had long passed the
fourscore years whose strength is described in God’s word as “labour
and sorrow.” She did not talk of what she had done for Christ; but in a
few words expressed her sense of what He had done for her.
“All in Christ—nothing in me.”
A volume could not have expressed more than did these half-dozen words;
but the light in those aged eyes, and the expression on the face were
pledges of the sincerity of the dying speaker.
May you go on and on until, losing sight of self and its poverty of
service and of love, you can say, “I have fought the good fight,
looking to the Captain of my salvation for courage, and strength, and
grace; and now the battle is drawing to a close I can only say, Thanks
be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”
“All in Christ—nothing in me.”
A correspondent who signs herself “One of your grateful, loving girls,”
sends a most interesting letter, of which I give an extract.
“I ought to write and tell you how much I have been helped by your
talks with us in the ‘G. O. P.’ It is nice to read about other girls’
lives, and I hope we shall be able to help each other. I was at a
meeting one afternoon, and, before singing a certain hymn, we were
told not to join if we did not really understand it. It was one only a
Christian should sing. I felt able to say the words. I am very thankful
to God for many blessings and for strength to overcome temptation;
above all, for the love that He has put into my heart. Will you please
join with me in the prayer that I may grow rich in grace?”
Yes, dear girl; and I trust that every member of our “Twilight Circle”
will join in the petition that, not you only, but all of us may “grow
in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
With such growth ever widening and spreading throughout the great human
family, what a happy world would this become!
So many correspondents allude to their beloved mothers whom “God has
called home.” It is a joy that our talks have been especially helpful
to several of them. It is sweet to be claimed as “deputy mother,” and
to read such words as these—“I always turn to the ‘Twilight Talk’
first, and read it out so that another as well as myself can enjoy
it. We girls all make a confidant of you, our real, true friend.” “I
address you not merely as a friend, but as a dear, kind mother.”
“I love you just as if I had known you all my life,” writes another;
and then she gives me a sketch of the school life she had enjoyed so
much, and of the trial it had been for her to turn her back upon it.
The leaving school was unavoidable, and I honoured the writer for her
brave efforts “to pretend not to feel it too much” for the sake of the
parents who were as sorry as herself. “But that is all over now, and I
long to do my very best in whatever place God may put me. I have made
many mistakes, failures, and slips, but I do feel Christ more precious
than ever before. Our ‘talks’ do help me. I hope you will _never_ give
them up before you are positively unable to write. Tired of them! No,
indeed! I have a Christian home, for which I cannot thank God enough,
and I have a Sunday School class of children between seven and nine.
Oh, I do want to teach them to love my Lord, and I tremble lest my life
should contradict my words! It is so nice to think you pray for us all.
I like to think the ‘all’ includes me.”
“Thank you so much for bringing all us girls together. The dear old
‘G. O. P.’ deserves our gratitude for many things, but never so much
as for this.” During our former “open evening,” I quoted from a letter
signed “_Une de vos filles_,” and now it makes me happy and will do you
good to share part of a second from the same writer. She is quite a
stranger to me, in one sense, for I do not know her personally—I wish
I did—and am equally ignorant as to her home and surroundings. She has
had a serious illness since she wrote to—shall I not say “us”?—before,
and now her second letter will do us good again, though it is too long
to be quoted in its entirety. Alluding to my quotation from her former
letter, she writes, “I wonder if you can imagine my mingled feelings
when your words caught my eye. There was gratitude to God, love to you,
astonishment, gladness, and yet shame. It is quite true that I am happy
and thankful for all God’s discipline, but I am often impatient, cross,
and rebellious. Though the impatience may not reach the length of
words, it ought not to be in the heart. It grieves me to find how much
evil there is yet to be subdued. Still, I could not help feeling glad
when I read what you said, for it made me happy to know that my letter
had given you pleasure; and when you called it ‘a little bit of work
done for Christ,’ that gave me more joy—it was so unexpected to find it
used as a message to others.”
Here I must miss words I would fain give for all to read did space
allow, and take another passage. “I liked very much what you said about
not being in a hurry to speak about Christ to others, but to live as
a Christian and wait an opportunity to speak for Him. When in doubt
as to the wisdom of speaking, I’ve asked Him to give me three things,
the words, the opportunity, and the courage, and He always does, or
makes me content to wait longer. It needs all three from Him, and if
the first two are given, (and don’t you believe we can feel when they
are?) the third is sure to come too. Sometimes the words are ready
weeks and months, and then, if I’m watching, the opportunity comes. It
is grand to know that Nehemiah’s God is as ready to hear and help now.
There is time for the needed courage and wisdom to be sent even between
the question and the answer. You don’t mind my writing again, do you?
When the heart is full it must overflow, and mine was so full of love
and thanks, yet of that feeling of unworthiness, that I had to tell
you. You seemed a dear and well-known friend before, now you are more
so than ever. By-and-by, when we remember all the way which the Lord
our God has led us, it will be nice to look back to our words, one to
another, as to something that helped us heavenward and made the ‘way’
a little easier, and to know that it was part of His leading all the
time.”
Are not you, the dear friends with whom I am sharing my precious
letters, glad of the privilege of looking over my shoulder or of
listening whilst I read them? Do we not owe much gratitude to those
of our circle who allow us the privilege of learning from their
experience, especially when it gives us new and sweet proofs of God’s
faithfulness and love in leading His children?
As I finished this letter from “_Une de mes filles_,” I felt such
a longing to bring her into communication with some of my other
correspondents who seem to be groping blindly and helplessly after
God. They want to know Him, serve Him, love Him, yet are wandering in
all directions save the right one, and are cherishing doubts, brooding
over isolated passages in God’s Word, and entertaining hard thoughts of
Him Who “is love,” because of occasional texts which they cannot fully
understand.
I want very much to write to some of these correspondents, who seem
to me all the dearer because of their troubled minds and the eager
questionings which prove that they are in earnest in their search
after truth. But I cannot answer them here and now. I have so many
pressing duties which cannot be put aside, and which make additional
correspondence most difficult. Dear troubled ones, you are not
forgotten. I ask always that a better help than mine may be given you,
and I want you to look round amongst your friends and think whether
there may not be quite near at hand, some kindly earnest Christian who
will delight in being a comfort and help to you. In one of our old
talks on “confidences,” I gave you some examples of those who went far
afield to find what was really close at hand. In any case, I hope
to write to several of you whose real names and addresses I have, or
through the Correspondence page, with the Editor’s permission.
I must give one or two brief extracts which prove how greatly many of
the members of our “Twilight circle” value such religious communion.
“A periodical is so vastly improved when the spiritual side of one’s
nature is looked after and fed.” “It is most encouraging and cheering
to know that God’s name is upheld in the magazine read by so many girls
as well as those more advanced in life. I get such blessing out of our
little ‘Talks in the Twilight.’ So many would not buy what they call a
‘religious book,’ and these talks give them the opportunity of seeing a
few words from the ‘Book of books’ when they otherwise would not.”
This sweet message came on Christmas morning. “Another year has passed
and we have still been meeting in spirit; and, in the enjoyment of
our ‘Twilight Talks,’ I am sure we must all feel very thankful that we
have been permitted to see another year. I am certain most of us, if
not all, have derived still further good from the loving, spiritual
instruction. E—— is, I am pleased to say, quite a different girl, and,
with God’s help, is continuing to overcome her besetting sins. She
still enjoys the talks, and the first thing each month is to look what
subject has been chosen, so interested is she.” You will all rejoice
with me in knowing that this dear girl’s life has been marvellously
influenced for good by our meetings, and her mother adds, “I, as one
amongst many, thank you for the benefit that has been wrought in our
home. I too have learned many useful things on the duty of a mother to
her children. The work is influencing the older as well as the younger
classes, so there is no limit to the good effected, under God’s
blessing.” I have only touched my pile of letters, and there are such
delightful ones unquoted from—piles of them. What can I do but just add
how truly they are appreciated, and thank all the writers for them, and
God for having stirred them to open their hearts so fully so me?
Who, after reading what I have quoted here and there, will say that
religious teaching is deemed superfluous by, or is other than welcome
to, the dear girls and friends of all ages who meet with me in the
twilight?
I hope to take “Sunday” and “Rest” at one of our meetings, in
compliance with many requests.
To all dear correspondents I send loving thanks, sympathy, and the
assurance that I long to be of use to them. Also the prayer, “May God
bless and help each and all according to their needs.”
(_To be continued._)
GIRLS AS I HAVE KNOWN THEM.
BY ELSA D’ESTERRE-KEELING, Author of “Old Maids and Young.”