Gabrielle knelt that night at her bedside, with a latent, but strong,
desire to walk, not by faith, but by sight. She wanted to hear an
audible voice from heaven to assure her that she might feel sure of
salvation. Mrs. Grey had had large experience in dealing with souls,
and soon detected and brought this to light when they next met in her
dressing-room.
"I wish there was something I could _do_ to make God love me," the
child began.
"My dear, there is something."
"What is it?" was the eager demand.
"Believe on His Son, Jesus Christ."
Gabrielle's countenance fell.
"I can't believe. I don't know how!" she said.
"My child, if I should tell you that I was going to take you to drive
this afternoon, you would believe me, should you not?"
"Yes, indeed."
"That would be having faith in me."
"Yes; but it wouldn't be loving you, and God says we must love Him.
Even if I can believe in Him, I can't make myself love Him. I am sure I
would if I could."
"If it is true that you cannot love Him, then He will not condemn you
at the last day."
"It's all perfectly _horrid_!" cried Gabrielle, bewildered and excited.
"Don't say so, my poor child!" said Mrs. Grey, drawing the girl to her
and kissing her burning cheeks. "Christ is altogether lovely, and all
His paths are peace. He puts no difficulties in your way; you make them
yourself. Now let me ask you one question. Have you not asked our Lord
to save your soul?"
"Yes; hundreds of times."
"And has He refused hundreds of times?"
"He must have, for I am not saved."
"Will you prove to me that you are not?"
"Why, if I was saved I should be full of joy; and instead of that I am
full of misery."
"Well, now, here are two poor men, brothers, and they are homeless, and
friendless, and weary, and heavy-laden; but a rich man dies and leaves
them each a fortune. One of them learns this to be the case, and is
relieved of care and want; the other has not heard of his good luck,
and therefore is, to all intents and purposes, as poor as ever."
"You mean that I may have faith and not know it, and so my faith is of
no use to me?"
"It brings you no present peace. Of course it would save you in the
end; but meanwhile you would lead a dark, joyless life."
"Sometimes I feel as if I had been changed a little," said Gabrielle,
thoughtfully. "But my feelings are not alike two hours going."
"Of course not. A thousand things vary our emotions. The Bible says
nothing about feeling this way or feeling that, in order to be saved.
It says '_believe_.'"
"I think, though, that it would be easier to believe if I felt more. I
keep hoping that sometime I shall feel so much that God will pity and
forgive me."
"In other words, you keep hoping to make yourself agreeable to Him
by a great display of emotion. Do not be hurt at my saying this.
Human nature is supremely self-righteous, and is not willing to take
salvation as a free gift. I beg you to decide for Christ now, with your
_will_; having once done that, your heart will follow fast enough."
"But suppose I begin and don't hold out?"
"Begin thus. Say to God: 'Let me not wander from Thy commandments;' and
He will reply: 'I will put my fear in your heart that you shall not
depart from me.'"
"Then there are so many things to give up if I become a Christian,"
said Gabrielle, evasively.
"There are no good things to give up, and there are thousands to gain.
I cannot preach to you below the gospel-standard, which says that the
friend of the world is the enemy of God."
"Well, He elects some people to save, and rejects others. How can I
know that I do not come under the last head?"
"By electing Christ as yours, at this moment, when His Spirit is
striving with you to that end. I can't tell you how it pains me to see
you tampering with divine truth as if it were a straw. I believe this
temporizing, argumentative temper comes from a league between Satan and
your own evil heart. If you do not take care you will grieve away the
Holy Ghost. For my part, I would rather offend than grieve a friend."
"Do you mean that the Holy Ghost is my _friend_?" Gabrielle asked, in
great surprise.
"Certainly. Otherwise why should He hover around you as He is doing
now, offering you the greatest prizes of life?"
"Why should He love me? Why should He offer me prizes? I have never so
much as given Him a thought!"
"I do not know. I can only say: 'Even so, Father, for so it seemed good
in Thy sight.'"
"Then I won't hold out against Him another minute, if God will take me,
just as I am, a dreadfully naughty girl! He may have me and welcome!
Only I wish I hadn't done so many things I am ashamed of."
Some weeks later she came shyly again behind her grandmamma and
whispered:
"May I join the church next Sunday?"
"'If thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest,'" was the fervent
reply, and Gabrielle slipped timidly away.
Everybody knows that, as a general rule, young people cannot talk to
their nearest friends about their souls when they will confide in
strangers. It ought not to be so. A warm-hearted mother once said that
she began to talk to her children about Christ when they were _three
weeks old_! by which sweet little exaggeration she only meant that she
gave her confidence, and won theirs, at the earliest conceivable age.
Mrs. Grey perfectly understood that, taking Gabrielle at a
disadvantage, she could not expect her to sustain to herself the
relation of a little child, and that she would be painfully shy
should she try to penetrate her hidden life. Indeed there was little
to penetrate. The child apprehended dimly the path on which she had
entered. All she knew about herself was, that whereas her chief aim
once was to have a nice time, and that in her own way, her earnest
desire now was to be "good."
Mrs. Grey's life, far more than her instructions, had dropped, as
a seed, into soil prepared for it by the hand of Him who hears and
answers prayer. Nor did she at once emerge into a saint, with all the
holy aspirations and activities of mature life. She was a child still,
and needed pruning, grafting, and weeding. But the root of the matter
was in her. That tiny spark of grace that sometimes seemed to her and
to her friends to have died out, was there; it flickered, and was often
invisible to mortal eyes; _but it was there_, and had her soul been at
any moment required of her, that grace, small though it was, would have
been her humble passport into the company of the redeemed.
Mrs. Grey's pastor at this time was quite an inexperienced man, and he
would not venture to admit any young people to his church till he had
seen their parents or guardians. He came now to see her with reference
to Gabrielle.
"I think the root of the matter is in the child," she said, "and that
she may safely unite with the church. But, if you will allow me to say
it, these immature young Christians need a great deal of looking-after.
Taking them into the church is like taking plants into shelter. But
shelter is not enough. _All_ the conditions of growth should be
observed, or instead of blossoms and fruit, we shall have stunted or
effeminate growth, or what is worse, no growth at all."
"One object I had in calling to-day," he returned, "was to ask you if
it would be possible to gather our young people about you once a week
for Christian counsel?"
Mrs. Grey cast her eye over her already overcrowded life, and shook her
head.
"I think I am playing the school-ma'am quite as much as is good for
me," she said, with a smile. "Sometimes I am almost frightened at the
multiplicity of things I am undertaking to do. However, the work you
propose looks very attractive; I might spare one evening in the week."
"They are almost all confined to their studies in the evening. Perhaps
we should have to steal a piece of Sunday."
"Oh, I don't see where."
"Nor I; unless I succeed in carrying out a plan I have in my mind.
My theory is that there is too much preaching, and too little doing,
of the word. Men of business, for instance, have next to no time for
Christian work, and their piety falls to sleep in consequence. If the
church would organize some plan for setting everybody at work on Sunday
afternoons, pastors and all, I think we might soon begin to expect the
coming of our Lord. By the bye, you love to deal with difficult cases;
I wish you would take occasion to talk to Mr. Morrison. You have had
great experience, and I have had next to none."
"It takes more than experience to reach a polished moralist," she
replied. "It needs the Holy Spirit. I doubt if there is anything we
can do but pray for him. He is so intrenched in his own virtues that he
is farther out of reach than most hardened sinners."
"I know it; but there are his poor wife and those six boys to be
thought of."
"You have been among us so little time that you are, perhaps, not aware
that he is my brother."
"Indeed, I was not aware of it."
"He is my half-brother; we had different mothers. At the time of his
birth, and for many years following, our father was not a Christian;
his training was different from mine. Our mothers were as unlike as
possible, and I can't begin to tell you how it pains me to look at his
perfectly useless--because Christless--life. I think he will be saved
at last; too much prayer has been offered for him to permit his being
lost; but oh, how much he has thrown away!"
"He is an interesting man; he would be very useful in the church; I
wish I could see him identified with it."
"I will make one more attempt to move him. My heart yearns over those
dear boys."
A few evenings later saw her closeted with Mr. Morrison, a fine-looking
man, with complexion almost as pure as a baby's, clear blue eyes, and a
noble head, crowned with waving white hair. They talked a while about
his boys, and his plans for their future; then she spoke, naturally,
for her heart was full of it, of the special religious work then going
on in the church.
"It is mere excitement," he said; "it will not last."
"Time alone can prove that. In my own case the excitement has lasted
fifty years, and I see no signs of its passing off. Robert, you can't
think how it distresses me to see you coming to church, Sunday after
Sunday, with a regularity that might put many a professor to the blush,
yet never advancing beyond that point."
"I should like to ask you one question, Emily. Haven't I heard you say
you were almost certain of my salvation?"
"Yes, I have said it. But salvation is not the sole end of man; his
first end is to glorify God."
"Well, don't I glorify Him? Point out any word or deed of mine that is
sinful, if you can. Am I not fair and square in all my dealings? Do not
I give, liberally, to the poor? Am I bad-tempered? Am I a backbiter?"
"We have gone all over this ground scores of times," she replied. "If
mere morality glorifies God, then I must allow that you are living up
to all His claims. But the Bible is our standard, and we learn there
that Christ rejected a man who had kept the law from his youth up."
"I never could see the reason for that. I have always aimed to lead a
blameless life, and think I have."
"To be saved by a blameless life one must never have transgressed in a
single point. Now you do not pretend that you never once transgressed?"
"I know it would be a lie to stand up in a prayer-meeting, and say I
was the chief of sinners, as so many do."
"Did St. Paul lie when he called himself the chief of sinners?"
"I suppose he knew what he was saying. I do not pretend to be St. Paul,
or saint anybody; but to pretend I am a great sinner, when I know I am
not, would be mere nonsense."
"That is as far as I ever get with you. You say you believe the Bible;
let us see what that says."
"Oh, I know what it says; that every man is, by nature, a great sinner;
granted, but all are not equally depraved, and it has always been my
nature to be upright, faithful, and true. What would you have more?"
"A great deal more. Morality is not Christianity."
"You think I am not a Christian because I never joined the church. But
I consider myself a better man than half your professors. If I ever do
set up to be a Christian, I mean to put most of you to the blush. The
way old Mr. Whitcomb gets up and whines over his 'coldness' makes me
smile."
"I don't like whines any better than you do. But I want to call your
attention to a fact you overlook. Allowing that your life is blameless,
let me judge you by that life. Its whole history is _forgetfulness of
God_, and that issues in final condemnation, however faultless your
record in regard to man. You are not honest and upright and amiable to
please God, therefore He scarcely looks at this exterior, fair as it is
in your eyes."
"Prove that I forget God, if you please. Is it forgetting Him to go to
church twice every Sunday? I do not make the pretension that some men
do, but I defy them to find me wanting in any virtue."
"Let us define the word 'forget,' before we go any farther. It implies
heedlessness, does it not?"
"I suppose so."
"Then one who forgets God is heedless towards Him. You go to church
every Sunday; outwardly this looks well. But the Divine eye penetrates
to the heart. Does He find a true worshiper there?"
"You cannot prove that He does not."
"I cannot _prove_ it, it is true, but I must judge of the state of your
heart on Sundays, by what I see of your life on week-days. Now, I see
no Christ there."
"I believe the Father judges me more leniently than you do. He finds no
fault with my worship."
"Does He not? Read what is said in prophecy and afterwards repeated by
Christ, of those who worship God with the lips while the heart is far
from Him."
"While my outward life is spotless I am not afraid of my heart's not
keeping step with it. Besides, there is nothing malicious, or unkind,
or severe in my heart, that God should look upon with displeasure. It
is not mere sentiment He wants. He wants a good, honest, manly life,
and that He gets from me."
"If He gets from you all He wants, why does He declare you must be born
again?"
"I know most men need regeneration, but I feel no need of any such
change, and never did."
"My dear brother," said Mrs. Grey, with difficulty suppressing her
tears, "I see that further argument is useless. You are living for
yourself and not for Christ, though He has died for you. You are
training your sons to outward morality like your own. But all your
souls are in jeopardy. There are those who have gone far beyond you;
they have prophesied in Christ's name; cast out devils in His name;
done many wonderful works in His name; and He has said, 'I never knew
you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.'"
"At any rate," he returned, "you are religious enough to satisfy the
most exacting Being possible. If I fail to enter heaven through my good
works, I can plead yours."
"Mine!" she cried. "There isn't one on record!"
"Oh, if it pleases you to take that view of your life, well and good!
It seems to be a part of your creed to believe yourself a sinner."
"It is, indeed, my creed," she replied, "and I find that creed in the
Word of God. One ray from it darting through your soul would reveal to
you depths of evil of which you are now unconscious."
"'Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,'" he said,
smilingly, and rose to go.
Defeated and grieved, Mrs. Grey went to the Refuge of her soul, to
plead once more on behalf of this deluded man. But for a time "He
answered her never a word."