ERRANDS OF HOPE.
"It is a very small world, after all."
Mr. Dickens, who touched the springs of the whole world's life, and
moved all its hearts with tears and laughter, said so; and we find
it out, each in our own story, or in any story that we know of or
try to tell. How things come round and join each other again,--how
this that we do, brings us face to face with that which we have
done, and with its work and consequence; how people find each other
after years and years, and find that they have not been very far
apart after all; how the old combinations return, and almost repeat
themselves, when we had thought that they were done with.
"As the doves fly to their windows," where the crumbs are waiting
for them, we find ourselves borne by we know not what instinct of
events,--yet we do know; for it is just the purpose of God, as all
instinct is,--toward these conjunctions and recurrences. We can see
at the end of weeks, or months, or years, how in some Hand the lines
must have all been gathered, and made to lead and draw to the
coincidence. We call it fate, sometimes; stopping short, either
blindly inapprehensive of the larger and surer blessedness, or too
shyly reverent of what we believe to say it easily out. Yet when we
read it in a written story, we call it the contrivance of the
writer,--the trick of the trade. Dearly beloved, the writer only
catches, in such poor fashion as he may, the trick of the Finger,
whose scripture is upon the stars.
Marion Kent is received into the Ingraham home. Hilary Vireo and
Luclarion Grapp preach the gospel to her.
"Christ died."
The minister uttered his evangel of mercy in those two eternal
words.
"Yes,--Christ," murmured the girl, who had never questioned about
such things before, and to whose lips the holy name had been
strange, unsuitable, impossible; but whose soul, smitten with its
sin and need, broke through the wretched outward hinderance now, and
had to cry up after the only Hope.
"But He could not forgive my letting _them_ die. I have been reading
the New Testament, Mr. Vireo, 'Whosoever shall offend one of these
little ones, it were better for him that a millstone"--
She could not finish the quotation.
"Yes,--'_offend_;' turn aside out of the right--away from Him;
mislead. Hurt their _souls_, Marion."
Marion gave a grasping look into his face. Her eyes seized the
comfort,--snatched it with a starving madness out of his.
"Do you think it means _that?_" she said.
"I do. I know the word 'offend' means simply to 'turn away.' We may
sin against each other's outward good, grievously; we may lay up
lives full of regrets to bear; we may hurt, we may kill; and then we
must repent according to our sin; but we _may_ repent, and they and
He will pity. It is the soul-killers--the corrupters--Christ so
terribly condemns."
"But listen to me, Marion," he began again. "God let his Christ
die--suffer--for the whole world. Christ lets them whom he counts
worthy, die--suffer--for _their_ world. The Lamb is forever slain;
the sacrifice of the holy is forever making. It is so that they come
to walk in white with Him; because they have washed their robes in
his blood--have partaken of his sacrifice. Do you not think they are
glad now, with his joy, to have given themselves for you; if it
brings you back? 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.'
He who knew how to lay hold of the one great heart of humanity by a
divine act, knows how to give his own work to those who can draw the
single cords, and save with love the single souls. They must suffer,
that they may also reign with Him. It is his gift to them and to
you. Will you take your part of it, and make theirs perfect? 'Let
not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.
Ye believe in me, believe also in these.'"
"But I want to come where they are. I want to love and do for them;
do something for them in heaven, Mr. Vireo, that I did not do here!
Can I _ever_ have my chances given back again?"
"You have them now. Go and do something for 'the least of these.'
That is how we work for our Christs who have been lifted up. Do
their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link
yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and the life of it.
The moment you give yourself, you shall feel that. You shall know
that you are joined to them. You need not wait to go to heaven. You
can be in heaven."
He left her with that to think of; left her with a new peace in her
eyes. She looked round that hour for something to do.
She went up into old Mrs. Rhynde's room. She knew Ray and Dot were
busy. She found the old lady's knitting work all in a snarl;
stitches dropped and twisted.
Some coals had rolled out upon the hearth, and the sun had got
round so as to strike across her where she sat.
The grandmother was waiting patiently, closing her eyes, and resting
them, letting the warm sun lie upon her folded hands like a friend's
touch. One of the girls would be up soon.
Marion came in softly, brushed up the hearth, laid the sticks and
embers together, made the fire-place bright. She changed the blinds;
lowered one, raised another; kept the sunshine in the room, but
shielded away the dazzle that shot between face and fingers. She
left the shade with careful note, just where it let the warm beam in
upon those quiet hands. Some instinct told her not to come between
them and that heavenly enfolding.
She took the knitting-work and straightened it; raveled down, and
picked up, and with nimble stitches restored the lost rows.
Mrs. Rhynde looked up at her and smiled.
Then she offered to read. She had not read a word aloud from a
printed page since that night in Loweburg.
The old lady wanted a hymn. Marion read "He leadeth me." The book
opened of itself to that place. She read it as one whose soul went
searching into the words to find what was in them, and bring it
forth. Of Marion Kent, sitting in the chair with the book in her
hand, she thought--she remembered--nothing. Her spirit went from out
of her, into spiritual places. So she followed the words with her
voice, as one really _reading_; interpreting as she went. All her
elocution had taught her nothing like this before. It had not
touched the secret of the instant receiving and giving again; it had
only been the trick of _saying out_, which is no giving at all.
"Thank you, dear," said the soft toothless voice. "That's very
pretty reading."
Dot came in, and she went away.
She had done a little "errand for her mother." A very little one;
she did not deserve, yet, that more should be given her to do; but
her heart went up saying tenderly, remorsefully,--"For your sake."
And back into her heart came the fulfillment of the promise,--"He
that doeth it in the name of a disciple, shall receive a disciple's
reward."
These comforts, these reprievals, came to her; then again, she
went down into the blackness of the old memories, the old
self-accusations.
After she had found her way to Luclarion Grapp's, she used
sometimes, when these things seized her, to tie on her bonnet, pull
down her thick veil, and crying and whispering behind it as she
went,--"Mother! Susie! do you know how I love you now? how sorry I
am?" would hurry down, through the busy streets, to the Neighbors.
"Give me something to do," she would say, when she got there.
And Luclarion would give her something to do; would keep her to tea,
or to dinner; and in the quietness, when they were left by
themselves, would say words that were given her to say in her own
character and fashion. It is so blessed that the word is given and
repeated in so many characters and fashions! That each one receives
it and passes it on, "in that language into which he was born."
"I wish you could hear Luclarion Grapp's way of talking," Ray
Ingraham had said to her just after she had brought her home. "The
kind of comfort she finds for the most wicked and miserable,--people
who have done such shocking things as you never dreamed of."
"I want to hear somebody talk to the very wickedest. If there's any
chance for me, there's where I must find it. I can't listen with the
pretty-good people, any longer. It doesn't belong to me, or do me
any good."
"Come and hear the gospel then." And so Ray had taken her down to
Neighbor Street, to Luclarion Grapp.
"But the sin stays. You can't wipe the fact out; and you've got to
take the consequences," said Marion Kent to the strong, simple woman
to whom she came as to a second-seer, to have her spiritual
destinies revealed to her.
"Yes," said Luclarion, gravely, but very sweetly, "you have. But the
consequences wear out. Everything wears out but the Lord's love. And
these old worn-out consequences--why, He can turn them into
blessings; and He means to, as they go along, and fade, and change;
until, by and by, we may be safer and stronger, and fuller of
everlasting life, than if we hadn't had them. I was vaccinated a
while ago this summer; everybody was down here; and I had a pretty
sick time. It took--ferocious! Well, I got over it, and then I
thought about it. I'd got something out of my system forever, that
might have come upon me, to destruction, all of a sudden; but now
never will! It appears to me almost as if we were sent into this
world, like a kind of hospital, to be vaccinated against the awful
evil--in our souls; to suffer a little for it; to take it the
easiest way we can take it, and so be safe. I don't know--and if you
hadn't repented, I wouldn't put it into your head; but it's been put
into my head, after I've repented, and I guess it's mainly true. See
here!"
And she took down a big leather-bound Bible, and opened it to the
fortieth chapter of Isaiah.
"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye
comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is
accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received
of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."
"The Old Testament is full of the New; men's wickedness,--it took
wicked men to show the way of the Lord in the earth,--and God's
forgiveness, and his leading it all round right, in spite of them
all! Only He didn't turn the right side out all at once; it wasn't
safe to let them see both sides then. But He _trusts_ us now; He
gave his whole heart in Jesus Christ; He tells us, without any
keeping back, what He means our very sins shall do for us, and He
leaves it to us, after that, to take hold and help Him!"
"If it weren't for them! If I hadn't let them suffer and die!"
"Do you think He takes all this care of you,--lets them die for you
even,--and don't take as much for them? Do you think they ain't glad
and happy now? Do you think you could have hurt them, if you had
tried,--and you didn't try, you only let them alone a little,
forgetting? It says, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation.' If
we have somebody to take part with us against our sins, how much
more against our mistakes,--our forgettings! and _they_ are the
propitiation, too; their angels--the Christ of them--do always
behold the face of the Father. Their interceding is a part of the
Lord's interceding."
"If I could once more be let to do something for them--their very
selves!"
"You can. You can pray, 'Lord give them some beautiful heavenly joy
this day that thou knowest of, for my asking; because I cannot any
more do for them on the earth.' And then you can turn round to their
errands again."
Marion stood up on her feet.
"I will say that prayer for them every day! I shall believe in it,
because you told me. If I had thought of it myself, I should not
have dared. But He wouldn't send such a message by you if He didn't
mean it; would He?"
She believed in the God of Luclarion Grapp, as the children of
Israel believed in the God of Abraham.
"He never sends any message that He doesn't mean. He means the
comfort, just as much as He does the blaming."
Another day, a while after, Marion came down to Neighbor Street with
something very much on her mind to say, and to ask about. They had
all waited for her own plans to suggest themselves, or rather for
her work to be given her to do. No one had mentioned, or urged, or
even asked anything as to what she should do next.
But now it came of itself.
"Couldn't I get a place in some asylum, or hospital, do you think,
Miss Grapp? To be anything--an under nurse, or housemaid, or a cook
to make gruels? So that I could do for poor women and little
children? That would seem to come the very nearest. I'd come here,
if you wanted me; but I think I should like best to take care of
poor, good women, whose children had died, or gone away; who haven't
any one to look after them except asylum people. I like to treat
them as if they were all my mothers; and especially to wait on any
little girls that might be sick."
Was this the same Marion Kent who had given her whole soul, a
little while ago, to fine dressing and public appearing, and having
her name on placards? Had all that life dropped off from her so
easily?
Ah, you call it easily! _She_ knew, how, passing through the
furnace, it had been burned away; shriveled and annihilated with the
fierce, hot sweep of a spiritual flame before which all old,
unworthy desire vanishes:--the living, awful breath of remorse.
"I've no doubt you can," said Luclarion. "I'll make inquiries. Mrs.
Sheldon comes here pretty often; and she is one of the managers of
the Women and Children's Hospital. They've just got into a great,
new building, and there'll be people wanted."
"I'll begin with anything, remember; only to get in, and learn how.
I'll do so they'll want to keep me, and give me more; more work, I
mean. If I could come to nursing, and being depended on!"
"They train nurses, regular, there. Learn them, so that they can go
anywhere. Then you might some time have a chance to go to somebody
that needed great care; some sick woman or child, or a sick mother,
with little children round her"--
"And every day send up some good turn by them to mother and little
Sue!"
So they bound up her wounds for her, and poured in the oil and wine;
so they put her on their own beast of service, and set her in their
own way, and brought her to a place of abiding.
Three weeks afterward, she went in as housemaid for the children's
ward to the Hospital; the beautiful charity which stands, a token of
the real best growth of Boston, in that new quarter of her fast
enlarging borders, where the tide of her wealth and her life is
reaching out southward, toward the pure country pleasantness.
We must leave her there, now; at rest from her ambitions; reaching
into a peace they could never have given her; doing daily work that
comes to her as a sign and pledge of acceptance and forgiveness.
She sat by a child's bed one Sunday; the bed of a little girl ten
years old, whom she had singled out to do by for Susie's sake. She
had taken the place of a nurse, to-day, who was ill with an ague.
She read to Maggie the Bible story of Joseph, out of a little book
for children that had been Sue's.
After the child had fallen asleep, Marion fetched her Bible, to look
back after something in the Scripture words.
It had come home to her,--that betrayal and desertion of the boy by
his brethren; it stood with her now for a type of her own selfish
unfaithfulness; it thrust a rebuke and a pain upon her, though she
knew she had repented.
She wanted to see exactly how it was, when, in the Land beyond the
Desert, his brethren came face to face again with Joseph.
"Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye
sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life....
To save your lives with a great deliverance. So it was not you that
sent me hither, but God.... And thou shalt dwell in the land of
Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me."
A great throb of thankfulness, of gladness, came rushing up in her;
it filled her eyes with light; it flushed her cheeks with tender
color. The tears sprung shining; but they did not fall. Peace stayed
them. It was such an answer!
"How pretty you are!" said Maggie, awakening. "Please, give me a
drink of water."
It was as if Susie thought of it, and gave her the chance! She read
secret, loving meanings now, in things that had their meanings only
for her. She believed in spirit-communication,--for she knew it
came; but in its own beautiful, soul-to-soul ways; not by any
outward spells.
She went for the water; she found a piece of ice and put in it. She
came and raised the little head tenderly,--the child was hurt in the
back, and could not be lifted up,--and held the goblet to the gentle
lips; lips patient, like Sue's!
"O, you move me so nice! You give me the drink so handy!"
The beauty was in Marion's face still, warm with an inward joy; the
child's eyes followed her as she rose from bending over her.
"Real pretty," she said again, softly, liking to look at her. And
"real" was beginning to be the word, at last, for Marion Kent.
The glory of that poem she had read, thinking only of her own petty
triumph, came suddenly over her thought by some association,--she
could not trace out how. Its grand meaning was a meaning, all at
once, for her. With a changed phrasing, like a heavenly inspiration,
the last line sprang up in her mind, as if somebody stood by and
spoke it:--
"These are the lambs of the sacrifice: _this_ is the court
of the King!"